evilc66 Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 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. Link to comment
reeftankguy Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 I like! Great write up Evil! Link to comment
schgr.cube Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 Great write up, good to see some better photos of this tank. Can't wait to see this one progress. Link to comment
badfish816 Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 sweet pico. those bams bams look amazing. Link to comment
cdelicath Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 Thanks for the review Evil Link to comment
evilc66 Posted October 22, 2009 Author Share Posted October 22, 2009 You are very welcome. I hope I can do your good work justice Link to comment
cdelicath Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 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? Link to comment
evilc66 Posted October 22, 2009 Author Share Posted October 22, 2009 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. Link to comment
Nemo Niblets Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 Very nice! Do you manually top off? Link to comment
illuminano Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 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. Link to comment
evilc66 Posted October 23, 2009 Author Share Posted October 23, 2009 Nope. Learned a long time ago that an ATO is a must on this tiny tanks. Link to comment
jestersix Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 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... Link to comment
glennr1978 Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 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. Link to comment
evilc66 Posted October 23, 2009 Author Share Posted October 23, 2009 I have something in the works for dosing. They should be showing up today Link to comment
evilc66 Posted October 24, 2009 Author Share Posted October 24, 2009 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. Link to comment
cdelicath Posted October 25, 2009 Share Posted October 25, 2009 sweet.. you know I will be watching. Are you using the arduino on the LED's now? Link to comment
RENDOG Posted October 25, 2009 Share Posted October 25, 2009 nice man....who did the lighting? Link to comment
adolfo425 Posted October 25, 2009 Share Posted October 25, 2009 Very sweet pico will be following this thread. Link to comment
evilc66 Posted October 25, 2009 Author Share Posted October 25, 2009 sweet.. you know I will be watching. Are you using the arduino on the LED's now? 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 nice man....who did the lighting? I wonder Link to comment
cdelicath Posted October 25, 2009 Share Posted October 25, 2009 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 Link to comment
evilc66 Posted October 26, 2009 Author Share Posted October 26, 2009 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. Link to comment
evilc66 Posted October 26, 2009 Author Share Posted October 26, 2009 Thanks bud. I'll have to stop by some time to see your new setup. Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.