Elijah's 2.5 gallon Pico

[Roc]

This tank is my son Elijah's. He is 6 and this is his 1st tank. I orginally got this tank for myself for a Pico tank chalange (which it is still entered in) but he will be learning using this tank how to maintain a salt water reef aquairum and will be making the stocking and aquascaping choices.

Spec's

Tank is a 2.5 gallon Acrilic cube made by FCA (Frist Class Aquairums)
18watt 50/50 bulb USA Current
HOB AC70 / Modded with cheto grate - filled with LR and cheto
25 watt Visi-therm heater

Liverock is a mix of stuff from my sump and from from Tony (Radar1)
Live sand is from my fuge

Money spent - $0.00 since I traded a fellow reefer 2 green Rics and a Neon Orange Ric baby for this tank and equipment, he was gonna sell it for 50.00 so we could consider that Elijah's budget.

Specs after 1 week

PH - 8.2
Amonina- 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10ppm
Temp - 78.9


Man I need to get the stuff to make a ATO for this thing, the evap is crazy.

And the pics

Elijah getting Sand from 120 gal tanks fuge

Adding the 1st bit of water

Learning to do it on his own without spilling

Admiring his work

Lighting added

Cycleing started

 

[LeviT]

Cool! I'll have my son's build thread soon. He's a little older though and has been hounding me to let him set up an account

 

[Roc]

Well being 6 he has a couple of things to learn , like No elijah you can't have a shark in your tank..........ROFL.

He is a lot like his dad though as he changed his aquascaping this morning.

 

[LeviT]

[quote author=Roc link=topic=4813.msg58511#msg58511 date=1223739214]
...he changed his aquascaping this morning.[/quote]
lol, isn't there only 2 rocks in there

I'm gonna have to do something to butter up one of you guys with the florescent orange rics

 

[Roc]

[quote author=LeviT link=topic=4813.msg58514#msg58514 date=1223740000]
[quote author=Roc link=topic=4813.msg58511#msg58511 date=1223739214]
...he changed his aquascaping this morning.[/quote]
lol, isn't there only 2 rocks in there

I'm gonna have to do something to butter up one of you guys with the florescent orange rics
[/quote]

There's 3 rocks and hell theres a lot you can do with 3 rocks.....ROFL

 

[Roc]

Well Elijah switched out one of his rocks for a new one that I guess had some dorment xenia and marco algae on it.

We had to add a couple of blue legged hermits to deal with the begining of his tank's diatom outbreak

And now some pic's

FTS

Blue legged hermit cleaning up

What kind of algae is this?

 

[seminolecpa]

Looks like turf algea to me. Can be quite painful if it is. Tough to get rid of.

 

[Roc]

[quote author=seminolecpa link=topic=4813.msg58547#msg58547 date=1223776023]
Looks like turf algea to me. Can be quite painful if it is. Tough to get rid of.
[/quote]

If it's a pest algae I will just tell Elijah he has to get a different rock.........lol

 

[A_Lee]

It actually looks a little bit more like a type macro algae to me
I know there are probably many species of alga deemed "red turf algae" but mine doesn't look like that.

 

[Roc]

Yea it don't look like all the red turf algae pics I seen.

 

[seminolecpa]

Yeah I did some searching too and it is not the true definition of turf algae. I definately looks very familiar to a very nuiscence algae I had in my tank a long while back. Is it very corse? I think in order to get anything to get it under gontrol it required me manually trimming with scissors and letting my foxface help get it under control. I would try doing a search on RC for it. Again just speculating but I believe if it is what I am thinking it is its a real PITA.