now what's cool about these pico tanks
guys is you just can carry them around
wherever you want to go
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all right guys
we're back in today's video i'm going to
show you
everything up to this point today's
video believe it or not
is going to be a 12 part video but
they're short parts i just wanted to
break it down
so you guys could follow along a little
bit easier
new viewers this is five of five just go
back to the beginning if you'd like
after you watch this
and watch the other ones leading up to
this it'll be fun for you
step number one obviously you have to
mix your
salt water and prepare it before you put
it in your tank
and you're also preparing it for your
live rock
[Applause]
so the next step is to get your live
rock and i always go down to fish guy
mike in parsippany new jersey he's
called frags galore he works out of his
garage it's really cool
and i went down and got my rock the
other day
some of you guys that were with me in
the beginning remember this place
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i love this place it's just awesome
it's got so much good stuff there
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the beauty of small tanks guys
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cured live rock from fish guy monkey
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when i get my live rock from mike it's
already
cycle guys he's had it probably in there
for years now it doesn't have to go
through
any cycling process if you're getting
live rock that's just been brought in or
just been
exported or it hasn't gone through a
cycle
then you can't do what i did with this
you'll have to go through the three or
four week period
testing ammonia and nitrite to make sure
that your rock gets cycled so as soon as
i bring it home
i unwrap it parsippany is only about 15
minutes from here so i take it out of
the bag and i put it right down in the
salt water
all right guys mike runs his temperature
around 76
75 so we're in between there it's been
mixed at 0.025
and that's usually what mike has his
salt water at
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check this out it's got sponges growing
on it now this is
cured live rock guys
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this is a nice piece either has got some
nice coraline growth on it
i like this piece a lot
i'm going to make a shelf out of this
piece i can put some
coral on there depending on what i do
with it
probably use the same water to pour
right into the tank
all right in this section guys i'm
showing you how i
rigged the return pump for the flow back
into the tank all right what i did here
guys is this hose that's connected to
the nano pump
cj i forced it up through these
right angles here this came from an
overflow
no leaks because this goes all the way
through
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so if you guys decide to do this or work
on a picot just keep in mind
the opening of this overflow box is like
three inches
wide it's actually too small
for me to get my hand down inside i
can't get to the bottom
that was another miscalculation on my
part but it doesn't matter because the
only thing i'm going to happen here is
the little pump
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i'll be doing a bare bottom so this will
keep the bottom
stirred up in this section i'm just
adding salt water to the tank now
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it's light enough so if i do half fill
here i can just pick it up and slide it
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in
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all right guys
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so we got some micro bubbles it's making
a little bit of a water noise
that flow is pretty good i'll arrange
that maybe i can turn it to the left or
right
all right what i did guys was i just
turned the pump around
i twisted the elbow so i could turn the
pump around
and now see those air bubbles back there
they're going to the back of the pump
they're not coming in
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[Applause]
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the initial plan was to have it
connected with my 20 gallon we call that
inline
and i scrapped that because i had too
much difficulty
with the return pump and head pressure
and all that nonsense
so what i've done is i just blocked up
the overflow hole in the bottom and i
blocked up the return hole coming
back into the tank all right so the next
step now
is to put the live rock in so that's
what i'm doing here i'm putting the live
rock in
just to get it settled in to check to
see what the lighting will be
with the live rock in there as far as
the lighting goes
i went with the kessil a80 if you notice
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there's no more box on top this was
after i tested the lighting
i realized i wasn't getting enough par
with that box on top
so i reconstructed the top a little bit
i had that
rectangular piece glued on with some
heavy duty glue and i just ripped it off
so now the kessel a80 is just resting on
top of the square
in this section we're going to tar test
it and i'm looking for about 150
par and maybe a little bit more those of
you are watching this for the first time
i've shown this before
this is a par meter and i want to be
able to just
set the kessel a80 on one setting
it'll come on wi-fi on and go off at
night
i don't have to mess with it or adjust
it after this time
so i can just go in like this with it
150 160 152 so we're that's right around
that'll be fine for what i want to keep
in here
all right guys no sps in here that's
fine
okay so i'm a big fan of aquascape
not falling apart once it's in your
aquarium
so i use e marco 400 cement
i'm gonna take the rocks out of the tank
it took me about
maybe 45 minutes to cement these
together
and i wanted them positioned as you can
see here
so that the top flatter piece
is kind of tilting forward and not
perfectly level because from down here
if it's level you're going to almost be
looking
underneath the rock so i wanted it to be
tipped forward so as i
add coral you'll be able to see them
while you're sitting down
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and what i'm doing here guys is this is
a little piece of rock rubble
what i'm doing is i'm taking some of the
wet cement
not pushing too hard but just imprinting
it
printing from the rock
piece of rock rubble so it kind of looks
natural
i'm pushing like stamping it and i'll do
that in the areas that are going to be
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visible
i also did another video a whole video
on demonstrating how i use
the emarco cement you could check that
out i think i did it actually in two
videos so check those out too and they
should be up here or here
did i say adam i got my chair coming
this wood thing is killing me
this wood thing is killing me so
that's it guys check it out
can i zoom in a little up there from
here
let me see if i can zoom in from here
that's about all i can do from here
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