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The Mad Science Experiment


MedievalITGuy

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MedievalITGuy

In honor of the Halloween deadline, i have decided to create a new pico with a "Mad Scientist" theme for the Creative Container contest! So here is my official entry, containing my favorite condiment, garlic (with a side of my second favorite, BBQ sauce, just to have an actual condiment in the pic).

 

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My original idea was to try and turn this into a pico with a built in skimmer, but as the contest rules don't allow for filtration, I am just going to be running a regular air line, and hamming up the mad scientist theme. So there should be lots of purples, and greens, and other rediculious colors in here once the tank gets going.

I'm actually running another (real) experiment to see if I can grow corals in a sealed container using only xenia as the water movement source, and if that goes well, I may end up taking the air line out of this, to see how it goes. But for now I'm just going to assume that the corals I want in here can't handle that little flow and run it with an air-stone for current.

 

More updates will follow, once I have my equipment in hand. Sadly I couldn't find any PAR bulbs I liked without getting them from China, so now the wait begins.

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20 minutes ago, MedievalITGuy said:

I am just going to be running a regular air line, and hamming up the mad scientist theme.

I can picture it now.

Image result for bubbling flask gif
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MedievalITGuy

Technically, I should say that this is going to be a "Mad Engineer" pico. It's hard to call a project scientific when your hypothesis reads "This is going to be awesome!".

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MedievalITGuy

No updates so far, because I haven't had time to make it to the LFS to get rock, but I ordered some tahitian black moon sand, and will be heading out to WWC for rock tomorrow!

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MedievalITGuy

It lives!

 

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Or at least it partially lives. I'm still waiting on the stupid light to get here from China <_<

Ended up getting the rock at a local reef store yesterday. I walked in and it was sitting right there staring at me, asking to be taken home, so the WWC run will have to take place at some later date.

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MedievalITGuy

Thanks guys! I'm still waiting for the silly light to get in so I can start adding corals. I'm not entirely sure what's going in here, but I've got a couple mushrooms, and the piece de resistance sitting in my QT tank:

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MedievalITGuy

One of the three lights I ordered came in the other day! Unfortunately, the company sent the wrong bulb, and the color rendering is horrendous because they essentially sent me a plant-growth bulb. I probably could get them to send me a replacement, but at the moment, it's not worth the hassle for a $6 light when I have two other promising options on the way. Hopefully one of them gets here soon...

 

While I wait, I've added a couple pruple and green hairy shrooms to the tank to see how everything's going. I'm most likely not going to be doing any testing on this tank (besides salinity), so I'm going to make sure to monitor the corals closely to adjust my water changes. They've been in there for about 48 hours now, and so far everything looks good! Well... besides the color of the light anyway...

 

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MedievalITGuy
5 minutes ago, seabass said:

Still needs a bunsen burner stand. :)

It does, but I think that's going to wait until after Christmas. Finances are a little tight right now, and I'm notoriously bad at spending $20 here and $20 there until I'm broke. 

 

... As evidenced by the fact that I set up a new pico tank just because there was a contest on... :D

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Pretty cool little "tank" you have there lol.  I like the piece of rock you put in there.  Personally the red light also seems kind of neat/spooky considering your theme.

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I cant sleep well until the former coral that made up that base rock can be named. calices are too big for porites, my vote was some type of oxyopora what does the quorum say on that skeletal ID

 

yes that pico is dope! but when I saw that skeleton rock I felt like an inferior man not being able to id it. I can walk taller when I know accurate ID is in the back pocket. I would have said siderastrea but those are typically circular and that thing was a log in its day a hundred years ago ish.

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MedievalITGuy
13 minutes ago, ajmckay said:

Pretty cool little "tank" you have there lol.  I like the piece of rock you put in there.  Personally the red light also seems kind of neat/spooky considering your theme.

Thanks. The light itself looks ok, but it doesn't do much to bring out the fluorescence in the corals, and I'm worried that there's so much red in the light that I'll have massive algae growth. 

 

10 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

yes that pico is dope! but when I saw that skeleton rock I felt like an inferior man not being able to id it. I can walk taller when I know accurate ID is in the back pocket. I would have said siderastrea but those are typically circular and that thing was a log in its day a hundred years ago ish.

First off, it's really cool to hear you think my pico is so cool. Your articles back in the day are basically the reason I am in the hobby at all!

As for identifying the base rock, I'm not sure how to help there, I don't have much knowledge on taxonomy, though my wife might. I was told it was tonga rock at the LFS. It actually is mostly circular, but it's definitely from a branching coral, it has protrusions where new branches would have started forming, and that's why it looks so lumpy. This piece is about 1.5" in diameter, and is actually the smallest one I saw at the store, so it's likely it was a much younger piece of the colony than the rest.

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Doesn’t look 1.5 I forgot about that glass amplification effect right! So glad to see your setup I bet some aquascapers tweezers should be on her Christmas stocking list for ya

 

salinity looks to be solid with that stopper how did you vent the pressure is there a little vent outlet somewhere 

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MedievalITGuy

Yeah, all the containers I like are curved, which makes viewing angles interesting. It actually makes it very difficult to scape anything, because you never know what view you're going to get if you move slightly to the left.

 

I've been using tweesers since I started the 5g. I don't know how people reef without them. I did order some with much finer tips for this setup though, and so far, I'm really glad that I did. They help a lot in these tight confines, and I get much finer control for things like gluing frags even outside of the pico.

 

For the stopper, I just drilled two holes instead of one. My original plan was actually to try and make this into an all-in-one tank + skimmer, but contest rules prohibit filtration, so that experiment will have to wait.

 

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