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Half Gallon Pico Update


thesmallerthebetter

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thesmallerthebetter

Ok, a little odd for a first post, but i think ive gleaned all i can off of searches and google and personal experience and exhausted my own ingenuity. i need outside input. i apologize if im long winded., but its alot of information.....

 

ive been keeping reefs and fish for years, and ive always been enthralled by the tiniest of tanks. (the LFS by me has a half gallon reef that i could just stare at for hours). so, as predictable, i always find myself collecting little pieces of undersized reefing equipment with the hope of eventually setting up my own sub-gallon slice of the ocean. im just starting to doubt if its possible.....

 

The tank would be one of those .36 gallon betta tanks like in the beggining of this post: http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...52&hl=betta

 

and, as in that post, red sea deco filter as well. Ill seed it with rock from my 75 gallon SPS dominated tank, and use estes marine sand (black) as substrate.

 

I dont want this to be a temporary endevor, and i dont want to cheat the gallonage with a sump and whatnot. this of course presents many issues....and this is where i need your help at. if you could brings to light the potential flaws in the plan it would be a great help to me :)

 

1. Temperature Instablity:

i live in southern california, and even in the dead of winter, it can get up to 85 abient temp cuz of santa anna winds and whatnot. So id need chilling and Warming power at the same time, and the first thing that comes to mind is a peltier. i can manualy reverse the polarity to produce a cold or hot side at will, and just use contact with tank and waterflow inside the tank as a conductive method.....right? id love for someone with experience in this to help me out. never worked with a peltier before.

 

2. Lighting:

i want to keep LPS and Softies. SPS came to mind, but i think trying to light such a small tank for them without producing more trouble than its worth is impossible (at least until someone makes a 40w MH fixture). That being said, i have a picotope 9w left over (thats like 36WPG hehe) ...think that would be enough light for some higher light softies and LPS? the PC shudnt cause much heat either....right? i was considering a Azoo Galaxy 13w too.....idfk. input greatly appreciated here.

 

3. Parameters Stability:

Shudnt be too much of an issue. I want to mod the Redsea filter into a tiny fuge with one of these: http://www.attictrunk.com/fountains9.html as a light for some macro. That shud help with nitrates and phosphates, as well as biweekly waterchanges, i shudnt need to dose that way. again, any input here is welcome, i want this to go as smoothy as possible.

 

4. Salinity:

Obviously theres gonna be HUGE evap on this sucker, so a acryllic lid is a must, and an ATO fed into the filter is a must as well. Im convinced that without an ATO this project will indeed fail. so i want to make a float switch triggered and air pump pressurized ATO with one of these switches: http://www.floatswitches.net/Miniature_Hor...t_Switches.html hopefully the switch will be sensetive enough to keep the water level rather constant. and if dosing becomes an issue, i can do it via ATO.

 

SOOOOO, sounds good right? i just want some input before i dive into this. the hope is that it will eventually be a beautiful keyboard side display, sleek and intriguing. any helpful information you can provide me with would be greatly appreciated.

 

if i get a few encouraging remarks or other good ideas for this il set it up and test run it bare and FW just to see what the temps do and how the equipment works before adding salt and rock. Thanks in advance for any input, and happy reefing to all :)

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you say you dont want to "cheat the gallonage with a sump" but i personally would hook either a 5 or 10 gallon sump up to that sucker and solve pretty much all your problems.

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Ok, a little odd for a first post, but i think ive gleaned all i can off of searches and google and personal experience and exhausted my own ingenuity. i need outside input. i apologize if im long winded., but its alot of information.....

 

ive been keeping reefs and fish for years, and ive always been enthralled by the tiniest of tanks. (the LFS by me has a half gallon reef that i could just stare at for hours). so, as predictable, i always find myself collecting little pieces of undersized reefing equipment with the hope of eventually setting up my own sub-gallon slice of the ocean. im just starting to doubt if its possible.....

 

The tank would be one of those .36 gallon betta tanks like in the beggining of this post: http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...52&hl=betta

 

and, as in that post, red sea deco filter as well. Ill seed it with rock from my 75 gallon SPS dominated tank, and use estes marine sand (black) as substrate.

 

I dont want this to be a temporary endevor, and i dont want to cheat the gallonage with a sump and whatnot. this of course presents many issues....and this is where i need your help at. if you could brings to light the potential flaws in the plan it would be a great help to me :)

 

1. Temperature Instablity:

i live in southern california, and even in the dead of winter, it can get up to 85 abient temp cuz of santa anna winds and whatnot. So id need chilling and Warming power at the same time, and the first thing that comes to mind is a peltier. i can manualy reverse the polarity to produce a cold or hot side at will, and just use contact with tank and waterflow inside the tank as a conductive method.....right? id love for someone with experience in this to help me out. never worked with a peltier before.

 

2. Lighting:

i want to keep LPS and Softies. SPS came to mind, but i think trying to light such a small tank for them without producing more trouble than its worth is impossible (at least until someone makes a 40w MH fixture). That being said, i have a picotope 9w left over (thats like 36WPG hehe) ...think that would be enough light for some higher light softies and LPS? the PC shudnt cause much heat either....right? i was considering a Azoo Galaxy 13w too.....idfk. input greatly appreciated here.

 

3. Parameters Stability:

Shudnt be too much of an issue. I want to mod the Redsea filter into a tiny fuge with one of these: http://www.attictrunk.com/fountains9.html as a light for some macro. That shud help with nitrates and phosphates, as well as biweekly waterchanges, i shudnt need to dose that way. again, any input here is welcome, i want this to go as smoothy as possible.

 

4. Salinity:

Obviously theres gonna be HUGE evap on this sucker, so a acryllic lid is a must, and an ATO fed into the filter is a must as well. Im convinced that without an ATO this project will indeed fail. so i want to make a float switch triggered and air pump pressurized ATO with one of these switches: http://www.floatswitches.net/Miniature_Hor...t_Switches.html hopefully the switch will be sensetive enough to keep the water level rather constant. and if dosing becomes an issue, i can do it via ATO.

 

SOOOOO, sounds good right? i just want some input before i dive into this. the hope is that it will eventually be a beautiful keyboard side display, sleek and intriguing. any helpful information you can provide me with would be greatly appreciated.

 

if i get a few encouraging remarks or other good ideas for this il set it up and test run it bare and FW just to see what the temps do and how the equipment works before adding salt and rock. Thanks in advance for any input, and happy reefing to all :)

 

1. get a heater and a small fan for temperature control. finnex makes a tiny 3-4" controllable heater that should work perfectly for you. the fan should cool the tank down far enough to keep the heater running. the biggest thing is stability. it is ok if your tank ends up running at 80-82 as long as it's not crashing more than 2-3 degrees at night.

 

2. that lighting should work just fine, i've seen it keep lps and softies in the picotope, so it should be more than enough for your tank.

 

3. in a tank that tiny, a refugium that small will be worthless. water chemistry changes will happen in a tank that small faster than the tiny amount of macro algae can handle them. i would use a 100 mL pouch of purigen in the filter instead. it will absorb all organics from the water column rapidly and effectively, and will last for at least 6 months in that tiny tank. i had a bag last for 14 months before needing regeneration in a 2.5 gallon and nitrates stayed at 0 despite neglecting water changes.

 

4. a float switch would take up half the tank lol. i would look into a gravity fed ATO system (look into the "sun tea jar" diy) or just rely on the acrylic cover--they are more effective than you would think at preventing evap. just make sure to keep it clear of salt creep that will prevent light penetration.

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thesmallerthebetter
1. get a heater and a small fan for temperature control. finnex makes a tiny 3-4" controllable heater that should work perfectly for you. the fan should cool the tank down far enough to keep the heater running. the biggest thing is stability. it is ok if your tank ends up running at 80-82 as long as it's not crashing more than 2-3 degrees at night.

 

2. that lighting should work just fine, i've seen it keep lps and softies in the picotope, so it should be more than enough for your tank.

 

3. in a tank that tiny, a refugium that small will be worthless. water chemistry changes will happen in a tank that small faster than the tiny amount of macro algae can handle them. i would use a 100 mL pouch of purigen in the filter instead. it will absorb all organics from the water column rapidly and effectively, and will last for at least 6 months in that tiny tank. i had a bag last for 14 months before needing regeneration in a 2.5 gallon and nitrates stayed at 0 despite neglecting water changes.

 

4. a float switch would take up half the tank lol. i would look into a gravity fed ATO system (look into the "sun tea jar" diy) or just rely on the acrylic cover--they are more effective than you would think at preventing evap. just make sure to keep it clear of salt creep that will prevent light penetration.

 

1. do you happen to have a link for the heater? i can only find their 5" titanium one.....

 

2.i figured the light would be alright, worse comes to worse i can step it up a few watts lol

 

3.i sorta worried about the size of the fuge. i didnt think of purigen, thats genious. i used to use that when i had to set up a hospital tank when one of my FW rays needed isolation and i had no time for a cycle.. The only worry is it weakening the natural biofiltration in the live rock....did you experience anything like that? i just wouldnt want the tank depending on the purigen rather than live rock for survival due to a lack of baterica feeding organics brought about by the cleansing of the chemical....

 

4. that tea jar thing is awsome! never came across that before. i think ill build a acryllic water tower type with clear rigid airline...just to be clean and sleek about it.

 

SEE! two posters and already a wealth of helpful information

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i still say hook up a sump under it. you could drill a hole in the bottom and have a large pipe as your overflow and the return pipe can come back up thru the inside of the drain line if that makes sense. ive seen someone do it but do not know the link. your return nozzle could also act as your powerhead/flow source.

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1. do you happen to have a link for the heater? i can only find their 5" titanium one.....

 

2.i figured the light would be alright, worse comes to worse i can step it up a few watts lol

 

3.i sorta worried about the size of the fuge. i didnt think of purigen, thats genious. i used to use that when i had to set up a hospital tank when one of my FW rays needed isolation and i had no time for a cycle.. The only worry is it weakening the natural biofiltration in the live rock....did you experience anything like that? i just wouldnt want the tank depending on the purigen rather than live rock for survival due to a lack of baterica feeding organics brought about by the cleansing of the chemical....

 

4. that tea jar thing is awsome! never came across that before. i think ill build a acryllic water tower type with clear rigid airline...just to be clean and sleek about it.

 

SEE! two posters and already a wealth of helpful information

 

I actually can't seem to find that heater any more :/ it is 5:45 in the morning and i've been up working on homework, so i'm probably just not looking in the right places right now lol.

 

i never noticed any issues with the purigen and live rock, but even if there was, the purigen would take care of it anyway. .36 gallons is too small for fish anyway, so there really will be little to no bioload in the system other than food you may add for the coral.

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thesmallerthebetter
i still say hook up a sump under it. you could drill a hole in the bottom and have a large pipe as your overflow and the return pipe can come back up thru the inside of the drain line if that makes sense. ive seen someone do it but do not know the link. your return nozzle could also act as your powerhead/flow source.

 

yes, that would solve every single problem....

 

but i consider that cheating

 

then its not a .36 gallon pico, its a (whatever the size of the sump is) pico with a .36 gallon veiwing window.....

 

part of the miracle of the nano/pico side of the hobby is that its the smallest possible slice of the billions if not trillions of gallons of ocean. this is just something i want to see if i can do. no sumps allowed :P

 

I actually can't seem to find that heater any more :/ it is 5:45 in the morning and i've been up working on homework, so i'm probably just not looking in the right places right now lol.

 

i never noticed any issues with the purigen and live rock, but even if there was, the purigen would take care of it anyway. .36 gallons is too small for fish anyway, so there really will be little to no bioload in the system other than food you may add for the coral.

 

lol, i know where youre comming from, its 2:45 am here. of course, i dont get up until 3pm on weekdays anyways :P

 

yea, no fish allowed in this thing, but i want to have like a single Dendro head. so thats a little bit of food......not much since the tank is so small and the polyp will be large enough to feed with 100% effinciency, but i dont want to overlook anything in such a tiny, and thus delicate project.

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Well, you definitely came to the right place for tiny tanks.

 

The Dendro could be trouble. Make sure that you are very careful with feedings. A water change not too long after feedings would be a good idea to get rid of any waste before it starts to polute the tank. I would make that the only coral you HAVE to feed. Have everything else photosynthetic.

 

Back to your heating and cooling issue, I'd only use a peltier if you had a way of controlling it for both heating and cooling. You don't want to be manually running it. It's a good solution to both issues if you can pull it off. The biggest problem with them though is that they are horribly inefficient. They use a lot of power to do what they do.

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in a tank that small if you had the dendro and several zoanthids, all you would have to do is dip a cyclopeze bar in the tank for about 1/2 a second. then very little food would be able to settle, as many corals would be pulling it out of the water column. a small blue leg hermit or sexy shrimp would help keep leftovers picked up as well.

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thesmallerthebetter
Well, you definitely came to the right place for tiny tanks.

 

The Dendro could be trouble. Make sure that you are very careful with feedings. A water change not too long after feedings would be a good idea to get rid of any waste before it starts to polute the tank. I would make that the only coral you HAVE to feed. Have everything else photosynthetic.

 

Back to your heating and cooling issue, I'd only use a peltier if you had a way of controlling it for both heating and cooling. You don't want to be manually running it. It's a good solution to both issues if you can pull it off. The biggest problem with them though is that they are horribly inefficient. They use a lot of power to do what they do.

 

 

yea, the dendro is a must though, i have a soft spot for the Dendrophyllia family :)

i think with daily feedings of 2 or 3 individual mysis and a small water change after each feeding i can keep it under control. and yea, everything else is going to be photo only :)

 

i actually decided to ignore the cooling issue for now, its winter, and i think ill be okay for a few months. when the time comes, ill find a solution. for heating i opted for one of those little hydor heating pads and it seems to fit well into the redsea deco filter. to control it i got a Zoo med repto stat thing. its just an adjustable resitor, and i can turn down the voltage and thus the heat to the pad. should work nicly. also got a digital thermometer with a memory to be sure its stable wheile im not around.

 

i got the tank and all the parts for a gravity fed ATO (except the bottle....still trying to decide on that) today. im going to hook it up and run it FW tonight without the ATO (the only thing i havnt got built yet).

 

 

 

in a tank that small if you had the dendro and several zoanthids, all you would have to do is dip a cyclopeze bar in the tank for about 1/2 a second. then very little food would be able to settle, as many corals would be pulling it out of the water column. a small blue leg hermit or sexy shrimp would help keep leftovers picked up as well.

 

 

Yea, gonna have some zoos, as well as a cerith and bumblebee based cleanup crew. hopefully they can keep everything mostly clean.

 

Excited to see how this turns out!

 

 

lol. so am i :)

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thesmallerthebetter
use LEDs. do not stock with anything that requires feeding.

 

DSCN7606_small.JPG

http://www.nano-reef.com/gallery/showphoto...amp;ppuser=1922

 

holy poop and scoop!

 

thats awsome!!!!!!!! lol

 

wut did you use for circulation?

 

do you really think that 2 mysis per day will make that big a difference in my tank?

 

i measured, and its actually: 7.5"x4.5"x4.5" (outside dimensions) so thats equal to half a gallon. Unfortunatly, bigger than i had expected.....but still small. apparently the tank at the LFS im using as inspiration is a gallon. its been running light and filter pad at lowest setting and has only reached about 75 degrees. so i turned the light off and stepped up the heater a tad hoping to get it to 78 for night time temp, and 80-81 during daylight hours.

 

i need to get a timer for the light beceause i sleep on a reverse daylight schedual. dont want to screw with the photo period.

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You could do your own glass tank,the glass shop would cut it with a tank so small ti would be easy to do.

Man that pyrex reef is small what do you do for circulation? What is it's history, some info would be real nice.

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Hey those are cool goals you have for your pico, no cheating on size, what you want to keep, I think that's the truest pico reefing there is, when you must rely on pure biology to keep your system alive. This is the exact kind of project I like as well. Do some searches around here on things like "oldest pico" "sub-gallon pico" or "sps pico" and across the web to see how others keep their visions of what works, actually working, longer than 3 months :). When you find a pico reef that has coralline on the glass, talk to them, that's true ionic balance for the long haul and when you have that you have a real reef, regardless of size. If someone has coralline in their pico, they've delt with your salinity questions. All else without calcification is just temporary holdings, be they 120 or .120 gallons!

 

you also might not consider auto top offs, this is cheating, technologically speaking because I can see you want the simplest methods. of course these are convenient, but not needing one is even better, and simpler, and more reliable because these are dangerous mechanisms that can kill a reef when they malfunction...

 

Consider evaporation restriction/prevention, not *adding* water to that which you have not restricted or controlled, this is the jedi way of the pico reef. :) there are several ways of doing this, and evaporation restiction means you will be topping off every two-three days, unlike most non-engineered picos that need it everyday or multiple times per day in the summer, and evaporation restriction means you never top off at all because you have zero evaporation.

 

Have you ever seen the jar candles that are huge and have a huge press on/sealed lid? It practically thumps into place when you seat it, now tell me what can evaporate from that when sealed? One item that will work for you to achieve total restriction is to buy a large one, big enough you can fit a 6" digital submersible heater into, and take the wax out by heating it in boiling water and then cleaning it all up. You take the lid to a professional glass cutter and negotiate with them to drill two holes in it for you, spaced equally on the top of the lid, small holes about the width of virginia-slims cigarrette. It is through these holes you can run the power lines to your heater and small powerhead, yes you will have to cut and resplice them back through the holes, and when you are done you will have a lid that you can remove which passes through a heater and a power head down into your tank. You will also have to use tiny black rubber grommets from radioshack in between the holes and the cord to make a true seal or salt creep will occur.

 

This is your basic pico, it will work, because I've done it many times over. It works so well I would never actually own a large reef due to the work involved, this technique is more stable than a fishbowl.

 

as far as oxygen, you can approach it two ways, one simple, one technical. You can leave in inch of airspace that will carry your system over through the nights with little problem, provided you keep it clean and not let bacteria build up too heavy, sand should be excluded in my opinion from this type of 02 holdover because it allows for more surface area than is needed in these picos. I use sand a lot, but only for looks, and I also employ the counterlit-refugium approach which is on the technical side of the equation.

 

The counterlit refuge approach means when you build this jar, you insert and silicone a plastic wall that divides the front 2/3 field of view from the back 1/3, the plastic wall should be solid black and run top of the water line all the way down to the floor, it should encompass the total body of water from top to bottom when the tank is filled. You build your live rock wall with tiny chunks and lean them or zip tie them to the front face of the plastic wall, they will hide it from view when finished. You have less room for corals with this approach but it works to carry stronger bioloads in any pico reef. The rear hidden chamber is *counterlit* to the normal lighting, so that at night a small palm light shines on your caulerpa to give you Oxygen, not just nitrate uptake. The black wall prevents it from lighting your front chamber too much...

 

You are welcome, I just gave you the exact plans for the baddest pico reef on the planet that accomplishes everything you asked for :)

B

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brandon!

 

i usually don't like to read long posts (even my own :lol: ) but yours are still always one of those that i want to read completely thru due to the wealth of information and experience you're always willing to share.

 

i don't agree with the ato comment though. c'mon, that's not cheating. that's letting technology into your life, making it easier. :P

 

but the rest of it should be taken as gospel imo by others (or at least one of the gospels ;) ).

 

glad to see you out of the shadows though! i thought you had turned completely to the darkside. :unsure:

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hey good buddy nice to see you, even though I haven't signed in I've been watching your sunlit pico for a while now and it has lasted way longer than my one attempt ever did nice job@!!

 

 

I may be skewed on the ATO thing because I never had one to work but then again I got burned out on them before you guys came up with the air driven coke bottle one (which albeit technical, is COOL) the kent marine drip doser (that ceases output by 75% when the water level/gravity drops) is what made me a skeptic you know

 

 

as far as the writing, we are dealing with purely unmitigated/unmedicated mania. Been like that for a while now eh>?

 

nice to see the og reefers still around you rule

B

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thanks for the comment! (and sorry for the hijack, small) we'll see on the current sunlit, it's still young.

 

meh, the coral side has been easy. it's only now that it's getting a little challenging with the crocea. :unsure: in hindsight, i probably should've started with a squammy (and chiller) and made it a whole lot easier on myself. >.<

 

i do agree that ato's are the bane of the pico sub-genre. i remember lizbeth's micro/mini tank and the top-offs were driving her crazy too. that's why i always loved your ingenius solution (imho).

 

have too much evaporation? then eliminate the evaporation possibility! :lol: seal it!

 

a lot of your concepts then were precusors to what i've been employing on these sunlit setups i the last few years.

 

still waiting/looking for a sensitive enough ato switch that's not too fugly and compatible with sw. hrm.

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non-photosynt

I'm very interested how your pico with dendrophyllia turns out.

 

With my pico trials, main limitation was size of equipment: minimal length of thermoregulated heater was 6" (Hydor All Glass), it fits only 0.75g wide pico (acrylic Curvies). Even with this heater, and I tried 2 of them and 1 Theo, held temperature was not what was marked on dial.

 

Red Sea hang-on Deco Art nano-filter worked well, with a good flow.

 

Making back chamber with refugium will require space for a pump, Tom smallest pump with spraybar is much smaller, than Micro-Jet, and is reliable.

 

The only way to deal with overheating, that I know, is central air conditioning.

 

Lighting; I have seen posts with 4" deep picos, that allow keeping sps under 36W PC.

 

Parameters stability: I'll second the notion, that the less food, the cleaner water. At large scale refugium wasn't able process nutrient after tubastrea feeding with the same speed, as they were added, even when skimmer was used. Water changes: I doubt, that they will be bi-weekly, and massive water changes with a new water depressed corals. Using aged water from another, established tank, will be cheating, but was better for corals.

Salinity: all ATO, that I know, are too big. I would rather use sealing, but opening for a HOB power filter anyway will be required.

 

If I remember right, I have seen at Reef Guardian photo of the DIY pico protein skimmer, with airstone, made from large syringe.

 

Good luck! I'll be watching, how it will work, and maybe will be able to figure out filtration scheme, sufficient for well fed non-photosynthetic tank.

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thesmallerthebetter

ok, ive spent the last few days sorta slowly putting all my parts together for this little reef.

 

i got everything working, tested it FW for a few days, works great, temps hover at around 77 with lights off, 80 with lights on. so i pulled it all apart, spray painted the back and the filter (with krylon fusion, reef safe when fully cured) . now, just waitng for the paint to dry (i ussually give it a week or so) and then im filling it up again, this time with saltwater, and giving it a go.

 

 

wish me luck, ill put pictures up when its running again. :)

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thesmallerthebetter

tank's back up, filled with rock, seems to be working pretty good :)

temps get to about 77 at night, 82 during the day, i have the heater and thermo probe hidden in the filter....

 

kinda hard to belive its only half a gallon......

 

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added a couple bonus shots of the shark and ray tank...houses 2 California Stingrays, 1 Smoothound, 1 Banded catshark, and a Bimac Octo

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