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1/4 Gallon Open Top SPS Cube


thesmallerthebetter

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thesmallerthebetter
Wait, so thats your camera acting up? up to now I though its just algaefied glass lmao!

 

i know right! thats what it looks like but no algae ever grows on my glass haha. the light from the LEDs doesnt touch the walls of the tank haha. my camera is a point and shoot nikon with a crappy white balance

 

my camera is only 5mp...only about 1/5 macro shots turn out well. And yes, I took the pic of the harleys. may they rest in peace...

 

aw, i love those shrimp. yo are still welcome to come by whever you are in town. anything is better than what i can do haha

 

 

wow i mean realy wow

 

what do you mean?

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thesmallerthebetter
those zoas are a bit stretchy tho, whats up with them?

 

thats acutally the reason i swapped the LEDs.

 

for whatever reason they strechted for light while the acros right next to them are fine :/ im hoping that the new LEDs will give more PAR and perk them back up....well see. i also amped the flow even more to see if it engourages them to lie down haha

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floridian reefer

Awesome tank!! I love it!!! About his time last year you were sayin wait a few months for the plans on the pump... Any update on that? I have a 2.5 It would be perfect in. I am currently using the smallest water fountain pump I could find.

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thesmallerthebetter
Awesome tank!! I love it!!! About his time last year you were sayin wait a few months for the plans on the pump... Any update on that? I have a 2.5 It would be perfect in. I am currently using the smallest water fountain pump I could find.

 

well...

 

i had started to work on a redesign on the pump that would make it more reliable, more streamlined, and more....better haha turns out it wasnt as cheap as i had planned and got bogged down. i also hit a few brick walls in a redesign that would allow a "widley available model" if you get my drift. sourcing parts and injection moulders is a pain.

 

i recently (last week) secretly swapped out of old pump with the new components (carbon fibre shaft, better sealed magnet, smaller esc). kind of a prototype for the new design.

 

if u want the "plans" so to speak theres a thread out there with the basic outline....i cant get more specific for legal reasons *waves the mean finger at the suits*. i can provide the sources i located for specific parts if that helps. shoot a PM if you will. i have loads in my inbox on the same subject haha

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thesmallerthebetter

so i just thought id share a little something i worked on today hahaha

 

ive noticed that with the SPS frags getting larger my alk goes from 10 at lights on to about 7 at water change time (right before lights out). my calc hovers round 480 regardless so i dont worry bout that.

 

i decided i wanted to get some beter growth and keep my alk around 11 at its lowest, so decided it would be a good idea to dose baking soda (not baked baking soda, due to a perfect PH)

 

thing is, id need to dose an IMMEASURABLE amount to get the raise i want (0.1g to be exact) so i did some calculations and found out this:

 

treating 1.25G requires 0.1tsp of baking soda for an alk rise to 11 from my low at 7.

.25 tsp of baking soda is approximately 1mL

.5 mL is enough to treat 1.25G of water.

 

my gravity top off takes 4 days to empty itself. which means that i can accurately does 4 days worth of buffer into the top of for automated dosing. but thats only 1G of doses (.25 total tank volume x 4 days)

 

so math was this:

 

if 0.1tsp Xtsp

------ = ------

treats 1.25G 1G

 

comes to = 0.08tsp/G

 

 

1mL XmL

------ = -----

.25tsp 0.08tsp

 

comes to 0.32mL/G

 

i happened to have a syringe marked .625mL at the lowest so i drew a new line halfway below that and im calling that good enough haha.

 

lotsa work for this crap haha.

Edited by thesmallerthebetter
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thesmallerthebetter
thats very neat there is no individual parameter dosing of pico reefs going on that I know of, thats pretty advanced man good job

 

thanks :)

 

i just hope that with more alkaline numbers i see more steady growth. i want mini colonies...not frags haha

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thesmallerthebetter
im really watching the tanks with LED setups to see how sps fare with them nice thread.

 

it is to early to tell for me too. i like the colors i get with the LEDs (over pcs, never used halides on a pico). so far ive seen very little growth. but this is prolly due to a couple of reasons.

 

1. the frags ive started with have been tiny. many under 1/4" and several with only 1 or two polyps....

2. i suspect my alk has been off for a while, i neglected my testing regime :(

3. the tank is still infantile. its only been set up for under a year, im hoping that as the tank matures a tad more i see increased growth

4. my initial LEDs were not, in my opinion, strong enough. 3W of light is still 3W of light no matter how small the volume of the tank. so i upped it to 6W of more reliable LEDs (Cree XRE) and hopeuflly i will see improvement.

 

this tank is going to be around a LONG time.

 

last night at work i found 2 very cool distichopora sp. (lace corals) on some of the live rock ive been curing for a few months. i fragged them off the rock, and they are in a prop tank at work for now. ive fed them mysis and they activly grab and eat it. im considering adding them to the system to catch particulate in the water column (shrimp poops) and to show that NPS corals can be kept in tanks this small (other than my dendro, whose been in here for ages). i have a red balano frag id like to add as well, and id love a black/green baby sun in here too.

 

so i think im going to remove the palys in the front, they look okay, but the stretchy neck thing bugs me a lot. in their place i want to put the two lace corals on that rock, and the red balano across from the dendro on the sandbed. that will give me a nearly 50/50 stocking of NPS to SPS corals. quite the ratio for a tank of only 0.25 gallons empty. :)

 

PS: 12 hours after starting my dosing regime i finally see polyps on my blue boa echinata.....its been closed for months!

Edited by thesmallerthebetter
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4. my initial LEDs were not, in my opinion, strong enough. 3W of light is still 3W of light no matter how small the volume of the tank. so i upped it to 6W of more reliable LEDs (Cree XRE) and hopeuflly i will see improvement.

 

 

cool those are the same ones i´m using. I love your tank

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thesmallerthebetter
cool those are the same ones i´m using. I love your tank

 

thank you sir :)

 

i like yours too. cant wait to see it start to fill in.

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thesmallerthebetter
when did you start dosing? and with what? must have missed the post..

 

i started using a tiny amount of baking soda in the top off to keep alk in check.

 

it now stays 11 all day as opposed to dripping from 11-7 over the course of the day

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thesmallerthebetter
what an awesome tank! I love how you're tackling sps in it. That's very brave of you.

 

thanks :P

 

i dont do anything different (other than baking soda top off) for the sps than i would for softies. with the right equipment i truly believe they are no more difficult than any other coral :)

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thesmallerthebetter

so tdoay member amnesta came by and hooked me up with two nice new SPS frags, one that is an irredescent red/green A. Millipora and another that is a stark white with blue polyps Monti (Verrucosa i think).

 

also moved some stuff around a bit to find mounting spots.

 

no pics until things settle in again

 

oh, and the Zoas are about an inch less stretchy with the new leds :)

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