Hi all, this pico contest looks so much fun that I'd like to join in too.

Although my intended set-up is not going to be complicated I've decided to enter it in the Custom category since the smallest 'off the shelf' tank available in the UK is 12x8x8. I felt that Custom seemed more appropriate somehow. Sourcing other 'stock' equipment is proving somewhat difficult too.

So anyway here's my entry shot:



Now I have to quickly knock out a hood for the lights I have chosen....

Best regards

Ann

Looks like a very nice tank. Silcone job is so much nicer than our 2.5g tanks.

Isn't that the truth!

That is a slick tank, looks much better than the aga.

seriously, how much did you pay for that thing!

I hadn't really thought about the silicone job until you all mentioned it. I can see what you mean now though. It's not so neat along the bottom but when covered with a bit of sand it'll not be noticeable.

The tank is the cheapest that you can get in the UK made by Peak Aquatics and came from my local garden centre at a cost of £9.90. That's $17.56 at todays exchange rate. How does that compare to the cost of a 2.5 AGA?

Btw I'm about half way through building a hood for this lil pico tank now.

Best regards

Ann

Almost twice.. I paid 9.00 US for my tank.

Nice Tank. Good luck and "Go 04!"

An update finally, some progress has been made.

The hood has been constructed and lights fitted, not as professional a job as some of the DIY creations I've seen on here but not too bad for a DIY newbie when all said and done.... I hope. The lights are 1 x 18W actinic and 1 x 18W daylight.

Here are some pics:





Actinic light only -



Actinic + daylight -



...and again -



Tomorrow I'm going to fit a splash guard to the hood and go get some live rock, yay!

Unfortunately the HOB filter that I ordered has turned out to be a big disappointment. It's the only one available in the UK and I've found that the build quality leaves a lot to be desired. The uplift pipe cracked right away but, by far worse IMO, is the noise it makes when running. I've only had it testing for 24 hours and the noise it makes is annoying as hell. Soooo, I've decided not to use it and try and create my own filter.

If all goes smoothly I should have it finished by tomorrow but if not I'll have to go with the headache making HOB for a few days at least.

Best regards

Ann

Hi Ann! Looks like the tank is coming along nicely Out of curiousity, where in the UK are you from? My husband is from Lyme Regis We visit England often as a result.

wow... nice combo.

Do you find one side of the tank yellow and the other too blue? I found that to be the case with seperate bulbs and the big plastic moulds on the interpret units, 50/50 gives an even spread.
You can get HOB's from ebay if you don't fancy making one, check out the equipment section on the uk nano site (linked below).

You've made a great job of that stand and hood! Go UK!

looking good, i like the hood, you will no doubt laugh at mine, i just took a pair of scissors to the bog standard hood it came with! (must post a pic)
are those the asl light fittings or the interpet?
brian
good to see more uk people having a go!

What a day it's been! I've only just got the tank up and running, finally. Here's a quick shot with some LR in, I'm not sure about the 'scaping but it's late and I can't be bothered to fiddle with it any more today.



ecotoxlady, thanks for the encouragement. I'm from the middle bit, Derbyshire. A long ways from Lyme Regis, well a fair distance by UK standards.

fras, thanks for the kind words. Funny you should mention that but after putting in the sand today it has become patently obvious to me that there is NOT an even spread of light, certainly with the tubes in the positions they are now. I have the same combo on my nano tank and it doesn't seem noticable to me at all. I will try orientating the lights the same way tomorrow and seeing how it looks, if it's still uneven I may have to switch to 50/50 tubes.

br1anm, the lights are Interpet starter units with ASL tubes. I'm looking forward to seeing how your set-up is looking now.

Argghhhh! Time for bed now. I have spent the a good part of the last two days sorting out an alternative to the HOB filter, I'll post details of my efforts tomorrow.

Best regards

Ann

Pretty.

very nice rock work! good picks!

Putting a single large reflector in rather then 2 may even the light out some. The other optoin would be to put a light diffuser in, but that would reduce the effective light and may not give enouhg of an evening that it is worth it.

Are those lights completely self contained? Like the ballast and bulb holder are the same piece?

Looking good! Love the rock work!!

It looks nice and clean.. I like it!

Good Luck...

Thanks for the comments. I'm not entirely happy with the rockwork, but then I never am really. I may break up the upper most rock on the right as it's shadowing front of the lower ones quite a bit.

BTF, I'm not entirely sure what you mean, the tubes do have separate ballasts. Fitting a single reflector rather than having two individual ones would probably help the situation as you suggest. I had those ones gathering dust from my tropical fishkeeping days (long since gone now) and I thought that it's would be good to make use of them again. Anyhow I've decided to swap the tubes out for the 50/50 mixed ones, the yellow/blue split is just too much for my eyes to cope with.

Best regards

Ann

Remote ballasts or ballast built into the bulb holder is what I meant.

Remote ballasts.

Best regards

Ann

Keep the aquascaping the way it is!!!! It is perfect. Awsome work on the canopy as well. Very proffesional looking.

I agree with the rockwork! keep it!,its hard to find the perfect rock for a tank this small,you shoud be happy.

Hi Ann,

I think it looks lovely!

I've just spent half an hour with a hammer and chisel trying to find the best rockwork for my tank and all I ended up with was large gravel. It's so hard finding rocks for tanks this size!

Good luck,

Ed

That tank looks so nice!

Good luck

Oh I love the rock work. Don't change a thing!

Nice set-up. Good luck!

No more updates? Do it!!

Pictorial update coming tomorrow. I know you all said not to mess with the rockwork but I couldn't resist tinkering with it.

There's not much else to report really. I've spent the week monitoring the temperature fluctuations and assessing how much water requires topping up each day. There's a good copepod population developing already, but I haven't seen any other hitchhikers on the rock with the exception of a couple of filter feeding Ark shells. At least there is no bad stuff. I'm really itching to get some stock in there and will probably add a single tester mushroom polyp tomorrow along with some snails, Stomatella and Dove snails from my other tanks.

My quickly constructed HOB filter or as I call it SB filter (that's 'Sit Behind' Filter) is still holding water which is good news. I will post more on it's design tomorrow, but don't hold your breath as it's not ground breaking by any means.

Till tomorrow....

Best regards

Ann

Update time.

I have rearranged the rockwork despite you all telling me not to touch the aquascaping. I couldn't say whether it looks better or worse now but I think that the water can circulate much better around the tank and the right side is not cast in shadow so much which will be better for the corals when they are eventually introduced.

The individual actinic and daylight tubes have been taken out and replaced with 50/50 tubes which I like a lot better, the light spread is much more even and pleasing to the eye. You'll also note from the pictures that I've been tweaking with the plumbing too. I wasn't entirely happy with having the one large-ish outlet from the pump on the top left side of the tank so I fitted a T-piece in the pipework to split it into 2 smaller outlets positioned at opposite ends of the tank.

My 'SB' filter is actually a small DIY glass tank that I made myself that sits directly behind the display tank. The silicone job is a bit messy and rushed as I thought at the time the entry deadline for this competition was for the 5th November. Knowing what I do now I wish that I'd taken a bit more time with it but as long as it doesn't spring a leak I can live with it. It measures a slimline 12 x 4.75 x 8 and contains the heater, circulation pump and a small fiter for carbon/polyfiter pad.

Here are a few FT shots:







A shot looking down into the SB filter:



And finally I introduced my first tester coral yesterday, whopppeee!! It has to be the smallest mushroom polyp ever. When checking out the shot of it below note the the grains of sand around it for size reference. You'll also notice algae has started to sprout so next livestock additions will be snails and a couple of small hermit crabs.



Best regards

Ann

Very nice tank, I really like how it looks like a much larger tank - very clean.

-Mike

looks great, love the aquascape.

It's looking really good Ann! I can understand why you changed the rockwork. It still looks great! It definately looks much bigger than it is.

Terrific tank Ann! I really like the new rockwork and the mushroom looks really cute and tiny! It does have a look of a much bigger tank which is really cool. You did such a great job aquascaping that it has that look. I hope you'll add a clown goby or something too when the tank gets more established. I would also add some macroalgae to the HOB filter to help with the nitrates. That should help to reduce some of the algae that you seeing pop up in the tank although to be honest all new tanks go through an algae growth phase in the beginning. I'm seeing that with my new tank. Great job and cannot wait to see more pictures!

Thanks all!

ecotoxlady you read my mind, I have decided to put some algae (Chaetomorpha) into the back filter. It means that I can put to use the daylight tube that I removed from tank earlier on this week too. Of course it also means that I'll need to make a new hood to fit in another light. Doh! That'll teach me for changing my plans at the last minute I guess.

Best regards

Ann

Beautiful tank Ann.

The tufty algae's days are numbered.... hopefully. A pair of dwarf blue legged hermit crabs have been introduced and they are getting busy with the algae as I type. Really neat looking creatures.



Best regards

Ann

nice

have you joined the uk nano reef forum

we could do with more members on there

uk reefer, I registered on there last month.

Sooo... my teeny tiny mushroom is settling in great, perhaps by the end of the competition it'll actually be all grown up. Here's a shot of it today, the Sargassum algae to the left of it is sprouting nicely too.



Yesterday I added some small Dove snails to the display tank and some Chaetomorpha algae to the filter.





I'm hoping to add some more corals at the weekend if I can find any nice stuff, fingers crossed for me.

Best regards

Ann

Did you make the refugium? I'm v impressed with your diy and photography skills! Shaping up to be a great tank! Keep the updates coming..

Yes, I just got some glass cut by the local glaziers and then siliconed them all together. It was surprisingly easy really. I'm not sure that I would trust myself to put together a big tank though, there'd be too much at stake.

I added another coral frag from my big tank yesterday plus a little something from the LFS. I'll post some shots of them plus an updated FTS tomorrow, though to be honest there's not much changed with the tank. I don't want to bore you all with identical looking photos.

Best regards

Ann

Just a little update for you.

Yesterday I added a small frag of the Bubble coral I have in my big tank. It's not really a frag rather more a piece of flesh/skeleton that has dropped off the parent coral. In the past this has happened to both a Euphyllia 'Frogspawn' and a Caulastrea coral that I have kept. Only the Euphyllia babies went on to form new colonies though so this baby bubble coral may or may not survive to adulthood. I'll have to wait and see, it's just so perfectly Pico sized that I couldn't resist giving it a go no matter what the outcome.

Here it is looking a bit pooped out:



The other coral that I added came from the LFS. It's a small Fungia sp. (or close relative anyway), not particularly colourful but I really like it anyhow. I actually went out looking for Zoanthids but they were either a boring brown colour too or the interesting ones were quite big colonies.



The hermit crabs are doing an absolutely sterling job on the tufty algae, there's just one small patch of it left now. Of course they've also eaten some new shoots of a rather decorative algae that was sprouting out of the rocks too but it's a small price to pay to get rid of the nuisance stuff.

Here's another close-up shot of my tiny 'shroom showing tufty-less rocks. You'll notice that the hermits haven't touched the Sargassum algae, it must taste nasty or be too tough to consume.



Here's a new FTS so that you can play spot the corals.



Interestingly the population of pelagic copepods in this little tank has completely exploded without any predators to munch on them. I don't know where they go during the lights on period but at night there are hundreds out swarming in the water column. I have tried to take a picture so that you can all see too, the white streaks are not bubbles but lots of pods zooming about.



On the equipment side, I've had to rig up a small fan to blow into the hood as the addition of an extra light over the 'refugium' tipped the tank temperature to the hot side. It seems to be keeping the temperatures down but it doesn't bode well for summer, I may need to ventilate the hood a bit better for then.

Best regards

Ann

Looking good Ann! ...love the Fungia.

It looks great Ann. I love the Fungia too!

Very nice Ann! You and TigahBoy, along with me, have got to be the top 3 Compettitors in the Custom Cat. (No disresprect to the other entrants).

Travis, thanks a bunch! You've just made my day.

I just need to get a hold of some drop dead gorgeous corals to stock my tank with and have them grow really well in the next 6 or so months of course.

Best regards

Ann

Loven the aquascape!!!!

Damn, that fungia is tiny. Very cool.