Updated Photos of 2 Gallon Cube

[ninjafish]

otolith,
It makes a great work tank. Teach you secretary to do topoffs and you will be way ahead. Water changes are the easy part - at the start of every work week I take in a pitcher, a pop bottle full of new salt water, and a short length of tubing. I syphon two liters of water out the tank and into the pitcher, then pour in the new water. The whole thing takes about a minute.
Cheers,

- Chad

 

[Agu]

Hey chad,

I've followed your posts but never commented. That is one amazing tank :thumbsup:

 

[ejls]

yet....

 

[fish head steve]

are those underwater halogen bulbs? where did you get those?

http://www.mainlandmart.com/aquapump.html

I believe item FLO2 are the lights in question but there are others on this site that might be of use to a reefer for various applications. Just need a little imagination as we have seen here

 

[ninjafish]

Agu,
Thanks bro. I remeber talking to you but it must have been in another nano-related thread. It's good to have you here.


ejls,
That's right. I forgot to mention that Ed has already drilled his cannnister filter and will probably be the first one to have this mod up and running. Best of luck!

- Chad

 

[ninjafish]

http://www.mainlandmart.com/aquapump.html

I believe item FLO2 are the lights in question but there are others on this site that might be of use to a reefer for various applications. Just need a little imagination as we have seen here

Yes Steve is right, those are the ones that I have. You don't need the double one if you are concerned about heat. I have found that a single bulb is more than enough to light the inside of a cannister filter. For anyone buying though, I would recommend getting replacement bulbs with your order or tracking down another source. These bulbs do burn out after a while and I had a tough time finding them locally.
Cheers,

- Chad

 

[CamBarr]

any new pics???

 

[ninjafish]

Cambarr,
I haven't taken any new ones yet but I will get on that and take some more when I am at work tomorrow.
Cheers

 

[fella1320]

all i can say is wow i have just spent the best 2 hours of my work day reading your thread and researching/designing how im going to do the same thing. thats how much i love your tank. i had a few questions though first off what size are your bulk heads second how do you keep sand from entering the canister third do you think i could put a heater into a fluval the same way you put the lights in your canister? i would have to cut off the plug near the wall to get the heater in then re attach the plug. sorry not looking to steal your thread but you are obviously the zen master. thanks

 

[ninjafish]

fella,
Thanks bro, I'm glad to see that other people get as muich work done as I do .
The bulkheads on this tank are 1/2". I use a cone-shaped bulkhead screen on the intake bulkhead to keep the substrate from getting sucked into the cannister. And the bulkheads are both above the the level of the substrate.
You could definitely mod your cannister filter to also accomidate the heater but I would suggest that you look into building an in-line heater compartment. This would mean one less hole in you cannister filter which would lead to more peace of mind. Also it will free up room for LR/chaeto. The in-line heater element is made by putting a 50w (or whatever size you need) heater inside a t-shaped length of pvc. Have the heater cord come out of the tee part and seal it with a pvc cap and siliconed hole. Then all you need to do is put hose barbs on the opposing ends and plug it into the middle of one of your filter lines. I hope this makes sense, I wanted to post a link to a thread where this has been done, but the planets have not alligned properly to allow me to use the RC search function. "in-line heater" should bring up the results you need.
I do not need a heater right now but when I go to a larger tank and move the system home I will build an in-line heater to help regulate the temperature at night. I hope this helps. Thanks for the compliment.


Good luck young grasshopper

- Chad

 

[ejls]

Hi,

I've got a 50W Visitherm heater in my eheim cannister (2222) The 25W one fits excatly into the filter diagonally. You could probably fit it vertically too if you chopped holes in the baskets.
HTH
Ed

 

[Lev]

Hello, Chad.
Your Nano is really something very special, and clever.
Please tell me, you have to prune chaeto every 2-3 weeks, is not it messy to open canister and then to assamble it again? I hate doing this, - a lot of water always spills on the floor.
And, what about underwater lights? I presume algae grows very fast on them, blocking the light?
Best Regards,
Lev Mironov
Moscow

 

[perpetual98]

You know, you'd think they'd bump you up to Premium Membership seeing as you've got Thread of the Month.

 

[fella1320]

thanks for the info and once again i love yoru tank!!!!

 

[ninjafish]

Hi,

I've got a 50W Visitherm heater in my eheim cannister (2222) The 25W one fits excatly into the filter diagonally. You could probably fit it vertically too if you chopped holes in the baskets.
HTH
Ed

Ed,
Nice job on the heater mod! I hope that some of these things catch on in our hobby. The cannister that I am using is one of the new ones with the heating element built into the bottom. The problem is, the heater is about 200w and way too big for a nano tank so I do not plug it in. I was corresponding with an Eheim engineer in Germany and was then transerred to deal with a representative in Canada. Along with the lights I also suggested they have a line of internal heater cannisters in the 25-50w range so that they could be used to run nano reefs. The other thing I suggested was that they make the sides of the cannister out of clear acrylic so that you had the option of removing the media baskets and putting a sand bed in the bottom. By adding some decorative algae and sponges and maybe a cleanup crew, you would have an instant refuguim/nano tank that anyone could connect to a system of any size without having to worry about the risk/noise/hassle of overflows. It was starting to look like I might get some sort of recognition for coming up with these ideas but I haven't heard from them for a while so I guess not...
Still, it would be pretty neat to one day see cannister filters equiped like this from the factory.

- Chad

 

[ninjafish]

Hello, Chad.
Your Nano is really something very special, and clever.
Please tell me, you have to prune chaeto every 2-3 weeks, is not it messy to open canister and then to assamble it again? I hate doing this, - a lot of water always spills on the floor.
And, what about underwater lights? I presume algae grows very fast on them, blocking the light?
Best Regards,
Lev Mironov
Moscow

Lev,
Thank you. It is really neat that we are able to share ideas from all over the world!
The only real reason that I prune the chaeto is to force it to grow back and take up more excess nutrients. The chaeto itself is partly translucent so even if it does pack the inside of the cannister, the 5watt bulb shines through it all and lights it up like some glowing green ball. You would have to have more chaeto than you could fit in a cannister filter to choke out the light. For example, in my 20gal sump, the very edges of the chaeto mat were completely dark; even that, however, didn't seem to bother it, probably because the whole mass is connected and as long as the heart of it was being fed, the rest was as well.

- Chad

 

[ejls]

Those mods would be really cool! Might take a bit of the fun out of it though

I was thinking about inserting a clear sheet in one of the sides myself so I could use external lights. Unfortunately when I actually got the eheim I found out that it's a one piece construction jobbie so I had to reconsider.

Oh yeah, just to correct my above post It's a 25 not a 50 in mine. I figure it should be enough with the 10W lights too.

 

[ninjafish]

You know, you'd think they'd bump you up to Premium Membership seeing as you've got Thread of the Month.

Haha. Actually I expected them to bump me up to premium status just so that I would use the included spell checker and fix my horrendus spelling

- Chad

 

[ninjafish]

thanks for the info and once again i love yoru tank!!!!

It's my pleasure. We're all in this together.

- Chad

 

[Mettle]

Ninjafish:

This has to be one of the most amazing and innovative things I have ever seen. Your wife is a patient woman though, allowing you to drop so much cash on such a little box of water. But then again, if I knew my loved one was getting this much out of their hobby I wouldn't say a word.

I actually joined these forums after getting a link to this thread from someone in another forum. And after spending two hours sitting here reading through the thread (instead of writing the essay I have due tomorrow!) I knew I had to leave a comment. Thus I joined.

I was recently thinking about starting up a nano of some type. I've never done anything salt water before, only fresh. I was going to use my 5gal eclipse hex to do it. But now you've completely inspired me to do it right - and do it custom. I love the 'no strings attached' look you have going on and I want to do something similar to this. You've given me a ton of ideas! I'm not sure if I want to go the cannister route such as you've done or build a huge sump/fuge underneath. Regardless, it's going to be built in to its own cabinet of sorts so it all looks nice and good.

I was thinking, for myself, of going with a bit of a different sized tank with custom dimensions. Something like 24Lx10Wx10H which is about 10 gallons in size. The only problem I could foresee here is getting the right amount of current to all parts of the tank. This could be worked on though. I also wonder if the FLuval404 I have sitting in my basement would work in terms of a customizing to achieve something like you have with your Eheim. Or if I should simply use the 40 gallon tank I also have sitting in the basement as a sump/fuge. Imagine that - 40 gallons under a 10 gallon. That would be fantastic!

Anyway. You've caused me to dream and dream big. Way back when I wasn't a fan, at all, of salt water. Then I slowly became enamoured. And I was going to try out my 5gal hex. But now this thread and your little 2gal cube have completely won me over. It's just fantastic - you've done a great job. I look forward to seeing more pics and videos. Ike is fantastic!

Looking forward to seeing more,

Stephan.