I have not only been neglecting this journal, I’ve been neglecting the tank. I haven’t written here because there’s been nothing to write. There are two fundamental problems with my picoreef which I cannot figure out how to solve. I’m not referring to problems of water chemistry or filtration. It has to do with the basic idea behind the desktop tank.

A bad location. The tank is located on my desk in the guest room. I rarely use the desk. It’s a repository for papers which periodically I file. I have a laptop which migrates around the house, but only occasionally ends up on the desk. If I didn’t go in and turn on the light for the tank, I wouldn’t go into the room every day. I never spend any time in the room. Not longer than it takes to get a book off the bookcases or put one back. Last Thursday I went out in the morning and didn’t even turn the light on. (It doesn’t seem to have hurt anything.)

A guestroom is not a good place for a tank because I worry about a guest accidentally forgetting and spraying something that would contaminate the tank. We’ve only had one guest so far…someone who understands aquariums, but the concern is part of the reason the desk will be moved to a shared office room with my husband sometime soon. (The other reason is that I want a dedicated guestroom with no desk.) As much as I’d like to think that this move will increase the visibility of the tank and my proximity to it, I have no real basis for that conclusion. I’ll probably spend a few days at the desk either before or after it’s moved, filing the current stack of papers, but moving the desk into the other room won’t substantially change my habits. I like the idea of a desktop tank, but I don’t like the desktop. It’s not where my laptop lives. It’s not where I live. My next computer may be a desktop, but that’s not in the near future and would likely only be a stopgap between laptops. It might not even end up on my desk because my husband’s desktop system is so archaic that if there is a desktop system in the future, it will likely go there.

Aquariums need to be located where they can be seen and appreciated. If you spend a lot of time at your desk, then a desktop system would be great. You would monitor it closely just because you were looking at it all the time. I’m hardly ever looking at my desktop tank. I congratulate myself every day I remember to go in there and turn on the light. By contrast, my freshwater tank in the den is under almost constant observation when I’m home. It gets terrific care. I love those fish. I’m about to move them to a larger tank.

Location isn’t the only problem with the picoreef, though. I really think that the tank is too small…or the rock in the tank is too big. I have a really difficult time changing the water or even testing the water because the rock takes up so much of the space in the tank. There’s about a half inch of clearance in the front and back and just 2-3 inches on either side. It’s hard to start a siphon, clean the glass or test the specific gravity without hitting the rock. If I had a bunch of invertes I’d damage them every time I did anything. I try to imagine a feather duster in that tank and realize that if I had one I wouldn’t be able to put either a siphon hose or a hydrometer into the tank without decapitating it. I need a bigger tank. The rock I got was right at the limit for what the tank could hold and is probably too big for the tank for all practical purposes.

This brings me back to my original idea which was a 10 gallon tank. I have no trouble maintaining a ten gallon freshwater tank and I probably wouldn’t have any trouble maintaining a 10 gallon marine tank. Except for the fact that I still have a location problem. The current 10 gallon tank has been shifted aside, sort of wedged under the bar to make room for the new 29 gallon tank which will go in its old location. This is really the only place in the den a fish tank can go. So, I’m looking around the house, trying to figure out where I could put a small marine tank so that I would be able to see it, enjoy it and maintain it daily. I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out.

In the meantime my algae-covered rock sits neglected on the desk. The microalgae, both red and green, are waging an almost successful battle with the emerging macroalgae. I’d thought that the macroalgae would suck up nutrients and deter the nuisance algae. From what I’ve read, that’s the way I thought it was supposed to work. I haven’t been topping off the tank because the salinity was low from the botched water change some time back. Some time soon I’m going to have to run through some water tests and bring things back in line because they surely need adjusting by now. I’m even considering pulling the rock out and scraping off some of the algae. I don’t see any point in getting a snail at this point because the experiment is so iffy right now.

I’ll log whatever I do here. I need to update the Phase 1 page and the glossary page, but there’s no time today after writing this long entry. I’ll be back. I’m not giving up this experiment. I just need to find a better location for the tank and plan on upgrading to a larger tank.