looking good, dennis! i'm in the process of setting up a 90g. maybe the next time you're up here you can come check it out! hope you're well, man.
-danny

thanks, bro. I'll let u know of course if I ever make it up to the bay.

wow, seriously, if I ever get some amazing frags half as cool as yours, it will be amazing........ your corals are always unbelieveable! keep up the good work dennis!

tanner g.

I love the new lord you added! Looking good Dennis! Hope everything is going well for you.

I love all the colors in the tank. Lookin' good!!

thanks for the kind words, ladies. =)

I just took this macro shot of the yuma. not the best macro shot i've taken, but you get the idea...

Bought 2 more featherdusters. A yellow one and another light blue one. Here's the yellow one...

Just stuck black background paper to the back wall. here's how it looks:



and here's the light blue feather duster...

All I can say is... WOW. Awesome looking tank. I love how the feather dusters give it a little more "oomph".

Thanks, scott.

Background comparison shot...

Oh yeah! The background really does make everything "pop"! I love the yellow feather duster! Actually both feather dusters really add that something extra to the tank. Are you on spring break this week?

That green feather duster is like neon with the black background. Nice.

Oooh those feather dusters are killer dude.

I'm jealous. I love those kind of worms, but I can't find them here, blah.

Ohh, and the black background is much better!

Left Side


Right Side

couldn't sleep, so I took some macro shots...

Beautiful shots! Your tank cleans up good.

Yeah, at least I didn't say that I wish I had worms like you. Hehe.

The tube worms look just like palm trees sitting on top of little islands in the sea.

Best regards

Ann

Hey Tigah, is the display made with 1/4" acrylic??? I can't tell looking at the pics next to the yard stick...

calvin - Yeah, i believe it is 1/4" acrylic.

Ann - and I agree w/ you. they do kinda look like palm trees on islands. hehe.

love the tank. w/regards to you 30g i saw on reeftuners



what creates the blue reflection on the back of your tank, do you have some sort of tint or backing image? do you have any daylight photos of it?

i like the videos too, you must spend ALOt of time on your tank. really impressive. motivates me.

The good ol days. I remember I bougght my first Ricordea coral from this tank. This tank was insane man. Killer tank. Tigahboy should do another 30g

Thanks. That tank had a clear back and the reflection was caused by blue shiny background paper you can buy at any LFS.

My Final Post for my 2.5g Surge Pico

Howdy! The contest if finally over and it has definitely been a great experience for me! I'd like to thank all of you for checking out my pico thread and for sharing your helpful comments and feedback.

Quick Specs:
Custom Acrylic 23x5x5"
Surge Device - 2.5g AGA sump
23" T5 Finnex fixture - 48w (2x24w)
Quiet One 1200 pump
Hagen Mini Compact Heater 25w
Chemipure
Stands - Shelving unit from Target for the main display and wall mounted shelving unit from Home Depot for the Surge Tank.
Tahitian Black Sand for substrate
LR is all fiji premium - about 2-3 lb. of it - and I used hammer and smaller sized chisel to "sculpt" and break the large chunks into workable pico-sized LR pieces. Cured for several months before the contest.

My 2.5g Surge/Tidal Pico has been up and running since 11-14-05, and it's still going strong today.

There's a lot of stuff in this mega-long thread, so I'm going to try my best to summarize it all in the next few posts below. Also, on page 1 of this thread, there is a table of contents that jumps ahead to all relevant posts...

I. Background
Awhile ago I went up to the bay area to hang out and visit some friends. I met up with Yoshiod9 (Danny, a member here on n-r of course), and he was kind enough to take me on a bay area LFS tour. though if I remember correctly, I had to do all the driving. =P. Anyways, at one of the LFS's (I forgot the name), I so a cool reef set-up with a surge device built in. The surge device created wave-like movement and even sounded kinda like the ocean.

After seeing this set-up, I was inspired to apply one of these surge devices for one of my own tanks. So when the pico contest was announced, I called up Yoshiod9 and asked about the surge device. He sent me some great information about setting one up, and the rest is history. =) Thanks for the inspiration, Danny!

II. The Tank
My custom pico entry is a 2.5g w/ the dims of 23x5x5". Here's the initial diagram I made for the pico:


I then sent the diagram over to socalcreations.com and they made the pico for me. Here's a pic of the finished product:


III. Wave Action
The pico has wave/surge action. I accomplished this by plumbing a Carlson Surge Device (CSD) to the pico set-up by adding a modified 2.5g AGA glass sump tank above the main display and adding the necessary plumbing to create intermittent surges.

So it actually has a "low tide" period where water is being pumped from the main tank to the top sump tank. Then as pressure builds up in the top tank, the water surges back down into the main tank below creating a tidal wave. The low tide-high tide cycle then repeats all over again. The cycle takes about 30 seconds to complete.

these pics demonstrate the surge action...

high tide


low tide


surge


or you can view the surge action in the following brief video:
http://www.tigahboy.com/vids/csd2.mpg [Right Click + Save As]





IV. The Plumbing
In order to get the water from the main display to the top surge tank, I plumbed a pump below the tank connected to the right-side chamber (in order to conceal the input and output plumbing). The pump is a Quiet One external that pumps around 300 gph, given the surge tho, the flow into the main tank would be a lot more than 300 gph. In my plumbing configuration, I split the outlet line so that a portion of the flow is redirected into the main tank (quasi-closed loop), and the rest of the flow goes directly up to the top sump tank. The top sump tank has a modified durso-like drain that facilitates the surge. Here are pics of the plumbing:

overall set-up


below tank plumbing connected to right-side chamber


2 inlets plumbed thru the right-side chamber into main display area


The line that feeds the water up to the surge tank




The durso-like drain that brings the surge of water back down
[img]http://www.the3wisemen.net/pico71.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.the3wisemen.net/pico69.jpg[/img]

V. Current Livestock
-Green Blastomussa Wellsi
-Hot Pink Echinophyllia
-Orange Echinophyllia
-Pink Yuma
-Green Yuma
-Blue Mushroom
-Blue Spot Mushroom
-Pink Sparkle Palythoa
-Neon Green Toadstool/Sarco
-Blue/Pink Candy Cane
-Orange tip Cyphastrea
-Orange Zoanthids
-Red Micromussa amakensis
-Red Striped Acanthastrea Lordhowensis
-Hot Red & White Acan Lord
-Blue Lithophyllon
-Red & Pink Echinophyllia
-Stomatella Snails
-Nassarius Snails
-5 Dwarf Featherdusters
-Tons of pods and mysis shrimp

Sweet setup dude

VI. Comparison shots
FTS 11-14-05


FTS 11-24-05


FTS 12-25-05


FTS 3-16-06







Mushrooms 12-13-05

Mushrooms 4-8-06


Acan 12-17-05

Acan 4-8-06


Yumas 1-4-06

Yumas 4-8-06




Blue Lithophyllon 12-17-05
[img]http://www.the3wisemen.net/pico75.jpg[/img]
Blue Lithophyllon 4-8-06
[img]http://www.the3wisemen.net/pico145.jpg[/img]

Red Chalice 12-17-05
[img]http://www.the3wisemen.net/pico77.jpg[/img]
Red Chalice 4-8-06
[img]http://www.the3wisemen.net/pico139.jpg[/img]

Green Sarco 3-16-06
[img]http://www.the3wisemen.net/pico113.jpg[/img]
Green Sarco 4-8-06
[img]http://www.the3wisemen.net/pico136.jpg[/img]

I fragged the green sarco and placed one frag in my pico, two in my 15g, and one frag in my 50g prop tank. The frag in the pico has the best polyp extension by far.

beautiful as usual!

VII. Recent Macro Shots

















VIII. Videos of my Pico

Also made a few music videos for the pico. Please play with sound b/c they have music. Right Click + Save as to download.

http://www.tigahboy.com/vids/tbpico.wmv

http://www.tigahboy.com/vids/tbpico2.wmv

http://www.tigahboy.com/vids/mantis1.wmv


IX. Final Pics

Took a couple pics today of the overall set-up. My final FTS...






X. Closing

Thanks again for all your support during this process. It's been a blast and good luck to all the other contestants! Peace.

Beautiful.

I love this tank! So clever!! You always do such a great job Tigah!

Last Video showing 2 surge cycles (from 2 different angles). Not a music vid, so no sound. PC & Mac friendly vid.

http://www.tigahboy.com/vids/surgecycles.mpg [Right Click + Save As...]

any updates?
I can't watch the video... Can you post a link one more time please?
I really like the idea, and would like to watch it
thx