Well, actually a vase that holds one gallon of water with apprx. 2 pounds of live rock, as you can see below.
Live rock, two pieces of tonga branch and a corraline-covered frag of green starburst polyps (won at a reef club raffle and covered in bryopsis) is the only filtration. I'm using the Micro-Jet powerhead tuned to 49 gph, the lowest setting. It creates a nice slight whirlpool effect and there is not one deadspot in the vase.
Lighting is a desklamp with a 50/50 20 watt PC bulb. The aluminum foil is used to focus more of the light into the vase, as well as not blind me while I work at my computer desk (my office as I'm a web designer/editor and work at home).
Only substrate I'm using is a crushed seashell from my established tank... took a hammer to it, cleaned off the pieces in old tank water, then dropped them in the vase. This is for the sole little hermit crab in there... I also dropped in about 8 shells for him too, adds to the substrate. The glass was too slippery for the crab to manueavor around the bottom--I thought it was the current at first, but turning it off, I saw the crab had as much difficulty moving about.
All in all this tank has cost me about 40 dollars to set up. Reason I'm doing it? One, I'd like to harvest pods in this tank, from my main nano. And two, that so-called frag I got from the raffle was infested with hair algae and in the period of two weeks had covered the entire rock. Wanted to get it out of my ten gallon.
Now for the problems...
Heat, obviously. The powerhead and light increase the heat of the room, but so far it hasn't gotten above 85, and we've had some really hot days lately. I'm not too concerned about this as I won't really be keeping anything special or demanding in here, other than the gsp which I don't really care about.
The powerhead in the winter should keep the water a couple degrees above room temperature, which will be 69 degrees. So we'll be at 73 or so, 75-76 during the day.
Also, cleaning the algae on the glass build-up. As you can see with the shape of the vase, that's going to be quite difficult. Plan is to add an astrea snail once it begins, and my hope is it won't get too bad.
Maintenance: top off every day, obviously, and water change about 6-8 ounces every other day. As this vase is always in my view and I'm always working in some form or other, I'll be able to monitor it frequently.
All in all, I think it's a very cool "lamp," and I'm interested in seeing how it evolves.
Live rock, two pieces of tonga branch and a corraline-covered frag of green starburst polyps (won at a reef club raffle and covered in bryopsis) is the only filtration. I'm using the Micro-Jet powerhead tuned to 49 gph, the lowest setting. It creates a nice slight whirlpool effect and there is not one deadspot in the vase.
Lighting is a desklamp with a 50/50 20 watt PC bulb. The aluminum foil is used to focus more of the light into the vase, as well as not blind me while I work at my computer desk (my office as I'm a web designer/editor and work at home).
Only substrate I'm using is a crushed seashell from my established tank... took a hammer to it, cleaned off the pieces in old tank water, then dropped them in the vase. This is for the sole little hermit crab in there... I also dropped in about 8 shells for him too, adds to the substrate. The glass was too slippery for the crab to manueavor around the bottom--I thought it was the current at first, but turning it off, I saw the crab had as much difficulty moving about.
All in all this tank has cost me about 40 dollars to set up. Reason I'm doing it? One, I'd like to harvest pods in this tank, from my main nano. And two, that so-called frag I got from the raffle was infested with hair algae and in the period of two weeks had covered the entire rock. Wanted to get it out of my ten gallon.
Now for the problems...
Heat, obviously. The powerhead and light increase the heat of the room, but so far it hasn't gotten above 85, and we've had some really hot days lately. I'm not too concerned about this as I won't really be keeping anything special or demanding in here, other than the gsp which I don't really care about.
The powerhead in the winter should keep the water a couple degrees above room temperature, which will be 69 degrees. So we'll be at 73 or so, 75-76 during the day.
Also, cleaning the algae on the glass build-up. As you can see with the shape of the vase, that's going to be quite difficult. Plan is to add an astrea snail once it begins, and my hope is it won't get too bad.
Maintenance: top off every day, obviously, and water change about 6-8 ounces every other day. As this vase is always in my view and I'm always working in some form or other, I'll be able to monitor it frequently.
All in all, I think it's a very cool "lamp," and I'm interested in seeing how it evolves.
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