Picotope for Frag tank? GoodBad

[dplantz]

I was thinking about a JBJ 3g Picotope for a sort of frag tank from my main. I would mainly be fragging zoanthids, ricordeas, mushrooms, frogspawn, xenia, kenya trees, colts, and maybe some varoius other low-med light corals. The high light requirment corals will be in the sand bed of my Finnex 30g M tank with 150 MH and 2 24 T-5s. I think this would be good for a frag tank because it would only cost around 60$ a year for upkeep.

 

[dplantz]

Has anyone tried this? I think its a good idea for a starting fragger

 

[mx#28]

3 gallons of water is hard to keep stable. If you can manage that, I'm sure it will work, but I would reccommend more volume.

 

[niskyvaulter]

i would probably go with like a 10 gal and just plumb it into your system. 3 gal is a very small amount of water and the evaporation would cause lots of fluctuations.

 

[joebob7]

I can see how a small frag tank is appealing because of the few frags most people reallt have but in a small tank like that the salt fluxuations are too unstable for steady coral growth IMO. Also in a frag tank you are filling the tank with freshly cut corals that are still oozing fluids into the water and 3 gallons might not be enough to disperse those fluids.
It would be a fun idea to loop the 3gallon into a system with more tanks to solve both these problems though.

 

[reefkprz]

all the technical problems aside like fluctuation, coral slime etcetera, just pure lack of space would be enough for me to not want to use it. just a handfull of frags and your out of space.