A journey in the art of steeping cash in saltwater.

Well noone can be out of this hobby for too long without wanting to watch a mantis destroy a snail or a clownfish bob in an anemone and I am no different. So for the summer while I am taking a chemistry class, I will be building and cycling and then stocking two tanks. I like JBJ's style and quality of product so I will be going with two JBJ tanks, one is the 28 gallon nano, whcih will either have LED lighting or halide lighting. Personally I prefer the LED. The overall lifetime costs of LED's is significantly lower, electricity, maintenance and quality wise than halides, as well as their par output and the quality of the light is far better than halides. This is because HQI lighting systems produce a HUGE spectrum of light. Ranging from large amounts of infrared, which ends up as enormous amounts of heat in our aquariums to ultraviolet, which without shielding causes damage to fish, invertebrates and to the bacterial populations in our tanks. So hopefully I will have the money for the LED system. The other tank is a small pico, the JBJ picotope to be exact. This tank will sit on my desk and will have some unique feature I will explain in detail. All water for these tanks will be store bought, I am far too lazy to mix seawater and on top of that I am horribly un-lucky, during my previous tanks days I opened two successive bad batch buckets of salt mix from TWO different companies!


First, the larger tank:

This tank will be a mixed reef, a I don't favor the look of jam packed SPS reefs with a rainbow of colors, it simply isn't natural.
The main focal point of this tank will be a RBTA and, you guessed it, a pair of clowns.

The specs:

-Dry Stuff

1.The aforementioned nanocube.
2.30-35 lbs LR
3.Enough Sand for a 1.5-3 inch sand bed
4.A heater-Herp
5.Thermometer-Derp

-The Livestock

1.RBTA
2.Mated pair of wild clowns, preferably A. percula. Ideally this is the case, however, if I cannot find the desired pair I will go with a wild perc and tank bred one.
3.Generic Coral - taking ideas
4.Generic Small fish - taking ideas
5.Generic Clean up crew - not taking ideas
6.Clam

The Pico:
This pico will be a slight experiment for me in home building a stand as well as a gravity and pressure fed auto top off.
It will be a mixed reef with small polyps such as zoos and palys as well as some SPS.
Its other inhabitant will be a Small G.Smithii or N. Wennerae mantis.
This pico will sit on my desk.
Lastly its canopy/housing will be built of legos. This is the major challenge of this project, which is how to conform legos into a properly fitting suitable canopy.

First about the tank:

-The Dry

1.JBJ 3gal picotope
2.The filter that comes with the pico
3.Small hidden closed loop -hopefully
4.Led Light strip: LINK
5.Lots of Legos
6.Heater
7.Custom made eggcrate Heater guard. Many a mantis has fallen to destroying its heater.
8.Enough sand to make a .5 to 1 inch sand bed
9. 2 to 3 lbs of live rock, small pieces and some rubble
10.Thermometer

-The Wet

1. G. Smithii or N.Wennerae Mantis
2. Small nassarius snails for food
3. 2 Large nassarius for sand bed cleaning
4. 4 Astreas for glass cleaning
5. Coral-Taking suggestions

The lego goal:

First off, the whole lego idea is simply based on nostalgia, I was one of those kids with his own lego town, I had at least a chestfull of legos, tons of them. So I thought today I would build a canopy/enclosure for a tank with them. The enclosure will close the tank in on 1 side. The back will be closed in and will be fairly deep and hollow. The top of the enclosure will have a three layer lid to be explained later, that sits on hinges. The top will be high enough to accommodate any future upgrades to the system. Preferably, behind the tank itself will be a false lego wall that will show clean lines when viewed through the tank, but will block most of the filter from view and will block the closed loop pump from view, as well as blocking power strips/chords. This false wall will have 2 holes for the closed loop return and pull. The lid of the canopy is also extremely important. it will use a three layer structure for strength, as it is only legos, and will also hold the led strip. This means that the strip will be screwed into this lid and will also have to be retrievable and the canopy must have a gap in its structure for the light to sit inside and not protrude excessively. Furthermore, this enclsure holds one more crucial purpose! This purpose is to hold the gravity fed auto top off above the level of the tank and to keep the top off container accessible and in proper position to not flood the tank.

Well here are the plans, the pico arrives in a few days, pics will be posted!