=Jwin's 9 GALLON MANTIS CUBE - Nano Wave 9

what type of lighting do they come with ? they dont have halides right? can u upgrade it to halide lighting?

i really want one, i was looking to do a smaller tank

 

It comes with 2x24watt PC lighting. It'd be fairly easy to take the top off with the old lights and hang or set a pendant MH light over it though. I really like the fuge setup in the back, as well as the small biomedia tower.

I drained the FW test today. Didn't bother taking a pic cause we all know what water looks like. Everything looks good! Now I just need some rock and sand and a fishy to get this thing up and cycling. It's actually got some decent amount of flow to it...it's a little less than 30 times turn over. For a stock little thingy that's alright in my book. Along with the fact that Mantis don't need alot of flow.

 

how loud is this thing? Make any noticeable noise? Thinking about buying one to put on my desk at work, but don't want to annoy my cube-neighbors.

 

Wooo! Congrats on the tank! I can't wait to see it when you get it up and running. I am going to be so jealous if you get a G. Smithii lol.

 

With only the water pump on this thing is super quiet. You can barely hear anything going. With the skimmer running, I would rate the sound as between a whisper and someone humming quietly to themselves. That's the best I can compare it to haha. It's a very dull, quiet, background noise so I don't think it will bother anyone at all.

I can't wait to get this thing cycling. My mom's kinda being a slowpoke however. Figures The speed of youth...

 

Well I got her filled up with sand, water, and rock. Aaaand as of fifteen minutes ago, a fishy! A little 5 dollar damsel. The LFS (a dumb one) had him labeled as an Orange Backed Gregory Damsel, but a website had it labeled as a Speckled Damsel, but then another website had a speckled damsel labeled as something different, so I don't know what the heck he is. All I know is he was five dollars, he eats like a pig, and he might not live once I get the mantis anyways

Either way he's a cute little bugger.

And, my mom's making me pay for the sand, rock, fish, etc. Cause she's only buying the tank, stand, and shrimp So it's been interesting...especially because I only have 3.3 pounds of LR in the thing because that's all I could afford for now. I'll probably just use base rock to add maybe 2 more pounds.

Pics are coming later tonight hopefully.

 

First wave of updated pics.


Sand

More sand (ignore the water jug. was for Q tank top off, but Q tank isn't up and running at the moment)

Rocks. all 3.3 pounds of it.

Agua! I try to pour water over the rocks so the sand doesn't get kicked up...but aiming the big 5 gallon water jug is kind of sketchy. Therefore, I missed some. Meaning kicked up sand. Lo siento.

 

Here are the pictures I took as of five minutes ago.




I bought that cute little magfloat today. Baby magfloat.




Here's what the turbulence at the surface looks like to give you a little idea of the flow. Not bad. But not good. A koralia nano would sure ramp it up though, if you want this as a coral tank or something.


And here's Gregory the unidentified damsel. Anyone know what type of damsel this is?

 

Looks good! But I do have one question? Is it acrylic or glass? I know most of the nano's are acrylic. Be careful with that magfloat, it looked white (the glass version). The acrylic versions are a blue/green. If its a glass version and you use it much on acrylic it will scratch the bejesus outta the tank.
And I have no idea on the damsel. Looks a lot like a blue damsel with the spot and everything, just not blue!

 

The tank is definately glass. Man that would be really bad to have expensive acrylic look as cloudy as my water looked! Yikes!

And Stomatopod.com got in another shipment today, and they said they had some very nice smithiis in the shipment. Apparently it's luck of the draw on what they get in, because alot of the guys that gather up the sea creatures don't care about hunting for mantis. They just grab them if they see them.

But they get in an order every week, so i'm hopeful. If I can grab one of the smithii from this order though, that would be fantastic. ;D

With LFS water and precured rock, cycling shouldn't take long either. It took only a week with our 46 using the same stuff. So I'm optimistic. And that damsel is a stinkin PIG.