Well with my recent acceptance of a position in Cincinnati, I didn't think I would be able to do this contest. However, my husband and I received this tank as a Christmas present and I thought this would make for a fun tank that could be easily moved when the time comes. So... my contest entry.
I believe this tank is 2.2 gallons. I have seen these tanks sold online previously and thought how cruel they were for fish. But when we opened the box and saw it, my wheels instantly started turning with what could be done with this tank.
Here is the front of the tank:
Back:
Top:
The background could easily be removed and replaced by removing the screws on the mounting hardware:
The tank comes with a really cute little filter for the inside:
The filter part pops off of a little 55GPH pump:
The bottom of the filter area pops off to show a sponge:
The other side has another compartment that holds a tiny bag of carbon. I figure I could put GFO in here instead:
The filter also comes with both a spray bar and a venturi. The tank isn't quite wide enough for the spraybar to fit to spray over the length of the tank, so I'm not quite sure why it would be used. I don't think I'll use either, just the filter spraying along the length of the tank.
The unit comes with a little undercabinet lighting fixture. I plan to build a little strip of LEDs for this instead:
It also came with a fish net, gravel cleaner with siphon starter, and a grabber:
It has a glass top also, but as you can see it doesn't cover the entire top. I didn't unwrap it because I figure I'll use a small screentop instead.
And finally the mounting hardware:
Overall I'm pretty impressed with this little tank. It is really well built and they really put a lot of thought into what all to include. The glass is plenty thick and has extra supports that really aren't necessary. The acrylic is really just a cover for the tank but is very thick!
And for my plan for this tank:
I'm not exactly sure how I will stock it, but I won't have a lot of money with trying to move to be able to get new stock. I think instead, I'll probably make this an anemone tank and move over a lot of the maxi minis that I have. I'll probably stock it with small inverts like sexy shrimp, anemone shrimp, etc.
Now to find a spot on the wall to mount this thing and get it cycling!
I finally got this tank mounted! It was a little more difficult than it looked, but it's up! Here's a short little video I took. You can see that this tiny little pump really puts off a lot of flow in this tiny little tank. And it's mostly hidden by the frame. I think I'll need to stick a small heater in here also.
And to make things official:
I'm still debating how to stock this. I plan to stop by the local reef farm this weekend and get a couple lbs of live sand. The plan was to get some small rubble and do mainly maxi mini and miscellaneous inverts that would be found in an anemone, but I'm still up in the air. I feel like it might get kind of boring after a while. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any!