sure, if you wanna spend the extra 13 bucks......personally id just manhandle the stock one....

make it fit.....if you need to straighten part of it, you can put it in between two pieces of wood and hammer it.

it wont be perfect, but you can work with it....im pretty sure you may have to cut a screw post or two behind the reflector/heat shield...

you check out any of the diy videos on you tube?

Good idea, I could actually just use a big table vice with a couple pieces of wood and crank away.

Thanks for the link, those LED systems they have look amazing! Too bad I can't justify the cost...

I wanted to start using chemi-pure and filter floss in my nano, however pulling it out of the depths of the chamber every time I needed to do maintenance would be impossible. These chambers are just barely big enough for my hands.

The lip on the back prevented a full plexi glass enclosure, so I designed a frame concept that I hope will work. I may need to add a full base to help keep it centered though. The base would tuck in under the lip, then the rest would slide, swivel, slide.

some half a$$ed Google sketchup:


With this design the egg crate can swivel (as pictured) to a vertical position when I need to get to the bottom rack, or take the whole unit out.

Anny suggestions? Let me know what you think. Construction should start this weekend. As well as the addition of my CUC!

I think I found my fans, I'm gonna need these upgraded ones for when I start to mod my lighting setup. They claim to be ultra quiet, which is a bonus because I might move this tank to my bedroom or living room.



http://www.acousticpc.com/rasurbo_50x10mm_fan.html

I have a feeling they'll be worth the investment in the long run. That's usually how this hobby works IME.

I'm moving to Minneapolis in a year maybe we can swap frags and talk reef when I move.

That would be awesome Hawaii_Bio_Cube, we'll have to keep in contact. I'm getting a few frags from a friend in a few weeks so I should have something going soon. What are you going to do about your tank during the move, are you starting over?

i wonder whats worse...too high or too low salinity...alls i know is when my water looks low, and i notice cuz at night the LED moonlight can be seen under the rim....and they blind me! my tank is right next to my bed and i have a bed that is ultra low...so when that light annoys me, i add water in the morning..and so far i havent seen any spikes..or drops...but then again i use a hydrometer....

I don't know which would be worse. I need to get some LED moonlighting going, but it's not at the top of the list right now.

I got a peppermint shrimp to take care of the Aiptasia. I didn't want to get any of the water from the bag into my tank so I used my hand (not very scientific) to put him in the tank after acclimation. He held on to my finger for a while which was kinda cool.

[quote name='evanj' date='Nov 24 2009, 07:51 PM' post='2541071']
I got a peppermint shrimp to take care of the Aiptasia. I didn't want to get any of the water from the bag into my tank so I used my hand (not very scientific) to put him in the tank after acclimation. He held on to my finger for a while which was kinda cool.

you scientist! haha... dude thats cool...i hope i can find time tomorrow to get to the LFS or else my tank will be just rock n crabs til next tuesday =(

he found himself a hole already hhuh

Nice, the peppermint already ate all of the aiptasia.. I'm gonna have to start feeding him though.

I have these two foods that I feed my cichlids - would they be alright to give to my shrimp?



Friday I should be getting a few frags from a friend so this may actually become a nano reef here pretty soon. He's got some tiny frags of Zoas, some Shrooms and Pom Pom Xenia! I have been doing a little research on these specific corals and it looks like they're some perfect starters!

Should be a good weekend - Frag Friday, CUC Saturday and hopefully some DIY media rackage.

nice... sounds like an eventful weekend..i may step back from my tank sunday and go skydiving...if the weather stays true to the forecast... my tank dropped to 75.8 degrees last night..I need to move it from where its at..its in front of my window... i already covered the portion of the window with a fleece blanket, but no luck it still gets a lil brisk

Should be a good weekend - i'm going rock climbing with the friend who is giving me the frags. Do you skydive frequently? That's something I would like to try eventually, however Minnesota wouldn't be as cool as somewhere more scenic from the air.

Do you have a heater in your tank?

I try to... not alot of people in my life agree with me jumping outta planes...I gotta be sneaky about it.. If my GF found my logbook, she'd go ballistic!!

minnesota huh..isnt it like green and stuff? i get to see desert, mountain, river, and so called dairy farms... and the occasional pecan grove... mainly just dirt views... wickedly awesome nonetheless...you gotta try it.. yeah I have a 50watt heater... i might crank it up a notch tonight.. and I have tomorrow off, so i may just fool around with the tank and its placement in the room

Cool, right now my tank is in a spare bedroom, I'm thinking of moving it to our living room once I get some quiet fans and build a stand... I'll have to keep an eye on your thread to see how you move the tank if it happens.

Sweet...Ill prolly move my bed, slide the stand with the tank across the room, i have half tile, and half carpet in my room.. the bed and tank are on the tile, and i have a feeling the bed would be easier to move out of the way than to go around it.. but i will throw down some pics later...

Going to get the frags later tonight instead of Friday!

I'll have some pics up once I get them in the tank.

*EDIT*

Quick update: got 'em home safe - they're acclimating right now - probably won't be any pictures tonight unless someone wants to see a bunch of closed up tiny frags. Hopefully they'll open up tomorrow!

They're tiny but they were free! Got these from a friend, he said most of them were either growing on a tank wall or on tiny pieces of LR floating around without a home. I hope my lighting is adequate for everything.

I have no idea what they are, so It's a little hard to research them.

They're in a glass dish at the bottom of my tank because I have no idea where I want to put them...







I might have to hit up the Identification Forum once these open up completely.

Got my CUC yesterday, well part of it anyway + another little green/purple zoa frag. I got two snails and a hermit crab, but I plan on adding a dwarf zebra hermit and a Nassarius Snail in the near future.

picsssss!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the snails and hermit. There's a tiny frag of zoas and a microscopic mushroom that I lost somewhere in my tank.



Got some goodies too.



Small new heater from tetra that is automatically set to 78, should be interesting to see how well it works. I just didn't trust the old Visitherm I was using.

FTS to follow shortly, gotta wait till everything opens up again after all the gluing and such.

ooohhhh goodies!! i saw that tetra heater at walle world...i wonder.....

nice tank, i have had a 6gal NC going for about 1 1/2 years now. This is what i did that made maintnence a bit better:
1. I put a bag of chemipure in the 1st chamber and a bag of purigen on top of that. then i would place a small amount of filter floss on top of the purigen and i would replace the floss every 5 days or so. I had to make a little rack (about 2" high) for the chemipure to sit on or else the bag would block the opening going into the 2nd chamber.
2. I turned my 2nd chamber into a fuge. I cut away the back piece of vinyl and put a CF light.
3. i put my visi=therm heater and return pump in the 3rd chamber.

Other things that have made life easier allbiet more $$$ upfront is to buy an ACJR and a chiller. Ill tell you after i bought those 2 items they were monry well spent.

I upgraded from the 1 light to the 2CF lights from NT and the light difference was significant. I later went to add a 70w viper to my tank hence the need for the chiller.
I still have the modded hood if your interested in upgrading. LMK

Well I just built a new media rack (check out the DIY thread) so I can put filter floss and chemi-pure in the center back chamber.

Here's a new FTS as well:



and some more shots of the corals, no idea what they are called:







and I finally got a good shot of my blue leg hermit:



I think I'm going to get a red leg too, just for good measure. Do they need extra shells to trade up into?

Heater sucks, went back to using my Visi-Therm.... temp got down to 75.4



I actually just built a media basket deal for my middle chamber, it's necessary if you want to put anything down there....

I think I found the fish I will be getting, a couple Sharknose Goby - what do you think?

The splash guard on my cube is cracked and missing screws, it's junk... I would like to build a new one out of plexiglass or something before I finish my LED build.

I don't think it needs to be two tiered like the stock one, my LED array should be lower profile than the PC fixture. Does anyone have any suggestions? Will plexiglass work?

I'm going LED someday soon, I don't want to buy any more PC fixtures etc.. I might even have an 18w fixture for sale soon.

Really, all I need is a hinge and a new splash guard before I finish my new LED array. Having a missing hinge really sucks.

I think plexiglass will work for a splash guard.

you just wake up or something?

buy his hood and use it for parts.....im sure he would part with it much cheaper than 50 bucks....

and if you scrap your LED idea, youll have x3 18watters to work with

Still up, why - are my messages incoherent? Working on homework, finals next two weeks.

I think he wants $100 or so, that's not a direct quote from him as I deleted the PM.

good call on the sharknose, those guys look cool! and i wouldv thought dif about that heater...but good to know...So locally we got hit with some winter storm and a ship load of snow fell, glad i moved my tank away from the window when i did..i watched the tank climb to 82 before i dialed it back yesterday...and that stuff your doing with the lighting, i have no clue what youre talking about but it sounds complicated

Maybe I got a bad heater... I might try another one soon.

There's a lot of people on here with step by step DIY LED lighting threads. It doesn't look too difficult... I still need to research more though before I start.

I really like Clown Gobies too, especially the Citrinis. I can't decide between the Sharknose or a Clown Goby.

Just added a DIY surface skimmer to the tank, was getting sick of looking at the film on the surface.

Quick little update on the tank. I added one Nassarius snail to the mix. The is probably my favorite thing in there right now lol. The tank is doing well and I plan on buying the war painted clown goby at my LFS pretty soon.

I contacted Reef Cleaners and asked what they would recommend for my size tank, and this is what they came up with:

7 Dwarf Ceriths - small effective cleaners
1 Nassarius
3 Florida Ceriths
2 Small to Medium Nerites

I ordered pretty much what was suggested, I just gotta find a home for my astreas...

Got my order from reef cleaners, great people to work with, I would recommend them and their custom CUC.

I ended up with way more ceriths and spare hermit shells than I ordered. I think my Nerites may be dead though - I'm gonna wait a few days though until I chuck em.

Got some aquamend today, I plan on taking everything down and redoing the aquascape.

The tank was doing well, I found a bristle worm and inexplicably lost a peppermint shrimp..

The reason for this redo is because my hair algae is out of control and I'm getting sick of these manual removal sessions before my water changes....

The LR already had a lot of hair algae on it when I got it, however I didn't remove it before adding it to the tank. Someone suggested that I take a tooth brush to it, that's what I'll be doing and then I'm going break the rock down and get fancy with the scape

re-aquascape is now complete fairly satisfied with the outcome



The hammer and screwdriver method worked great for getting the rock to crack where I wanted.



I used a whole tube of aquamend... and the pictures just don't show any of the over hangs. I'll have to experiment with photographing it, and my tripod broke.

right side:



left side:



Unsightly putty marks... nice, eh? At least I can clean my tanks glass now.