1 gallon pico rebuild

thanks guys
birdfeather yea i figured rics wouldnt need a ton of light since they're soft corals but this one seems to do better up there whats weird is that ive kept another ric under fairly low lighting and it did great and even split a couple times and my friend has a couple under a 24" 2 bulb t5 fixture in a 4 foot tub and they are doing great so maybe they're diffrent species that have diffrent light requirements or something

zc42 the maintanance is very simple on this tank i do a 50 percent water change every other day. i used to think it was a 25 percent water change because the volume of the tank is 1 gallon but after you account for the sand, rock, livestock, and pump it takes only half a gallon to fill it so a quarter gallon water change is half the tank. oh and here is your fts its not very impressive yet but im working on it


and windowlicker you should start a thread on it when you get it going id love to see it

 

hey guys this post isnt aquarium related but i figured some of you might find it interesting so im gonna go ahead and post it. and i had already started the project when i decided to start taking pictures so there will be a few missing. heres the back story to the project i like to start mowing the lawn a little while before dusk so that its not so hot out and by the time im halfway done its completely dark outside so i had to use the factory lights on my lawnmower and theyre not that great and on top of that one was blown so i decided to replace them with the same led panels i used in this pico build since i had a bunch laying around.to start i had a light fixture i made with them for a 75 softy tank and it was to be used in conjunction with a t5 actenic fixture because i only used white led panels heres the fixture i made and used to gut the panels from

the next step was to take the bulbs out of the mower and gut the sockets
heres one with the contacts removed
i then put the bare wire ends from the female connecters for the led through the hole in the socket and soldered the wires to the the original plugs then i took apart the front side to see what i was working with and the reflector is just a thin piece of mylar and the lens is a cheap piece of molded clear plastic its so cheap in fact that it wasnt sealed to the housing and that allowed a good bit of dust inside coated the mylar
then i cut some egg crate to the fit inside the light housing and zip tied the led panels to it then connected them in paralell to each other and then to the female connectors i put through the hole in the socket then i drilled a hole through the housing and used a bolt a couple washers and a wingnut to hold it all in place
here it is on with out the lens on
on with the lens on
and off with the lens on ill test it out tomorrow night and let you guys know how it works in real world application

 

Thanks for the FTS!! It's looking great. ( I wish my tank were close to that good) Quarter gallon water changes...Pretty sweet- you should start timing yourself to see how fast you can do it!!

 

Oh do you plan to keep any Inverts (other than corals)?

 

zc42 ive already got 2 hermits 3 dwarf ceriths 1 turbo 1 nassarius 4 micro stars and 5 or 6 astrina stars but everything in there is so tiny that they hide pretty easily so you dont really see them but if you look back through the thread you can see pics of all of them before i added them as far as things like shrimps or true crabs i doubt it the only thing i would consider would be one of my bumble bee shrimps that i already have in my main tank

and Bogalho89 thank you

 

hey guys sorry i havent posted in a while. its been a hectic couple of weeks. anyway theres not much new with the tank as of late but i did get a YCG 2 weeks ago yesterday.

he loves to perch on my corals

hes perched on most of my other corals too but these were the only two good pictures i ended up getting of it.
my ric is doing better all the time now you can see its little frilly things around the rim puff up nice and big
and another new polyp has popped up on the ring of fire zoas giving it a total of 6 but i dont think you can see it in the pic and if you look closely at the rocks in some of the pics you can see small patchs of coraline starting to form

 

Awesome I love YWG.

 

thats a clown goby not a watchman lol

 

Looking too good, I have to hide this thread from the boss (wife). She's gonna want one in no time.

Did you get the heat issue solved?

 

not completely it only lowered it somewhere between half and 1 degree but all the corals and fish are happy so im not too worried about it although i may try removing the plexiglass for a couple days and see how it effects the tank if at all but the largest contributing factor to the heat is the pump and the small tank size. if there were an smaller pump or maybe an external pump i could use that had a really low flow rate it would probably eliminate the heat issue all together