27 litres of poor financial decisions.

[Cheese-Lover]

Tank: - Mr Aqua 27 litre cube tank

Equipment:
A random bedside table
Eshopps Nano Overflow
Block of stone
Fancy black foam
Sump tank made with better glass than the display tank...
Marine Pure... everything...
Classica 2mm argonite sand  --- Replaced by black, because it just looked dirty.
A very budget return pump --- Replaced by a small sumo return pump.

Lots of 3d printed stuff.

 

Current Livestock:

10x Poecilia wingei, 8 female and 2 male

3x Turbo snails
1x Nerite snail
 

Planned Livestock:
1x Black sun coral
1x Palaemon serenus/serrifer, or other small shrimp that will not eat my fish... Willing to take recommendations.
1x Nassarius Snail
N+1 x Frags that catch my eye
Fancy macro algae.  Pick a red species, I probably want it for either the display or the refugium.

Now, people are only interested in pictures.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Cheese-Lover
updated the list of things in the tank

[zoafan627]

Are endlers able to deal with the current of a reef tank?

[Cheese-Lover]

7 minutes ago, zoafan627 said:

Are endlers able to deal with the current of a reef tank?

The adults certainly are able to. Fry, not so much without a couple of areas where they can get out of the main flow if they need to.
Endlers are much more capable swimmers than fancy guppies.

[Thetravelguy]

Ohh interesting. I had no idea you could keep endlers in saltwater, but that’s legit! Under the dark blues/purples I bet they are iridescen.  

[A.m.P]

Very, very cool had considered endlers (or saltwater kilifish) myself, can't wait to see them in your tank.

[TatorTaco]

I like everything about this setup. Using Marine Pure for your aquascape is an interesting idea. 

 

Using endlers for saltwater livestock stock is also interesting and I’m sure their colors will look terrific under heavy blues. 

 

Im tagging along for this ride. 

[Cheese-Lover]

Well. Hey. I am not dead.

Half of Australia is on fire currently, so, uh, that's a thing.

This tank sorta got put on the back burner when this fellow turned up...

 

His is VERY demanding of my time...

 

 

He is probably going to end up being featured in this thread a lot.

Anyway, the tank is up and running, cycled and has some livestock, but a FTS can wait. We had some issues with fish getting into the overflow so that required some improvised solutions...

 

 

 

And well, the livestock have a tendency to jump, so a lid was in order...

 

Rough sketches...

 

 

So the prototype ones work, but I don't want to cut glass for the back part of the tank, that's going to be hard!
 

 

Ah, they lock together!
Its all going to get re-printed in BLACK once I've got more filement in. This was all just a first prototype run. A couple parts are warped because I haven't bothered to work out the heated bed on my printer... and got it printing at it's fastest settings for the majority of the time.

Cool, so this was the temporary lid...

 

It didn't work overly well for light.


So since nothing can jump, I had to sort some more filtration. Because my filtration was... Mhmm...

 

 

So I printed a thing to trap bubbles and hold marine pure cubes... The water comes through the overflow, into the boxy-chambery-thing and flows through the bottom, up through the three stages of marine pure media baskets that can slide in and out... Ignore the second pump in there, that was the original return pump I was using but swapped out to the sumo pump.

I decided that I'd like to try one of those fancy random flow pump thingos... So I printed one.

 

I can tell you that it doesn't really make random flow. It makes a weird flow pattern, but it's certainly not random.

We had other things happen, like...

This buy being so cute that I had to stop what I was doing and give him attention...

Uh, back to the tank.

I have a temporary light fitting that my lovely girlfriend told me was too ugly to be in the lounge room and it required some black to make it okay... So...

All of the not-black plastic was made lamp black.

 

 

What else did I take pictures of... OH!

 

The livestock was converted to salt water!

 

I had the ghetto pump dripping salt water into their bucket for a week to bring them up to the correct salinity. up until .015 went by in a day and a half the rest was a lot slower... I now know this can be done faster, because I had to repeat the process (Remember how I mentioned jumpers and an overflow guard? Yeah... That was really sad to be honest.) and the second batch were salt water ready in 3 days.

The little bastards are really difficult to photo.

 

 

 

As you can see, I took photos when everything was still dirty because I was so excited for the fish to go into the tank.


I am not taking a full tank shot at the moment, because there is a big ziptie structure in the middle of the tank for the fist to hide in, while I wait for both my proper lighting and big centerpiece of macro algae to turn up... Once they do, I'll be sure to clean up the glass, take some photos and share them.

Any questions, I'll possibly answer... or I might disappear for months at a time.


Also, dogs are expensive. I thought fish tanks were bad...

[A.m.P]

Dogs are more expensive than tanks, depending on how you choose to keep them lol, excited to see the endlers but sorry to hear about the jumpers...

Love all the glasswork and printing, looks sharp.

[billygoat]

I love it! Excellent job with all the DIY work. I swear 3D printing is going to be the future of this hobby.

 

It looks like your setup is really starting to come together despite all the setbacks. Your dog is super cute too. 😊

[Cheese-Lover]

So, uh, life REALLY got in the way of this.

 

Not long after starting this thread a bunch of life things happened and the tank was pulled down and put into storage.

 

After a bunch of life things and some major flood events I was inspired to put water inside my bedroom.

 

So, uh, FTS:

 

Tank has been running since early last month... using precycled marinepure cubes in the sump and a couple of weeks of dosing stability and bact-m daily.

 

So the tank had 2 male endlers and 5 female endlers... but one male disappeared and the other died. So i've got 5 pregnant female endlers.

 

They are so hard to photograph.

 

I've also got... i'm not sure how many... pandaka lidwilli in the tank cruising around, wiping out my pod population.

There are two pandakas in that photo. And they are even harder to get photos of than the endlers.

There are a bunch of little juvenile pandakas in the tank that I though for sure were going to get eaten, but are actually starting to get to a reasonable size, so I might have to rehome a bunch soon-ish.

 

I've also got 3-4 little... feeder shrimp? Glass shrimp? Some kind of prawn?

 

 

So yeah, i'm back to having a tank with inhabitants that I don't see anybody else keeping.

I honestly am surprised that nobody keeps the little pandakas in the pico/nano community.

 

[Toomanymatts]

Clicked because of the title.  Post did not disappoint.  

[fenderchamp]

2 years and all that, and there is, there is uh.... 

 

is that a guppy staring at me? 

 

/me is confused

 

 

https://youtu.be/_zC-QYFK7Ro

 

 

[Cheese-Lover]

1 hour ago, fenderchamp said:

is that a guppy staring at me? 

I mean, endlers and guppys have been interbreed so many times... that there is more than likely a decent amount of guppy genetics in the endler...

 

So yes, I guess that is a guppy staring at you.

[M. Tournesol]

Do you plan to add any easy Softy like Xenia, Toastool or a photosynthetic gorgonia. 

[Cheese-Lover]

3 hours ago, M. Tournesol said:

Do you plan to add any easy Softy like Xenia, Toastool or a photosynthetic gorgonia. 

I wanted to go mostly macros, but it seems to be really difficult to find any for sale in australia.

 

I've got Ulva lactuca coming next week, but it's all i've been able to find for sale.

 

LFS hasn't been able to source anything either.

 

...

 

I'm interested in getting a black sun cora and a couple of NPS, but don't know if I want to run the risk of all the endler fry ending up as food...

Edit: after a quick google search, I couldn't see any online seller in australia selling gorgonia's. I don't think they are super common over here.

[Cheese-Lover]

So I went to a not so local fish store today and found a photosynthetic  gorgonia.

And now it's in the tank.

 

I am kind of concerned about the asterea stars in the tank...

Hopefully they'll just keep munching on the algae like they have been.

 

 

I also found someone willing to part with Caulerpa! But they were only willing to part with a tiny amount...

It should grow quite well in the sandbed. I'd rather keep it off the rockwork.

 

I should have a handfull of Ulva turning up in the next few days, so i'll have to attach that to the rockwork somehow...

 

 

In other news, I started a phyto culture and a copepod culture. So, hopefully i'll be able to start dosing phyto and pods soon.

 

I'm also building a rack to have 10x 2.2l glass jars with individual lights and shared air. I might do 3-4 with phyto and the rest with a couple of different strains of copepods.  The one I desperately want to culture is Calamoecia Salina. They are bright red and native to Australia only!

 

 

Please excuse the mobile phone photos, I haven't pulled my camera out of storage since all the flooding at the end of February... i'm lazy... (it's crazy, we still can't get Natural Salt Water yet. I'm really over mixing up salt every couple of days...)

[Cheese-Lover]

Double post, but, uh, I just realised there was a baby Björn posted... but no updated photo.

He's a big puppy now. And sooks really bad if you don't bring him out to work on the car...

 

 

And i guess i forgot to take a picture of the snail that keeps 1/20th of the rock clean...

No idea what species it is. It came from the same location as the little pandaka's did. (Near the broadwater in Southport, Gold Coast, QLD Australia)

 

Not sure if i posted the shrimp that's in there... so here is another shot i guess.... no idea what species.

 

[Cheese-Lover]

Had my handful of Ulva turn up.

 

I'm not using anywhere near a handful in the tank, so i'm looking for someone with tangs to feed it to...

 

Anyway, dirty FTS:

 

While I was typing this post up, I noticed this little pandaka using the Ulva exactly as i'd hoped they would.