JBJ 3 gallon (first ever aquarium) (1 Viewer)

[Jaybird]

Got the idea/jealous after my best friend started his pico. June 10, 2012 is the first day i began. I began with a JBJ 3 gallon and the cheapest filter i could find at Aquarium World, an aquaeon. light is a bulb i got from my friend that goes to his finnex lamp.

day 06 I changed filters to a Fluval 106. the HOB was just taking up way to much room. plus, i found a bunch of visa gift cards from highschool graduation last year.

added a lego dude thought it made a nice touch.

this past two days i added an emerald crab to help manage the bit of algae. today, i also changed out the budget friendly lamp to the Finnex ray 12" LED lamp. much better in distribution of light as well as not having light venturing to far into my room during the night. this is how my tank currently looks as well as current water conditions.

If anyone has any suggestions I am all ears. So far I think Im doing well.

 

[porkchop]

Looks cool man. I'm new to this hobby, but I love these little tanks. I just started a six gallon. What are you planning for livestock?


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[ReeferMike]

Great start and Welcome

 

[Tnconcept]

Another Lego fan!

 

[Mark L.]

+2 on the Legos! I'm building my Star Wars collection. Just added R2D2.

Tank is looking good so far.

 

[ange062]

Looks cool! I've been running one of these for about 9-mo now, it's a neat little tank. A couple of suggestions:
1) Remove some of that sand, space is precious and it's not needed for biological filtration (just rely on your LR)
2) A lid or ATO is almost 100% necessary to keep evap from causing Sg swings in your tank, PM me and I can send you info on a guy that makes custom lids for cheap
3) Tunze and Hydor both make pico-sized powerheads for <$20

Look forward to progress and seeing your stocking plans!

 

[Jaybird]

I'm not sure what I'm going to stock it with. Need to get one more rock for the empty space on the right. Cycle should be finished by this weekend. I'm all for recommendations on coral or livestock.

 

[TiAg]

Hippo tang? Ok yeah I'm sure that joke was already old in the last thread LOL. Firefish, clown, snails, crab. There are some really cool varieties of each you could put in to make it unique. For corals I'd get a bunch of ricordia.

 

[Jaybird]

Take some substrate out and put in one big green anemone?

 

[ange062]

Too small for clown or firefish IME. Stick to a small goby/shrimp pair and some small inverts like sexy shrimp or porcelan crabs.

 

[below radar]

I really like mandarin gobies.

 

[ange062]

I really like mandarin gobies.

Not to be augmentative with you buddy, but Mandarins are dragonettes, a completely different family from gobies but are often mislabeled. 3g is too small for a dragonette though.

I'd look into something like a yasha, sharknose, or neon goby that stay tiny and dont move much.

 

[Jaybird]

i've looked into Dragonettes but i figure, as you said, "3g is too small..." i do like the green clown goby or the White Banded Possum Wrasse.

 

[Jaybird]

I named her Emily

 

[Jaybird]

Picked up 2 small pieces of LR and a purple pseudo. Now I just need to add some coral. Any recommendations for easy coral? I'll post pics of my improvement later today.

 

[TiAg]

Mushrooms, Ricordias, zoas.

 

[Jaybird]

bought a pistol shrimp yesterday. this is what my tank looked like before he went in.

this is what it looked like after he found the nearest rock.

there are changes in the landscape as my shrimp is approx. 1.5" long

I plan on getting coral on friday. not sure exactly what im going to get but its definitely going to happen.

 

[Jaybird]

Update: I finally added some coral that I got from Felix. I did a water change yesterday as well as adding my LED desk lamp to the tank giving it more of blue allowing the colors to pop. im still new to coral so any suggestions about what i just picked up would be great. im still not positive of what im doing for lighting is proper. i have my system set up to be an hour on and a half hour off intervals.

I received my refugium yesterday and got all that set up. i know some say LR is a good enough bio filter for this size tank but ive seen some where they have, for example, spegetti algae. If i could get some suggestions of what i could use it for that would be great.

 

[TiAg]

You should leave the lighting on I'm pretty sure. I've never run a pico so maybe something is different but in the bigger tanks they actually go through a cycle every day. When hte lights are on the corals are pretty, when they go off the CUC comes out and the corals feed. I'd set the lights to run during the day and be off at night. I run mine from 7am until 7pm. (LED) they gradually turn on starting at 7 and gradually turn off.

 

[Jaybird]

Thanks TiAg I'll do that. I had the light like that because I was developing brown algae. I've since got me some chaeto and haven't seen the likes of it since.

I'm going to quickly assume that my pistol shrimp is rearranging my coral. Anyway to avoid this or should just glue that sucker down? I can't recall the name of the piece but I was told it grows like carpet. I'll post pics later. Leaving for Conroe today for work.