Sexy Shrimp Pico, Heater?

[Anonymous]

I just set up a Candy Combo XL pico "reef" for my two sexy shrimp. It's about .5 — .75 gallon, ish, with a little power filter, PC light, live sand from my 65-gallon tank, some live rock, a little caulerpa prolifera.

I'm worried about temperature fluctuations. During the day it's fine, but when the PC light is off at night, the temp dips. I ordered a 25 watt heater (see link below), but I don't want to fry the little shrimp. Does anyone have experience with heaters in a pico? Any better way to control temperature?
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_Display.cfm?siteid=6&pCatId=3925

 

[brandon4291]

I have some direct experience with heating pico reefs. May I say yours is nice! Ive seen those at the LFS for a couple months now, and they have one going as FW. I really like the little filter on the back, its very small and useful for holding scrubbers such as zeolite or carbon/resins of various kinds.

You have a few options in that setup, one is a reptile heater. About $20 from any pet shop, you would set the small reef on it then turn the pad on at night opposite of the lights. There are ways of using the tiny 3" inch heater (always on, no off switch) from Wal-Mart but this is also very tricky. All this is a matter of pure experimentation, .5 g picos can behave very differently from home to home.

It is more a matter of your ambient room stability, try to get the heater on at night for the house if it fluxes too wildly. Ultimately, this is the single factor that currently limits us in how small we can go in a stable pico w/corals, inverts> the best technique is to build your system around the smallest available thermo-controlled glass heater (6" tronic?) so you can always have a cool room. Its much more of a hassle to cool them than it is too warm them...

What are you seeing in salinity shift in the system--I feel this will be the greater stress to the shrimp. If you add about 30-50 mL of water every day it should be okay, and don't discount experimenting with a lid design. When I checked out these particular setups at the LFS, the only hard part to seal would be the filter/tank interface and the light bracket. Cut some plastic around it... any restriction is better than none!

Great setup though, it looks like its doing great.

 

[reefann]

A little addition to what brandon said, my 2.5 has that heater in it and I have never had any temp problems, but your tank is much smaller. I would personally go for the reptile strip method in that applictaion. The tank looks real nice.
JJ
BTW how much are you feeding those shrimp??
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[Anonymous]

I put two or three pellets of Hikari Marine S or spirulina pellets. It's fun to watch them hold a tiny pellet in one set of claws and pick at it like corn on the cob! They also scavenge the live rock for tiny copepods, I think. They seem really busy picking at it, anyway.

 

[tinyreef]

this combo unit seems to have some interesting promise for nanos/picos, www.aquatics-online.co.uk/bigpics/thermopumps.htm

someone recently posted a question on it at NR. it looks alright to me but i haven't any pers exp with it. i haven't heard from the poster (gregers) that it's junk or anything. however, it is sourced from the UK so availability may be an issue. hth