AlanM

Salt water, fiji pink sand, and Caribsea Fragzone rocks. The tank is so small that I just glued some of their frag holder rocks together with superglue gel into a cave pile. I think it looks pretty good for what it is. I'm not sold on this rock yet, though. I'll visit some LFS and see if I can pick through their cycled rock to find a good piece that I can carve up into a nice shape. One good rock to hold zoas and ricordia maybe. It's cloudy at the moment from sand and new saltwater. It'll clear up eventually. Now the wait begins, heh.

Found it: This one has two pipes going up. It's possible that just putting a media bag on the end would quiet it too. One other possibility is that your barb fittings to flexible hose are causing turbulence which makes the bubbles noisier by making the flow less laminar. It looks like they're moving around in there quite a bit. could you use spaflex and PVC external couplers instead? https://www.lowes.com/pd/EZ-FLO-1-in-Inner-Diameter-x-1-ft-PVC-Spa-Flex-Hose/1000365071

it may quiet once you get some slime in it, but it may be just the air in the lines causing a lot of turbulence and bubbles at the bottom. If you plug the hole partially with a finger or some tape does it move faster? Eventually as it gets small enough it will turn into a siphon and then will flush the box, so maybe if you made the hole big enough to put a small valve in it to make it tunable? Rob Gunnett (zygote2k) advocated using a "Drain box" at the bottom of a Durso drain to avoid the noise and salt spray caused by having a drain full of air bubbles. It's essentially an acrylic box with three sides and a top, but no bottom. The top has a hole drilled to the outer diameter of your drain line so it pressure fits in. The fourth side of the box just goes loosely against the sump wall. The idea is that the bubbles pop in that drain box and the noise and spray is held in, but the water can go freely out the bottom. It isn't air tight, so the bubbles don't build up in it. I'll try to find a picture of it. I had one on a tank in an elementary school and it made a huge difference.

It's wet! I just have RO water in it for now. It's so small. It's 9"W x 6.5"D x 9"H. It's small enough that if I go on vacation I can just bring it with me in the car. 8) I put the Sicce Syncra Nano in there as a return pump and put an Innovative Marine Spin Stream on the exit nozzle. It slowly turns and makes a full rotation in about 30 seconds. The pump says it puts out 110gph, and it's about the minimum that would make the spin stream work. I had to move the spin stream around to make sure I really got all the bubbles out before it would go. It has a 10W Sicce Jolly heater, and an Inkbird temperature controller. The light is a Kessil A80. I just have it plugged in right now, but will install a Kessil wired light controller to run it. It kind of floods the area with light, so I may look around to see if anyone is 3D printing shrouds for it to try to keep the shadows in.

Yes, by hand. It has a glass top that fits over the entire top of the tank with a small gap along the sides and back so I don't expect too much evaporation. Plastic clips on the side hold it up inside the rimless tank. It's a cruddy picture, but you can see it here:

Tank 2 arrive intact! This one wasn't packed in any external box, just a shipping label slapped on the aquarium box. I think that's probably better because UPS knew what it was and that they couldn't toss it around. Lights and everything else are incoming from saltwateraquarium.com. I ended up ordering a Kessil A80.

This tank, sump, stand, lights, everything are such a pleasure to watch. It's so satisfying to see someone doing it right and not cutting any corners. The rock structure looks great. Lots of negative space for corals to fill.

Here's what comes with it for filtration/plumbing. It also comes with a glass lid and a light that would work for just fish, but not for corals. The filtration is a sponge, some large grain carbon under that mesh pictured, and some sintered glass beads bacteria media, common in freshwater filters. It's not a bad setup. There are slots in the first chamber for the beads and carbon to slide into. The sponge goes in the second slot, the return goes in the third. I'll probably just put some floss and thermometer in the first slot and a heater in the second.

It comes with a 40gph tiny pump and some tubing and a nozzle, so fully plumbed.

Yep. It happens. They're sending another one. UPS again. This one goes in the trash. If the second one comes broken I'll just ask for a refund and go get one from the store locally. I'm surprised at how thick the glass is on this little tank.

Just arrived. Broken into many pieces. Box is dented on the corner. UPS. Oh well. They're sending a replacement.

Haha, no I got rid of all of the RA gear. I'd be tempted to do that. I thought about how I'd like to use the new Apex too, but somehow putting an $800 controller on 4 gallons of water seems like overkill, even for me.

OK. That's the one I was looking at.

Thanks! That's bigger than the Fluval Spec III I had as a frag tank.

No tank now. I got rid of everything and was into brewing for a while, but sliding back into fish maybe. A pico like this isn't the ideal way to get back in, honestly, because the margin for error is small, and it will be easy to get discouraged if it fills up with cyano, heh, but the risk is small as well if I keep it simple.

I'm glad someone else here has one. I'm waiting to buy a return replacement until I get it here and can do detailed measurements. I can't find good measurements of the filter sections online anywhere. I have one of these in the cart waiting for those measurements: https://www.saltwateraquarium.com/syncra-nano-pump-110-gph-sicce/

Thanks, still in Gaithersburg, yep. Once I'm ready for rock/sand I'll send you a PM. I'm getting the tank today and then have a small cart of stuff to get: heater, heater controller, return pump upgrade, lights, salt, etc. I'll probably go a bit powerful on the lights for a 4g in anticipation of the inevitable. Deciding on a chinese PAR38 on the cheap end vs a Kessil A80 or an AI Prime HD.

I haven't had a tank in a couple of years, but I'm getting back in small. I have one of the Petco 3.7g AIO cubes coming that I'll be setting up with some coral and an invert or two. I know this is how it starts, heh. it's a small investment, but I'm intrigued by these very cheap little tanks with large filtration sections relative to the tank size. Ideally I'll be looking to buy some small established rocks and sand from someone's tank. This tank is so small you probably won't even notice they're gone. 8)

It is hard to tell from the pic, but it looks like the aiptasia has a single bubble-tip tentacle? That's pretty amazing if so. Never seen that before.

The lowest tank is always going to be the sump. No matter if it's the display or holds the equipment. That's where the water will go when the power is off. Having said that, you could set up drains on the upper tank so that when the power goes out it only drains a little bit of water into the display as long as you leave enough headroom in the display tank to accommodate the extra water. Then you'd have your return pump in the display tank or something I guess? You could also put another tank below the display to hold overflow. Then it would be the sump, could hold the extra water, and the upper tank would basically be a refugium. That's the most common config of people who put a tank above their display.

I moved this topic from another post so it would get more visibility.

is it possible that you have a flush valve on your RO membrane that is set in the wrong position? If it's wrong, then it isn't allowing the flow restrictor to operate and is rinsing water past the waste side of the membrane without letting pressure build up and make good water. Normal ratios of waste to RO are around 4:1 or 5:1. Much more than that and your membrane isn't working. Or maybe the tubing just isn't set up right on the flow restrictor. I'm surprised that the tap water where you are is only 25. Mine, in Gaithersburg, was 150 or so without RO/DI.

I agree. It does look like dinos. It's too brown for maroon cyano and looks exactly like when I had them. What worked for me was manual removal plus UV plus running the tank dirtier plus dino-x. So, feeding extra and skimming less and chemical. I did turn down the lights a bit while doing it so I didn't grow lots of algae and because they expanded in the light a lot. A total blackout didn't do it for me.

I don't know what that test kit is, but if your alkalinity is really 15 dkh, that is way too high. Alk of around 8dkh is good. Calcium of around 400ppm is good. Magnesium of around 1300ppm is good. Salinity of around 35ppt (SG of 1.026) is good. Nitrates below around 10ppm are good. Phosphate should be near the lower detection limit on whatever test kit you have. Keep everything around there over long term, and you'll do fine. Is your salinity high too? What do you run at? What are you testing for and how old is the tank? It looked like you were still kind of working out issues with adding rock and water topoff well into October, so the tank seems pretty young and maybe you're having issues with stability of water chemistry. Corals can grow in a range of parameter levels, but they don't like changing conditions. They need stability. Until you get your system settled down it will be hard to have stable water parameters and it will be a challenge to keep coral alive.

How are your water parameters? Calcium, alkalinity, nitrate, phosphate? Are other corals doing ok?