Nate’s 5 Gallon Pico Build

[nelia]

Hello all, as someone who has been a lurker for a minute, thought I’d begin a build thread for my current project, a 5 gallon pico tank. It’s currently cycling, but here are some of the current details.

Tank: Marine land 5 gallon - loved the height as I could put it on my desk and I would be looking straight into the tank rather than down on a fogged up glass lid

Tank Modifications: modified the back panel to take out the unnecessary supports (picture below), replace the original filter with the most janky of janky custom media baskets, and added a panel of acrylic to separate the space into three chambers. I hindsight, I probably should have just made a back panel completely from scratch and siliconed it in because I defiantly made a mess (and probably damaged the glass) trying to work in such a tall small space.

Rock: I just took 5 lbs of rock and smashed it up to pieces with a hammer and then glued them all back together. Not the most happy with it, but I wanted to have something similar to multiple levels spiraling up and it was the best I could do given my exceptional and unending creative talent

 

[blaxsun]

Rockscape looks great!

 

[Fishkins88]

Any updates? Love the tall size.

 

[Steven Garland]

That aquascape looks amazing !!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Any updates? I have always loved the idea of tiny little desk tanks like that

 

[nelia]

Hello, all I have another update for you! It turns out I used a silicone that I probably should not have (GE2) and rather than taking my chances, I decided to just take apart the tank and go heavy with the mods. So let's get into it

Modifications round 2: I made the following modification to the Marineland 5 gallon tank
1. I removed the black sticker, I might end up making the back glass frosted, but for right now it is nice seeing everything going on in the AIO portion
2. Created a new janky media basket that could extend all the way to the base of the tank, this required sawing out a little platform the tank originally came with, but was not ultimately a big issue
3. added an additional acrylic panel to create three chambers - then found out it leaked ever so slightly so went absolutely ham with the silicone

The tank is now starting a new cycle and I plan to stock it with some coral and maybe a yellow clown goby at the end of the month

 

[nelia]

Hello all, figured I should probably provide everyone with an update. The tank is a little bit over 6 months old and I finally decided to upgrade some frags. So far the only thing that seems to really struggle in the tank is my euphyllia, but everything else seems to be chugging along. Not thriving, but not doing poorly either.