Easy DIY .5 gallon pico

[sc8kv123]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to post my latest project to see what you guys thought about it. Its a half gallon pico tank. I found this little tank at walmart for $5 dollars and decided to see what I could do with it.



I threw some stuff in there just to get an idea of what it looked like..pretty boring so I started thinking about I could do to improve its design.

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It needed some lighting so I put in a 3 mode led I had laying around the house. I mounted it into the lid and ran the wires out the back.

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I also wanted to improve my filtration. One of the reasons why I liked this cheap little tank was that it had a baffle that fit in there perfectly already. It just needed a little trimming, drilling for the overflow/return sections, and some silicone. Went in perfectly.

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Next I needed to attach a pump for my return. I had one of these aqua one 40gph adjustable pumps laying around from another project. They run around 8 bucks online. I hooked up an extra directional on it and used some extra hose I had.

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[sc8kv123]

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Now I just needed to hook up my return pump to the baffle. It fit right in and sealed up pretty well.



It fit in pretty well with the led/hood setup. I also taped everything off and gave it a paint job to conceal the filter section.



For the filter I decided to use some panty hose and make my own nano media bags. I made one with GFO, one with carbon, and two with ammonia removers to surround the intakes of the return pump.



First I put down the ammonia removers around the intakes.



Next I repeated the process with the GFO and carbon.

 

[sc8kv123]

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Here is a picture with all the media being shown from the viewing window. The window will help me keep an eye on the water level and condition of the filter media without having to remove it and blow a bunch of junk in my tank.



Here is a top view of the tank./.



And here it is with the blue lighting..



And with the regular day lighting..





Thanks for checking it out guys, let me know what you think!