twofinhogie
Member
Recently I've been sorta bored with how my 14 biocube's setup and decided it was time for a new tank. I set my sights on a 3 gallon picotope because if anything it will at least be cheaper to setup than my 14. WRONG! Anyways I got the boss mans permission to set this sucker up at work so I immediately ordered one off of Foster and Smith aquatics. In one week it came in. I was thrilled! I couldn't wait to set it up so the next day I bought some live sand and RO water from the LFS. On Tuesday I came in early to set it up.
It looked Awesome! Fit perfectly on my desk and everything. After wiping up all the mess I let it run to begin filtering the water. I noticed I missed a spot of water on my desk so I wiped it up. A minute later I noticed some water on the backside of the tank where I had just wiped and thought, "what the heck, I just cleaned that up?" Well it hit me shortly after that, I think I got a leak.
Sure enough I watched drip after drip roll down the corner of my brand spanking new tank.
Bummed out, I drained the tank and brought it home. There I discovered that the glass pane on the back of the tank did not line up with the rest of the glass. What they had done was fill the gap with silicone hoping it would hold. It had not. I figured it would be an easy DIY so I got a razor and separated the 2 pieces. While aligning the pane to the back of the tank the pane slipped out of my hand and came crashing down into the tank busting into exactly 2.37 million pieces. That tank was toast! Slightly upset yet still determined to setup a new tank I scoured the LFS till I found another picotope. This time I tested the tank out prior to setup. I now had 2 over the side filters to provide twice the flow and a tank that held water.
Next was the live rock. I got about 5 pounds and set her up in the tank.
I let the tank sit and work it's magic for the next 2-3 weeks. The guys in the office were going crazy wanting to put stuff in my tank. I came back after some inspections to find a 6 inch shrimp laying in the bottom that they had bought from a local bait shop. They named him Mr. Scampi. I caught him out of the tank and released him into his natural environment. After the 2-3 weeks I believed my tank had cycled so I bought a small cleanup crew for my small tank. In one day the algae was gone. After they made my tank spotless I decided it was time to throw some spare frags into it. After about a week we added a "canary" yellow tailed damsel.
Once I saw my corals were opening up and looking good, it was on. My next 3 corals were a frag of blue snowflakes, a sweet yuma, and a 2 headed frag of frogspawn.
Another week passed and it was time.............FOR MORE CORALS!!!!!!
(That toadstool's got quite the gangster lean)
So I thought I'd give the corals a rest and get some more livestock. I bought myself a nice little skunk shrimp. Now the damsel didn't take kindly to me adding another reef inhabitant into his domain, but because the shrimp cost more than him, I guess he didn't realize the shrimp had priority. Oh well. I made a makeshift fish trap within the office and caught him out of my tank and gave him back to the LFS fatter and healthier than when I got him. The sweet yuma I bought just 2 weeks ago was already shrinking at an exponential rat.
That brings us to this week. Feeling that one of my rocks was feeling a little bare I decided to get some ric's to cover it up. I also felt like my skunk shrimp could use a companion so one of the guys in the office bought a little true perc to keep him company.
More to come......
It looked Awesome! Fit perfectly on my desk and everything. After wiping up all the mess I let it run to begin filtering the water. I noticed I missed a spot of water on my desk so I wiped it up. A minute later I noticed some water on the backside of the tank where I had just wiped and thought, "what the heck, I just cleaned that up?" Well it hit me shortly after that, I think I got a leak.
Sure enough I watched drip after drip roll down the corner of my brand spanking new tank.
Bummed out, I drained the tank and brought it home. There I discovered that the glass pane on the back of the tank did not line up with the rest of the glass. What they had done was fill the gap with silicone hoping it would hold. It had not. I figured it would be an easy DIY so I got a razor and separated the 2 pieces. While aligning the pane to the back of the tank the pane slipped out of my hand and came crashing down into the tank busting into exactly 2.37 million pieces. That tank was toast! Slightly upset yet still determined to setup a new tank I scoured the LFS till I found another picotope. This time I tested the tank out prior to setup. I now had 2 over the side filters to provide twice the flow and a tank that held water.
Next was the live rock. I got about 5 pounds and set her up in the tank.
I let the tank sit and work it's magic for the next 2-3 weeks. The guys in the office were going crazy wanting to put stuff in my tank. I came back after some inspections to find a 6 inch shrimp laying in the bottom that they had bought from a local bait shop. They named him Mr. Scampi. I caught him out of the tank and released him into his natural environment. After the 2-3 weeks I believed my tank had cycled so I bought a small cleanup crew for my small tank. In one day the algae was gone. After they made my tank spotless I decided it was time to throw some spare frags into it. After about a week we added a "canary" yellow tailed damsel.
Once I saw my corals were opening up and looking good, it was on. My next 3 corals were a frag of blue snowflakes, a sweet yuma, and a 2 headed frag of frogspawn.
Another week passed and it was time.............FOR MORE CORALS!!!!!!
(That toadstool's got quite the gangster lean)
So I thought I'd give the corals a rest and get some more livestock. I bought myself a nice little skunk shrimp. Now the damsel didn't take kindly to me adding another reef inhabitant into his domain, but because the shrimp cost more than him, I guess he didn't realize the shrimp had priority. Oh well. I made a makeshift fish trap within the office and caught him out of my tank and gave him back to the LFS fatter and healthier than when I got him. The sweet yuma I bought just 2 weeks ago was already shrinking at an exponential rat.
That brings us to this week. Feeling that one of my rocks was feeling a little bare I decided to get some ric's to cover it up. I also felt like my skunk shrimp could use a companion so one of the guys in the office bought a little true perc to keep him company.
More to come......
