El Jefe's 3.7 Gallon Cylinder Tank - Now With Corals!

[El_Jefe]

I just finished gluing my rocks together into a single piece. I'm hoping that the epoxy is durable enough for me to be able to lift the rock form out of the tank periodically for coral placement and ease of maintenance. One step closer to getting water in this puppy. I'm on the fence regarding cycling. I could pull a rock from my sump and put it in the cylinder to kick start the cycle, or just do it the old fashioned way. Either way I plan to add ammonia to induce the cycle and feed the bacteria. I would like to add a number of corals all at one time, so I want to build up my bacteria population first. Would adding a single rock have a big impact on getting the bacteria established, or should I just start from ground zero?

[El_Jefe]

I was able to get some water in the tank tonight to see how it would come together and function. Overall I'm pretty happy with it so far. I think I will probably ditch the air stone and just run an open ended airline tube. I may also epoxy a couple of small rocks to the top rock in order to cover up the end of the central support post. On the up side, I was able to locate the top lid ring, so I can secure the lid with my super-cool wing nuts. Enough talk, here are some pictures.

 

 

 

 

And here are some with the Kessil running. I am pleasantly surprised by the distribution of light. I was worried that I would get a pretty extreme spotlight effect, but after adding water this seems to help the light bounce around and illuminate the majority of my rock work. Good news for future coral placement!

 

 

 

 

Now to wait for the tank to cycle...

 

EJ

[El_Jefe]

The fish-less cycle is coming along slowly. I've started to see nitrites as well as ammonia levels starting to come down. I've decided against seeding this tank with rock from my main display, as I was concerned about transporting over unwanted pests. My main tank is pretty well under control, but I do have aptasia pop up from time to time and I would like to avoid these buggers in the pico if possible. Here is a shot during some testing I was doing tonight.

 

 

Its nice to have an access port so I don't have to pull the whole lid off. I did a partial water change last night to bring down my ammonia level through this port as well, which made the job super quick!

 

I'm trying to gauge how much evaporation I am going to see in this tank, but its tricky since I do pull small water samples out of the tank for testing every day or two. Thus far it seems to be very minimal. I've plugged all of the ports on my lid with the exception of the large cylindrical part with the side ports you can see in the picture. This cylinder was the original vent for the bioreactor, and it is designed to capture moisture before it leaves the tank. The two threaded ports lead to a spiral shaped tube that runs through the cylinder, and originally cold water would be run from one port to the other to condense moisture. The cylinder is also filled with small ceramic media that also helps trap moisture. I don't plan to run the cooling circuit, but I'm thinking that the fact that the air has to pass through loosely packed ceramic media may help keep evaporation to a minimum. I've thought about rigging up a single float switch ATO system for this tank from some spare parts I have laying around, but first I want to see if I evaporate enough in a week to even make it worth doing.

 

 

[Mirya]

Do you think CO2 build-up or O2 depletion may become an issue once you start stocking?

[rolyat113]

Do you think CO2 build-up or O2 depletion may become an issue once you start stocking?

I think since he's got the air pump going in it shouldn't...

 

Subscribed. This is super cool!

[Mirya]

I think since he's got the air pump going in it shouldn't...

 

Doh...

[El_Jefe]

I think since he's got the air pump going in it shouldn't...

 

Subscribed. This is super cool!

Thanks Rolyat! I am assuming that the air stone will keep oxygen levels in the tank in check.

 

It seems that most other pico tanks in the 3 gallon range don't use the sealed design that I am employing, and I'm hoping that the sealed approach scales well to this size of tank. So far I'm liking the setup. As long as I can keep algae and pests at bay I think the maintenance shouldn't be too bad. Time will tell...

[rolyat113]

Thanks Rolyat! I am assuming that the air stone will keep oxygen levels in the tank in check.

 

It seems that most other pico tanks in the 3 gallon range don't use the sealed design that I am employing, and I'm hoping that the sealed approach scales well to this size of tank. So far I'm liking the setup. As long as I can keep algae and pests at bay I think the maintenance shouldn't be too bad. Time will tell...

The smallest tank I've had is the IM Fusion 10 I'm running now, so no help in the pico dept. However, with the airstone and the one vent up top I think you'll be good to go. You could always uncap some of the other openings later on if needed right? I'm excited to see this in action.

[pgrVII]

This thing is really really cool. Well done man,it's a perfect blend of form and function

[1.0reef]

Incredible craftsmanship!

[cje0114]

That's really pretty cool. My dad used to work for the company here in NJ that made those reactors. Too bad I didn't know about them until now or I would have had him bring some home for me to play with.

[rolyat113]

Any updates??

[El_Jefe]

Any updates??

The tank is still cycling, so nothing really exciting to report. One of the larger bolts must have been made of mild steel because it started to rust on the inside of the lid. I had to pull the lid off and scrub the rust off the bottom face of the lid with a scotch brite pad. I haven't decided yet what I am going to use to replace it. I don't have any rubber corks large enough. I may machine a plug out of ABS plastic. For now I have just covered the hole in the top.

 

I have put a lone hermit crab into the tank as he was causing problems in my main display. I wasn't sure how pumped he would be about a tank in mid-cycle, but so far so good. He has been in there for about a week now and seems to be doing OK. I'm guessing it will take another couple of weeks to fully cycle.

[El_Jefe]

That's really pretty cool. My dad used to work for the company here in NJ that made those reactors. Too bad I didn't know about them until now or I would have had him bring some home for me to play with.

Thanks! These things are super-expensive new, and even in the used market people want a lot of money for these old reactors. Laboratory grade equipment is definitely not cheap. Given the fact that you could have a large custom reef tank built for less than one of these things goes for I'm guessing we won't be seeing too many of these reactors turned into fish tanks! I happened to be in the right place at the right time to score this one for free. If nothing else this will be an interesting study on the impact of stainless steel in a reef tank environment.

[cje0114]

Thanks! These things are super-expensive new, and even in the used market people want a lot of money for these old reactors. Laboratory grade equipment is definitely not cheap. Given the fact that you could have a large custom reef tank built for less than one of these things goes for I'm guessing we won't be seeing too many of these reactors turned into fish tanks! I happened to be in the right place at the right time to score this one for free. If nothing else this will be an interesting study on the impact of stainless steel in a reef tank environment.

I showed it to my dad and he said that thing is about 10 grand new. I guess you officially have the most expensive Pico reef on nano reef... Haha!

[El_Jefe]

I showed it to my dad and he said that thing is about 10 grand new. I guess you officially have the most expensive Pico reef on nano reef... Haha!

Yeah, you are probably right about that! Hopefully he isn't too bummed about seeing one of his vessels so hacked apart. These vessels mated to a large control unit, and apparently the control unit had failed and there was no interest in fixing it. At least I've given the reactor vessel a new lease on life, it was headed for the scrap yard!

[WhiteWulfe]

This is definitely an interesting looking concept, and I love all the work that's gone into it so far!

[El_Jefe]

This is definitely an interesting looking concept, and I love all the work that's gone into it so far!

Thanks! It should be a bit more interesting once the cycle completes. I'm still pretty undecided on what I will be going with for corals. I'm thinking I might stick with mostly encrusting corals since I don't have a lot of real estate for corals to stick out from rocks. Decisions, decisions....

[rolyat113]

Thanks! It should be a bit more interesting once the cycle completes. I'm still pretty undecided on what I will be going with for corals. I'm thinking I might stick with mostly encrusting corals since I don't have a lot of real estate for corals to stick out from rocks. Decisions, decisions....

That could be really cool! The only thing I always dislike about encrusting corals is the plug always shows! I never know what they should actually look like. They have such cool colors though.

[petolo]

This is really epic, can't wait to see what this turns into. And you should have an interesting time with the magnification effect, a tiny frag will probably look good in there from the get go.

[land shark]

So are you a mad scientist by trade or just on weekends?

 

Seriously though, that is an awesome find and perfect for a pico! Can't wait till its packed with coral.

[petolo]

bump...? How'd the cycle go? any livestock yet?

[El_Jefe]

bump...? How'd the cycle go? any livestock yet?

The cycle has been complete for a week or so now, but I've been swamped at work and have not had time to pull over some livestock from my main tank yet. For now I have a single larger hermit crab roaming around in there. I've taken this time to work out some bugs with my setup, and I will post a bit more detail about this soon. I'm also hoping to find some time this weekend to get some corals moved over and start getting things rolling with this tank. I will probably run it with livestock for a few weeks to see how everything does before lugging the setup into my office.

[Matteo]

this is super cool! gonna be a great conversation piece!

[El_Jefe]

After a very busy past month I have finally been able to make some progress on the lab cylinder tank. After running the tank for the past month during the cycle I found that salt was creeping past several of the threaded bolts in the chamber lid despite using teflon tape on the threads and snugging the bolts down. In order to eliminate this issue I decided to remove the teflon tape (It was ugly anyway), tighten the bolts and then seal around all of the bolts on the bottom of the lid using aquarium silicon. Here are a couple of pictures of the lid after the silicon treatment.

 

 

 

I decided this morning that today was the day to get some corals in the tank and bring it into my office. I started by doing a 100% water change. I fragged some corals off of the mother colonies in my 60 gallon tank to get this one up and running. I think I will run the tank with these corals for some time in order to ensure that all systems are running smoothly before I start putting more money into livestock for the tank. After getting the frags glued in place I filled the tank up about 3/4 of the way, buckled it into the front seat of my car and took the tank to work. Here are some pictures of the tank I snapped with my cell phone after getting the tank all set up in my office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

These shots were taken shortly after the tank was brought back up online, so the corals are all looking rather grumpy. After a few hours of the tank running many of the corals were fully opened and looking much happier. I was able to pull two frogspawn frags, a single head of green torch coral, two neon green candy cane frags, a Duncan frag, a green and red blasto and two varieties of zoas as a start for the cylinder. As you can see there is a lot of room here to add additional corals once the tank settles in a bit more.

 

Thats about it for now, I will try to get some better pictures of the tank next week with a real camera. Fingers crossed that everything is happy when I get back to the office on Monday.