I’ve been an on-again/off-again fish keeper with freshwater and reef tanks over the years. Had to tear down and give away my previous 75 gal reef about 7 years ago when we moved house (3-4 months of open-house, auction, settlement, house hunting, purchase and settlement on a new house, made moving that large a setup impossible) Our new house isn’t great for large tanks (plus the wife barely tolerates my hobbies and another big tank would probably be a bone of contention.)
But the kids are a bit older, we’re nicely settled into the house so I’ve been contemplating something a little smaller.
While recently cleaning out the garage and sorting through the random aquarium kibble I’ve collected over the years, I came across a little acrylic tank I picked up a few years ago as part of a Kickstarter. It’s called an EcoQube C Plus, and it's basically meant to be a small 3-gallon freshwater planted tank. It has a little… box on top, that’s kind of like a HOB filter. It sits on top of the tank and the return pump pushes the water up into this instead of into the display tank. The idea is you plant some small terrestrial plants like basil or something, and they grow hydroponically, pulling the nutrients out of the water and “cleaning it”. It has a little underpowered adjustable LED on a plastic stand and everything. For whatever, reason, I never really bothered to use it. The light was cheap and kind of fell apart and the whole “grow a plant” felt a bit gimmicky.
Obviously, it's designed for freshwater, but it’s a solid little acrylic tank with a built-in filter chamber in the back and with a little modification, I decided it might be fun to try and turn it into a PICO tank.
Equipment
Tank: EcoQube C plus – 3 gallon w/fuge (modified)
Pump: Sicce Syncra Nano
WaveMaker: AI Nero 3
Light: AI Prime HD
ATO: AutoAqua Smart AWC Touch (modified)
Heater: AquaOne 25w Preset Nano
I ditched the light (no way that would work for a reef) cleaned it all out, leak tested and started looking it over.
The first problem – it has a frosted acrylic rim around the top of the tank, quite large (about 2-3 cm). It was an aesthetic choice of the designers I guess, but it’s a pain for light transmission. So I taped up the rest of the tank, got out some varying grades of sandpaper and plastic polish and polished it up. It came out looking pretty clear.
Problem two - thanks to the hydroponic design, the return pump doesn’t feed back into the main tank - it points straight up and connects to the bottom of the plant box. I contemplated several options, from ditching the box, replacing the pump and drilling a new return into the tank, to drilling a return and keeping the box with two pumps in the rear chamber. In the end, the hassle of getting a drill into the narrow confines of the tank made me decide to keep the plant box and see what I could do with it.
But the kids are a bit older, we’re nicely settled into the house so I’ve been contemplating something a little smaller.
While recently cleaning out the garage and sorting through the random aquarium kibble I’ve collected over the years, I came across a little acrylic tank I picked up a few years ago as part of a Kickstarter. It’s called an EcoQube C Plus, and it's basically meant to be a small 3-gallon freshwater planted tank. It has a little… box on top, that’s kind of like a HOB filter. It sits on top of the tank and the return pump pushes the water up into this instead of into the display tank. The idea is you plant some small terrestrial plants like basil or something, and they grow hydroponically, pulling the nutrients out of the water and “cleaning it”. It has a little underpowered adjustable LED on a plastic stand and everything. For whatever, reason, I never really bothered to use it. The light was cheap and kind of fell apart and the whole “grow a plant” felt a bit gimmicky.
Obviously, it's designed for freshwater, but it’s a solid little acrylic tank with a built-in filter chamber in the back and with a little modification, I decided it might be fun to try and turn it into a PICO tank.
Equipment
Tank: EcoQube C plus – 3 gallon w/fuge (modified)
Pump: Sicce Syncra Nano
WaveMaker: AI Nero 3
Light: AI Prime HD
ATO: AutoAqua Smart AWC Touch (modified)
Heater: AquaOne 25w Preset Nano
I ditched the light (no way that would work for a reef) cleaned it all out, leak tested and started looking it over.
The first problem – it has a frosted acrylic rim around the top of the tank, quite large (about 2-3 cm). It was an aesthetic choice of the designers I guess, but it’s a pain for light transmission. So I taped up the rest of the tank, got out some varying grades of sandpaper and plastic polish and polished it up. It came out looking pretty clear.
Problem two - thanks to the hydroponic design, the return pump doesn’t feed back into the main tank - it points straight up and connects to the bottom of the plant box. I contemplated several options, from ditching the box, replacing the pump and drilling a new return into the tank, to drilling a return and keeping the box with two pumps in the rear chamber. In the end, the hassle of getting a drill into the narrow confines of the tank made me decide to keep the plant box and see what I could do with it.