Campbell's 20cm^3 "ticking time bomb"

[campbell_wat]

Hey all! Over the past weeks I decided to go for a very unconventional tank - a deep sand bed 20cm cube tank with a pistol shrimp.

 

The deep sand bed and small water volume could spell trouble, but we will see how this progresses. I started the tank with live sand and rock, as well as established media from another reef, so it was cycled from week 1. 

 

I added the pistol shrimp yesterday (2 weeks post set up), but do not have any pics.

Other stock includes some random zoas I razored off of my other colonies as well as some mushrooms. 

 

Lighting: Amazon par38 bulb

Flow: Odyssea filter/surface skimmer (this thing ROCKS for nano tanks)

Heater: some cheapo pre-set (my room is ambient 74)

 

Cheers!

[carnationcrab]

how is the tank going?

[campbell_wat]

Update: 

 

I knew this wasn't going to work - and it did not work. Took the tank down a month or so ago.

 

Here is the only pic I took of it because it looked so bad all the time haha

 

 

Kept the thing going for about 4 months until the tank crashed and smelled up the whole room. It was growing soft corals before the complete failure but it was never pretty.

 

Could never get it to stabilize (cyano and dinos ALWAYS) and the constant digging from the shrimp contributed to its fugliness. Bright side is I saved all the livestock and transferred it over to my 20g frag system. 

 

My 6g is looking better than ever, though! Cheers everyone!