3 Foot Office Nano

[timkenagy]

I guess it would be motivation to get my butt to work everyday.. Do you have trustworthy people to handle it so you can take vacations? Such a small tank with delicate specimens like that would make me nervous. :o

 

[eschulist]

I guess it would be motivation to get my butt to work everyday.. Do you have trustworthy people to handle it so you can take vacations? Such a small tank with delicate specimens like that would make me nervous. :eek:

No one else at work has fishtanks or knows too much. I've taught my 2 cubicle neighbors the absolute basics on feeding the fish and adding RO to the top of container. Other than that I hope for the best. Over Christmas I had almost 2 whole weeks off, and so did a lot of other employees broken up over various days. With people in flux and myself still being in town I made a dedicated trip into work to take care of the tank every few days.

 

[borgie]

Curious as bow you did the overflow, setting up a series of 40 breeders that are all going to share a common sump and don't want to have to buy overflow boxes for them all was thinking maybe just bulkheads with 90°S pointed up but this looks much better!

 

[Josh King]

Love your progression shots! I agree, I would never get any work done The scape reminds me of Chinese Penjing. Which is like bonsai with landscspe.

 

[aquaman33431]

super cool tank!

are there issues maintaining temp and salinity?

I was always concerned going small due to finding balance, but your results prove it can be done.....nice job

 

[MJC]

Love it congrats man ;)
Any advice you can give about drilling the tank and location of holes? i.e. 1"down from the rim? 2" over from the left?

 

[nervousmonkey]

Awesome tank! I have the exact same tank just drilled a little differently. That tank is a lot of fun just because it's only 8" wide. So hard to scape but fish have a lot of run room.

 

[Zane]

I dig it.

 

[Jimbo662]

Do you have pics of your sump?

 

[cvx16]

As I mentioned earlier, absolutely gorgeous tank! I love all the color and the layout. The proportions all look so good.

I found myself also thinking, "I want one of those, and one of those, and one of those, and one of those..." I'm still a noob and getting my 60g cube set up. It's pretty bare. I look at tanks like yours and love the corals and fish but don't know what most of them are. You seem pretty photo/computer savvy. Would you consider annotating one of your FTS with names of corals and fish in your tank? I would love to have that as reference for my livestock shopping and research! Thanks in advance!!!

 

[Lilly45nano]

Your tank is awesome.....any chance you could show the sump to us?

 

[Ellery]

This nano is awesome - how much maintenance do you have to do to keep up with this? I wouldn't trust the water coming out of the faucets of my work place and I am barely in the office anyways. I worry they will turn the power off on me they've done it to my servers but live stock I can't reboot.

 

[eschulist]

Curious as bow you did the overflow, setting up a series of 40 breeders that are all going to share a common sump and don't want to have to buy overflow boxes for them all was thinking maybe just bulkheads with 90°S pointed up but this looks much better!

Simply design. Bulkhead as high as you can get it with a slotted screen over the top. The water will be slightly lower than an upturned elbow but the look is sleeker. A 40 breeder my make this more difficult as the trim will get in the way of the bulkhead and screen. It was inspired off the Oceanlife Overflow or X-Aqua when I did it.

Love it congrats man ;)
Any advice you can give about drilling the tank and location of holes? i.e. 1"down from the rim? 2" over from the left?

As high as you can get it. The Mr Aqua tanks have fairly thick glass for nanos and can handle a hole drilled that close to the edge. The are then just drilled so the return and drain are centered on each end. On the left side the return is on the back, on the right the return is on the front.

Two fairly old photos

 

[eschulist]

Love your progression shots! I agree, I would never get any work done The scape reminds me of Chinese Penjing. Which is like bonsai with landscspe.

Totally what I've been going for. I'm trying to use the bonsai approach by keeping the corals all about the same size and have balanced areas of shape and color.

 

[eschulist]

super cool tank!
are there issues maintaining temp and salinity?
I was always concerned going small due to finding balance, but your results prove it can be done.....nice job

I used to have trouble in the first few months if you look at my fts progression. This was mainly due to me manually dosing RO and Calc/Alk every morning, or as often as I would remember. Eventually I added a 50ml doser and 8 setpoint timer. I now have it turn on for about 2 minutes 8 times a night and add my RO and Kalk. The temp is maintained with a Neotherm heater which is very good about keeping it stable within 1 degree. The only time I have issues is in the summer when it gets warm in the office and the sunlight shines through the nearby windows. I have a few of the top sps coral bleach out for 2-3 months every year.

 

[eschulist]

Awesome tank! I have the exact same tank just drilled a little differently. That tank is a lot of fun just because it's only 8" wide. So hard to scape but fish have a lot of run room.

Thanks. The tank really is a cool design. Its panoramic! Makes the more active fish like the angel and blenny have more swimming room when they can go longer lengths.

 

[eschulist]

Your tank is awesome.....any chance you could show the sump to us?

Do you have pics of your sump?

Old photo as well but it shows the setup.
The stand is actually for a TV. So there is a cabinet and shelf for entertainment equipment. Its gets in the way of accessing the sump but is beneficial for holding a lot of the stuff I want access to like foods, refractometer, towels, tools etc.

This is still a couple months out but I have plans to completely redo the stand and plumbing in the future. These are just 2 of the 4-5 designs I've been toying with. If anyone has input on either of these designs I'd love some feedback.

 

[eschulist]

As I mentioned earlier, absolutely gorgeous tank! I love all the color and the layout. The proportions all look so good.
I found myself also thinking, "I want one of those, and one of those, and one of those, and one of those..." I'm still a noob and getting my 60g cube set up. It's pretty bare. I look at tanks like yours and love the corals and fish but don't know what most of them are. You seem pretty photo/computer savvy. Would you consider annotating one of your FTS with names of corals and fish in your tank? I would love to have that as reference for my livestock shopping and research! Thanks in advance!!!

This will take me a little bit of time to create but I can label everything if you want to know what corals are what species and if they had any “brand names”

 

[eschulist]

This nano is awesome - how much maintenance do you have to do to keep up with this? I wouldn't trust the water coming out of the faucets of my work place and I am barely in the office anyways. I worry they will turn the power off on me they've done it to my servers but live stock I can't reboot.

I bring in all of my own water in 5 gallon jugs and they are put against the cubicle wall opposite the tank. No one can see them unless they go inside my cube. I have my Red Sea salt bucket stored under my desk for mixing my salt. I mix my salt and do my water change right at the end of the day before I go home usually on a Tue or Wed. This way if something doesn't look right the next day I usually have time to correct it before the weekend. They are really good about not turning off the power as there is a lot of servers and equipment that needs to run 24/7. And there are often people in on the weekends to work so everything says on. We also have dedicated battery power outlets in each of our cubes. Its for the computer incase we are working on projects while the power goes out. Gives us time to save and back things up and power down safely. Its only happened 1 time in the 6-7 years I've worked at this company (and it was at our old building that didnt have battery power). I could put the tank on that outlet but I don't feel it necessary. The only bad thing is in the summer the office can get a little hot even with the AC going. There are just lots of windows and computers running and the tank being so small gets affected. It doesn't look as great from July-Sept.

 

[melev]

What a great reef. Thank you for sharing it with us. You are doing a great job keeping it very clean. It's like bonsai reefing.