Nano Drop-off Reef

[Rize2]

Ever since I saw pics of philippe grosjean's drop-off reefI've wanted something like it, I however don't have much space. Last August, I decided I'd make a nano version of it out and took to Google SketchUp to design one. It ended up being between 10 and 15 gallons and has a RO reservoir box inside of about 2-3 gallons. Here's a pic once I finished the design:
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Once I had that finished I went and got some acrylic that was cut to my dimensions. Building it was pretty easy, it was just very time consuming to scrape all the edges so that they were smooth-ish. I didn't get any pics of the build process, but here's some pics of when i finished it:
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Here's after it was painted

That was all done last August. For the months since its just been sitting around in the way. Last month I decided I was ready to set it up. I put new super fine sand in it and live rock and water from where I work, zoanthids.com. The two main pieces in the tank are Vida Rock from Cerameco, so hopefully it becomes live soon. For now i have random pieces of regular live rock in the back overflow and behind the arch. Here it is at that point:
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[Rize2]

I want built this aquarium to be one where I could keep(and actually see) some of there cool little inverts that are out there. Here's my current livestock:
ocellaris clownfish
yasha goby/candy candy stripe pistol shrimp
Hi-fin goby
2 bumble bee shrimp
white spot anemone shrimp
glass shrimp
porcelain crab


I hope to be getting other cool shrimp in the future, like sexy shrimp and pederson shrimp, along with more porcelain crabs.


Here are some pics I took today:
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cool mushrooms and a yellow feather duster

Euphyllia Yaeyamaensis​

green and pink ricordea florida with it's crazy body guard, my glass shrimp

 

[rhcpnut1]

This is all very awesome and I know the tank your talking about. Its awesome put nano version together.

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[Ian]

I love that tank design, I'd love to do one but I remember Troylee had one and he had a big problem with stuff settling in the drop off section. I'm sure you could solve that with a closed loop but electricity is too expensive here to run a large pump on a CL...

 

[Rize2]

I love that tank design, I'd love to do one but I remember Troylee had one and he had a big problem with stuff settling in the drop off section. I'm sure you could solve that with a closed loop but electricity is too expensive here to run a large pump on a CL...

What stuff settling? Is that caused by not good enough flow down there?

 

[CoryC]

Probabbly creates a vortex of rolling water around the edge, and water flows over that vortex and not into it so it forces heavy particles into the area. like a riffle on gold mining sluice.

 

[Rize2]

Probabbly creates a vortex of rolling water around the edge, and water flows over that vortex and not into it so it forces heavy particles into the area. like a riffle on gold mining sluice.

I tried to avoid that and dead spots by having my loc-line be different than most. You can see it in the pic below at the top. It runs along the side of my aquarium. So instead of the pump blowing from back to front it goes from left to right. Do you think I'll still have problems?

 

[CoryC]

time will tell. i think you've got a good solution though.

 

[GHill762]

That's really cool! it would really finish the look if you did a rock wall with pond foam for the drop off..

nice work!

 

[Zoanthids]

Looks good

 

[Rize2]

I hope it works! i was looking into "making" my own rock with it covering the drop, but I didn't exactly what I needed. Now I'm just hoping it still looks good when it's covered in coralline

 

[SloppyJ]

x2 a sloped rock wall would be sweet!

 

[mebo926]

This is cool.....would love to see what a bigger cube tank would look like,

 

[Rize2]

I got a new camera yesterday! I'm still trying to figure out how to use it, but here's my first batch of pics with it:

Here's my Hasslets goby

 

[Rize2]

I got this mushroom from Brandon(zoanthids.com), His is a stunner! Mine is just a baby but is starting to look better and better.
May it grow quickly and have many babies...

 

[Rize2]

I picked up this rainbow wall hammer yesterday! It's colors arent super bright, but it does have a green, yellow, orange and blue shimmer to it. The camera mostly just picked up the blue for some reason

 

[Rize2]

Here are the new corals I got this week:
Naked Agave

Maxi Mini

FTS

 

[SeahorseKeeper]

Looking good!!


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[Daniel@R2R]

Very cool!

 

[skinz78]

Very nice indeed!