I'm trying out one of the all-in-one picos made by our very own cdelicath as a replacement for the pico I made for myself a few years back. It was a neat concept, but had several flaws that I wasn't too thrilled about any more. Deli asked me one day to try out one of his new tanks and I saw this as a perfect oportunity to get rid of my old tank, and try something new. Anyway, lets get started with some pictures


Full tank dimensions are 12"x8"x8", which works out to about 3.5g. Display is only 6" deep for a 2.3g display. The entire tank is cut from cast acrylic.


The false wall is black acrylic and has a small grate for the entrance into the back chambers on the right, and the return outlet from the pump on the left.


Nice little decal on the corner. Glue seams are pretty good. A few bubbles here and there, but nothing distracting.


Back chambers are pretty simple. First chamber is great for a heater. The overflow in to the second chamber has a small media basket that is great for holding filter floss, sponge, or even a small bag of carbon/gfo/etc... Second chamber is good as a fuge, or additional chemical filtration.


Last chamber houses the pump. It's a Rio200 (200gph) and it's pretty quiet after about a week of break-in. The flow is adjustable, but it's a little hard to get to with the pump in the tank. Flow is actually almost a little too much, so the adjustment is very welcome.


One very welcome feature is the water level viewing window on the left side of the sump on chamber three. Makes it very easy to see your waterlevel for top off. As always, an ATO is always advised for such a small tank.

Anyway, I've had the tank for a few months now and everything is cycled. I have about 2lbs of Haitian LR and an 1-1/2" sandbed in there.


Gratuitous cycling photo. It was pretty nasty in there.

All of that nastyness is cleaned up now and I have a few frags in there.


Bambams


Micro frag of frogspawn.

Not much in there right now, but I will be putting more in soon. I'm trying to go a little heavier on sps on this one and I'm still figuring out how I can dose the tank in a compact way.


FTS.

Lighting is the old LED setup I had over the last tank. I'm working on coming up with something new and far better suited for this tank.

Bottom line, I love this tank so far. It's well built, well thought out, and works beautifully.

I like! Great write up Evil!

Great write up, good to see some better photos of this tank. Can't wait to see this one progress.

Awesome tank.

sweet pico. those bams bams look amazing.

Thanks for the review Evil

You are very welcome. I hope I can do your good work justice

I don't know about you but I think I like the glass better. I already have a few scratches in mine from cleaning. Not bad but I know they are there. You got any war wounds in yours yet?

Not yet. I made my own algea scraper back when I started my last acrylic pico and it uses felt for the cleaning surface. Another trick I learned was to put a small square of felt under the mag cleaner. It still gets the gunk off, but is a lot less abusive on the acrylic. It's also a good way to help scrape off coraline algae.

cool I will try that

Very nice! Do you manually top off?

Not bad, but for 190 dollars? Plus shipping and no lighting? They want 260 dollars for the LED lighting as well? That seems unreasonable, correct me if i'm wrong.

Nope. Learned a long time ago that an ATO is a must on this tiny tanks.

On pricing, I paid $85 for a PAR20 Pico Lamp from Evil for my 1.25...so I think these are a pretty good deal considering. I'm running the LEDs on my Baracuda love them - being able to dim the lights is worth alot to me + the PAR to graow pretty much anything I want, and they look freaking COOL. Just my 2 cents worth...

Cool little tank!

I'd recommend the BRS dosing pumps to keep up with the SPS demand. The one I got doses 1.1ml per minute, perfect for these small tanks. My tank is currently only using 4.4ml of alk per day (and even less Ca). At that rate, my 1g jugs of b-ionics should last a couple of years, lol.

I have something in the works for dosing. They should be showing up today

Got my dosing pumps today. Scored a sweet deal on a bunch of GD-Thomas SR10_50 24v persistaltic pumps rated at 100ml/min. They are tri-rotor pumps too, so no need for check valves. I'm going to start working on an Arduino controller for the lights and the dosing pumps in a while, after I beat my laptop into submission (stupid spyware BS )

I know 100ml sounds like a lot, but I will pwm the supply voltage to the motor to slow them down quite a ways. I can even run them on 12v if necessary and drop the speed even further.

sweet.. you know I will be watching.

Are you using the arduino on the LED's now?

nice man....who did the lighting?

Very sweet pico will be following this thread.

Not right now. This is still the old unit that I built two years ago. It's still using the transistor based linear drivers. Not easily adjustable, but I'll be damned if they haven't been reliable. Next light will be stepping into the 21st century


I wonder

I have all my crap sitting in a box still. I haven't had any luck getting the arduino software working on vista. I guess I will have to throw a linux distro on the laptop and dust off the parts. Have we found a better driver for the LED's yet? As far as using PWM at lower levels.I know there's been talk of it but that stuff is over my head

No drivers yet that are off the shelf and reasonable cost. The Recom series is equivalent to the Buckpuck, but are a little more expensive.

Tank looks nice!

Thanks bud. I'll have to stop by some time to see your new setup.

For sure. I've still got a few things to work out still...

I might just pick one of these bad boys up.
I was just about to check out my cart in fostersmith with a new 3g Pico.

But now im giving it a thought, To bad its more then double the price.

Still giving it thought.

Great work delicath n evil

all glass cubes are available now also for a much lower price.
I am in the process of adding descriptions to them but they are available.
3/16" glass high polish and you can get them in black or clear sealant.

Looking pretty good so far. I really like those bambams. You DID have an icky looking cycle, my pico is a tick over 2 weeks old and I am just now starting to see a very few diatoms, and I've only changed a quart or so of water during that time.

Yeah, that was the worst cycle I have had in any tank.

Added some sps frags over the last few days. I'll get some pics up when they are all settled in.

Awesome setup!

Oh, and the site/products look incredibly nice Deli!

Thanks buddy

that tank is soo clean eebil....


Very Nice.

MOAR PIX

+1^^^^ lemme see your stuffs!

any updates evil?

I have some corals that I still need to put in. I'll get some fresh pictures up this weekend.

tank looks nice.


if u didnt have so many led questions to answer u may have time for some pics .

Ain't that the truth.

How are the sps doing? I was thinking of adding some to my 5.5. What are using for filtration?

Sps are doing fine it seems so far. Filtration is the stock sump with floss in the media tray. Nothing more. Haven't set up the fuge yet.

Would the single satellite fixture fit nicely on this tank? It seems like the dual fixture might be too large?

I think both would work. While the dual is fairly wide, the area where the bulbs are exposed should fit nicely over the display area.

New pictures


Micro frogspawn is still doing well. Hasn't got much bigger yet.


Rainbow montipora and blue milli.


Awesome purple cap with blue polyps. It's hard to see, but they are very vibrant.


Gobstoppers


Strawberry patch montipora.


Bambams still doing well.


Eagle eyes. Simple, but they look great under the LEDs.


Couple of small nukes.


Purple bonsai. Hoping it's going to color up a little better here soon. Got a little washed out under the halides. It's really purple under the LEDs in my 40B. It's already encrusting over the glue, which I'm happy about.


FTS

Shweeeet......

Now if we can just figure out how to take pictures without the camera going ape sh!t

Whats your set up as far as leds evil?

Those Bam Bams look amazing!

the bam bams look awesome under leds as do the eagle eyes.

Any updates on this yet? I stumbled across what looks like a very good option, the cat4101, a "constant current LED driver with PWM dimming." It's a little chip thing that'll run a string of LEDs at 1A. It'll handle up to 25v, and only requires a PS (of course), and a resistor on the reset to gnd. Otherwise it's as good as a buckpuck, as far as I can tell.

I don't know enough about this to be sure from the schematics that it really is all it's cracked up to be, but if so, it's basically a $3.5 buckpuck, with optional dimming. Sounds awesome to me. But like I said, I haven't yet tried it, and I'm not electronics-savvy enough to be sure it's all this from reading the datasheet (Google it. I can't find the link to the datasheet ATM. Digikey sells this part). Maybe someone else who is savvier or who's seen or tried this driver can pipe in there.

If it does work out, you could run LEDs with a computer PS (a regular desktop PS) and these drivers, which are a good deal cheaper than any buckpucks I've seen. You could use a $15 24v/5-6A PS too, like the one MPJA.com has, but the advantage to a computer PS is that you may have it more readily available (old PC, or from a repair/IT shop) and it's already got a 5v out, which this driver requires, aside from the 24v to run the LEDs. (I know computer PS's have 12v out, but you can rig the -12v to the +12v for a nice 24v output. Or you can just rig 12v strings of LEDs. Works too.)

To be revealed. It's new. Just got it finished recently. Deli knows, but he's sworn to secrecy


These drivers are linear, and are only a step up from an LM317 in current limiting mode, or a transistor based linear driver. There are a few problems with this driver that start making it more complicated than you think. First off is the supply voltage. The driver chip cannot run at the same voltage as the LEDs. As a result, you need to regulate the source voltage down to a level that is compatible with the chip. More parts. More cost.

Next is to do with the PWM. Square wave in = square wave out. It doesn't average the current like an inductor based buck driver does. It's not as efficient.

Lastly, heat. Linear drivers burn off the voltage difference between the source voltage and the total LED vf in heat. As a result, you need a large ground plane to solder the tab of the driver to so it can be cooled effectively. The greater the difference in the two voltages, the more heat is generated. A buck driver can much more easily deal with these differences with much less heat. This also forces you to make your own pcb. You won't be able to use perfboard with a unit like this.

There are some switched inductor buck driver chips out there that are just as cheap as the CAT4101 that are far more efficient, and cost about as much to build if you know what you are doing. Some of them will also take analog inputs (pot, 0-5v), as well as digital (PWM). The CAT4101 isn't a bad solution. You just have to take into account certain limitaions.