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