Funny shaped tank for a funny shaped world

[Pinrod Urkish]

As a very few of you may recall I attempted a hitchhikker only tank about four months ago. And every thing was doing fine (except the lettuce nudibranch, which sacrificed it's self in order to prove that my intake WAS to big) any who after four succesful and interesting months, I scratched that whole hitchhikker idea (it was mostly giant aptasia anyways) when a customer brought in this

 

Really the whole hitch hikker idea was just an excuse to have an extra tank to try new ideas and to just have an extra tank.

 

Well my actual livestock is as follows:

2 sexy shrmps (they get very jealous of non-host anemones. When i had aptasis and colony anenomes the sexys would allways sabotauge the colonies/ mojavo)

1 pencil seaurchin

1 I think it's called white a ring seaurchin, I call it lazy bum "Clean you stupid glass you LAZY BUM!"

1 hermit crab

3-4 tiny feeder starfish

5- pepermint snails

 

and recently added

-glove polyps

and

-rock anemones

- shaving brush plant (it was in my 55 but not enough lighting)

 

The tank it self is 1gal with aqua clear30 (a litte over kill on a 1 gal I know but so far no complainers.

The lighting is a DIY project consisting of:

2- coral life 10w pc's

and some serious ghetto rigging

An finally inorder to mantain water quality i preform a 50% water change every sunday (just incase you were wondering)

[shrinky]

Very nice man.

 

I like your lights - I am new at this and would like to do something similar? What are the parts required? They all look like they could be picked up at home depot or whatnot, but what wiring is required? looks awesome.

[Pinrod Urkish]

Yea a fan!

Well after about two hours at HOME DEPOT, I ended up with a 4" plastic utility box, and lamp bases with the switches on the bottom. Truthfuly i wanted toggle switches but i couln't figure out how to make them fit. Any who I used a 1 1/2 circular drill bit to make the fixtures fit in to the box.

notice the holes

 

Auctually I messed up on the angles (I swear my saw is off) so one of the side is wider than the rest, so make sure your hood will fit b4 you glue it.

Also I went with the grate at the top b/c I was concerned with heat esp. from that much light on such a small tank.

[CGNano]

Very cool.

 

I like the "Rock Anemones" as well.

[robmacy]

slick hood. coralife compact PCs rock for picos!

[geekreef_05]

Ive got a question about your Shaving Brush Plant. I see these at my LFS all the time and wonder what the deal is. Do they have any niche or purpose withing the aquarium, or are they just suppose to look cool?

 

Sweet glove polyps.

 

happy reefin'

[Pinrod Urkish]

The shaving brush fulfills the feng shui niche of the tank. As a word of asdive on them, I'd say don'y consider them unless you have at LEAST 5 watts per gallon. Mine was in 2.5wpg and slowly turning white. But since I put in in the pico it peped right up.

[icenine]

Love the anemones... where did you get them?

[Pinrod Urkish]

Where I work. "Pet Village" in TX. The rock I got was the smaller of the two brought in. The other one was like $100 and I swear it had no less than 40 of the anenomes and a sizeable button polyp colony. I would have gotten it but it was way to big, plus my manager called dibs on it first.

[Fishfreak218]

if that Shaving Brush seems to die..leave it...soon after it "dies" it should shoot out babies.....i didnt know this til after i threw mine out

[Ann]

Aww, that takes me back a bit, I once had a teeny tiny hitchhiker urchin like that. Now quite a few years later I have a huge rock bulldozing, coralline munching urchin like that. It's a rock boring Echinometra sp.

 

I think that the anemones are actually a type of Anemonia sp., there's a pic of the exact same ones in 'Reef Invertebrates - A Quick Reference Guide', well, they certainly look very similar. Very nice looking anemones really, I wonder if they reproduce as fast as their cousins?

 

Cool looking tank btw.

 

Best regards

 

Ann

[Ryan_H]

ive got one of these as a pico too! they are awesome! i've got a red sea nano filter, a 25 W thermal submersable heater and a 10W 50/50 mini compact. i crammed 4 lbs of live rock and about 2.5 lbs of aragonite into this little thing. have you had to deal with trying to get that abnoxious brown algae of the acrylic yet? its a real pain!

[Pinrod Urkish]

OH THANK GOD! Some one else is suffering with that stuff too? I saw a planaria on the glass when I first started the tank, and so I just figured they were making a some sort of SCIFI grade movie that was "Impervious to all forms of weaponry, and starring Lou Diamond Phillips in KILLER BROWN STUFF FROM THE SEA".

But I guess it makes sense that it's evil algae. I can barely scratch the stuff, and my lazy bum sea urchins won't touch it. I even tried my magfloat and that just made a big mess.

At this point I’m just going to call it a naturally stain glass window, Oh look a picture of Jesus and/or Mary. Too bad it's not grilled cheese then I could really make some money.

Oh my back up plan with the sea urchins is if they get destructive then my dragon wrasse gets a new play toy. I can see it now BAM BAM BAM (dragon wrasse Oni bashes urchin against rock and proceeds to eat the juicy insides. end of story)

 

On the shaving brush I had two and the one died . I thought i was going crazy when I saw it drop green stems. Too bad my herd of herbivores ate them. But good to know next time

[NanoGal13]

lol, im making a 2g hex, should come out cool, congrads on the 1g

[Ryan_H]

my brown algae finaly started disapearing when i added a pouch of purigen and a puch of sea gel (phoszorb/matrix carbon blend). all my corals seem happier too.