Video of the rarest aquariums you've seen lately eh? micro palmtop and globe environ

[brandon429]

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thanks for stopping in guys

guess I wasn't very specific I meant no water pumps on the vase bowl...it still needs an air pump. the heater is the common tetra preset ones, 78 is perfect. since the lid sits on the inner diameter of the neck of the vase, all the splatter is contained in the lid and dripped back down in the tank. This makes enough current for everything, and it's possible to move frags that make sweeper tentacles such as frogspawn and galaxea into the middle water column where the flow is always the same--a circle from back over the top down the front. all the sweepers flow in a controllable line, most of the aquascaping in these is dynamic and controlled by the needs of coral spacing. corals that can touch take up most of the plantable real estate

 

[sil3ncio]

what kind of air pump is that? i'm still a little confused..... can you tell i'm trying your experiment!

 

[sil3ncio]

and also what light fixture are you using?

 

[brandon429]

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Glad you are trying it man. it's not like riding a unicycle or anything I promise! meaning it doesn't sway on the edge of crashing like you'd expect a gallon reef to do. The only two things that'll kill it is ambient room temperatures in the 80's, meaning keep your room cool, and evaporation but if you get the proper lid that rests on the inside, and matches the diameter of the inside of the vase neck, you will only need to topoff every three days. you'll start a monday at .023, then wed night or so it'll be .025 then you can top it a bit. for a long weekend, change it gently to .022 and it'll go nearly 5 days till .025, the corals adapt to this no problem as i've been doing this particular vase for dang near 4 years now.

its ran with a ceramic airstone, rock ones break down in marine tanks...and a strong air pump to blow into the vase, that's the only circulation. use any light that won't overheat the tank. In fact do the 2.0 version where you put it under a 70 watt viper light, it's tough. But my particular light is a coralife mini might, look em up they are 80 bucks

 

[modonne2]

very interesting. cute turtle. it must take a lot of time and attention to keep them looking so good.

 

[firehazard]

hey brandon. i also would like to try this. i see in your video the bubbles are following the vase walls until it reaches the neck of the vase where it then moves horizontal. creating the flow i believe. would a airpump create this circulation on a cylindrical tank where the bubbles only move upwards?

 

[brandon429]

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I didn't purposely design it like that, it just happened that way. All I was trying to do was blast some random current in there, the only directional part in the whole tank is right in the front middle display where I've noted, due to sweeper's direction, that there is a straight laminar flow going up>so that if I place sweeper generators like galaxe and a favites brain down low (coralline obscures it to the camera) their trailings won't burn too many others.
in a cylindrical tank the random flow won't matter imo as long as it moves all spots in the tank, although sealing would be harder because there's no inner slope. I haven't tried to seal, or more accurately -restrict- the evaporation on a cylindrical tank because it is hard to find lids that seal on the out diameter well enough to prevent salt creep.

i feel it will still work on a cylinder tank if you just keep the water line a little lower so splatter isn't thrown up directly on your seal mechanism

 

[firehazard]

thanks brandon. i ended up using a powerhead instead of an airstone. just thought it would be hard to move water all around the "tank". also i sealed mine by making a rim of silicone letting it dry and then cutting a piece of acrylic to sit on top of the silicone rim.

was wondering what temp do your pico tanks maintain?

 

[brandon429]

sealed

-for that setup the variables will change a little based on my observation...the continual air in/out of bubble stone setups does notable things to the redox measures of the water chemistry...it closely matches them to the household carbon dioxide balances, which if ambient levels are low so will be your reef...pH support is *greatly enhanced in micro picos with continual air bubbling and constant inner refreshment.

Unless you have a refugium I feel you may collect waste gasses but this can be offset with a large gap, in between your seal and the water column. Just refresh the seal from time to time its worth a go 78 degrees is ideal

these pics are old ones i found just today

 

[brandon429]

large!

did you know this is the only tank forum I have seen on the web that lets users post pics that big. Nice data storage on free accounts dudes, that's a digital big deal. I wouldn't dredge up this thread again without posting some hella detail, zoom in on these pics above if you have software for it, you might can see the rock detail

the drawings were the original sketches and contemplations before the build, right around y2k time

 

[anthony27]

I would love to try this out looks awsom

 

[brandon429]

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i promise to only drudge up this thread quarterly if the new pics i find on old pc's are worth it lol

a living room shot from 2001 then one from last week, look at how the plants have changed and that pothos snake eating up my wall

along with build/time lapses of the planted bog tank.

You can see where the wood/vine and rocks are held in place on the back of the tank with the triple expanding foam trick. As it dried I carved out little pits to plant and capillary action draws nutrients from the bog water into the plant roots all around the globe. Humidic distribution is also at play I just add water occasionally and dose ferts occasionally. Sometimes I forget to feed the bowl for weeks and weeks, the guppies don't care either way. In the absence of flakes they just eat detritus salad lol

if you want to set up any of the ecosystems holla! I recommend the vase reef it's the easiest of them all.

 

[brandon429]

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and here's the vase as it stands yesterday, the oldest still living pico reef you can find anywhere you search just to round out the time progression pics:

also one of the globe reef as a 19 gallon also one of the globe reef as a 19 gallon nano for pic diversity, and, the empty brand new palmtop showing the incorporation of the heater, lid, line penetration through the lid for sealing, the weatherstripping, and the refugium division.

THIS FORUM HOSTS THE BEST PICTURE BANDWIDTH OF ANY SITE ON THE ENTIRE INTERNET
Thank you for your gigabytes, really I love it.

 

[Mikei70]

Amazing.

 

[brandon429]

Hey Mike thanks for checking it out, just found this thread again was about to post a few updates here's some shots to show alternate angles and finally the sandbed (which is prominent and quite a good study in nutrient sinking I might add due to its concentration)

With this much living coral exuding mucus, food waste and digesta and all the collective wastes of the reef animals (snails most prominently) hitting the sandbed, it's important for there not to be added whole food particles.

If the nutrients hitting the sandbed are a few steps closer to mineralization, the nitrates and phosphates will be utilized by life above the sandbeds rather than below, the whole balance is indicated by the lack of hair or patch algae/cyano in the system. until that point it is proven clean and self-sufficient but if it ever does eutroph I'll put up prostrated pics :_)

 

[brandon429]

that picture in the lower right always hurt my eyes to look at it.

imagine how the sps felt for 11 hours lol had to use pennies as light shields per the vid

 

[rookie07]

It is amazing.....I cant believe you are able to do these tanks!

Could you post a picture of what the sign next to the Vase says?

 

[brandon429]

Hey rook I sure will thanks for joining. Thought I already put up that larger pic of a vase in 03 but I didn't, here it is.

This bowl was being dosed Iodine, whereas now I don't dose any and I let the feed take care of micronutrient support (regular water changes replenish too). Look how red the aquascape is in this pic. without extra iodine added I find the look to be more purple. anecdotally I keep seeing iodine control the red features of the micro tank in possibly the same manner the ULNS/Zeovit systems is using elemental adjustments to control blues/greens/reds etc I don't know just a repeating observation I found. Additionally, the I never affected the color of the corals it brought out the reds in the coralline and assorted benthic growths on the rocks, strange!

I had this sign printed for a funny reason. At shows, about 50% of the people either asked where the goldfish were, or what kind of flowers these were and how they grew underwater. I thought it would help the layperson to know this one a miniature ocean not a dang glorified goldfish lair

 

[xvinny631x]

Awesome tanks!! I like the plants too!

 

[jhale]

Brandon that's pretty amazing. Impressive that you grew a alveopora in that little system.
I saw in the video you have a baby bobbit worm, do you have any plans to remove him?