I've always wanted an aquarium for my cubical at work so I thought I set up a nano(maybe pico is the better term). I found a nice ~6 inch glass cube(0.68 gallons per the measuring cup) at Garden Ridge for $13. I tried sand at first but didn't like it so I threw in some Eco-Complete I had from an old tank and an interesting rock I found outside(boiled for 15 min).
I know its dead simple but what do you think of the hard scape and what plants would bring this to life? I don't know what I'm going to do about lighting, but I can dose excel and the temp in my office(data center) is always at 70F and never fluctuates. Id like to throw in an RCS shrimp or two once its established.
For those of you who have nanos/picos at work, how did you get them there and how do you maintain them? Did you set it up at home then drive carefully to work? How do you do water changes?
Some unrolled marmiro balls would look nice if grown on the rock. Some hc for groundcover if your light is good enough and dwarf hairgrass in the back wouldn't be bad.
These are awesome. I love the diligence that people put into these super minis. I have a 1.5 cube just like this, now I am considering smaller Good luck! cant wait to see the progress!
I liked the first hardscape better. The white milky quartz rock stood out nicely against the black eco-complete.
As a thought, you might want to add some tiny driftwood twigs. IMO, corkscrew willow twig ends look nice for this sort of thing... nice and thin for the small size "tank" too... I use them in my cherry shrimp setup with moss attached. Something similar might look cool here.
If you can get ahold of some mini Riccia, that'd look nice in this... or even regular riccia if you place it behind the rock, maybe with some hairgrass or HM behind that...
I just set up a similarly-sized mini as a local biotope, lol - used only locally-collected hairgrass specimens, but not sure how it'll fill out given time. Interesting project, though - planting with tweezers is really an exercise in patience!
I agree about the contrast of the white rock against the black substrate in the first pic, but I also like the depth of the cliff face if the second pic. Here are a few more hard scape attempts using white rocks. Thoughts? I think I may try to make the cliff face one again using white colored slate.
I also prefer the dark. If you do plants, it will cover most of the black sand any so there wont be much contrast between the white. The dark rock looks for natural.
+1 on the black stone. I like how it's flat. Reminds me of a canyon cliff or something. I don't know about plants, but I think it the black with some nice green would look nice.
Looks good. I also like the black stone. I found a couple twigs and a rock for mine. What light if any are you going to use? I've seen a couple LED clip on lights at fry's electronics I might give a whirl over mine when I set it up.
I think I want a carpet of some sort in front of the rock and a lot of people suggest I grow some HC. How much light do they really require and how fast will it grow? I want to keep trimming to a minimum. I dont think my boss would approve of me working on the tank/cube a lot.
Behind the rock I think I want to grow something emersed but I have no idea what might work there. It would be cool to have something grow a few inches above the cube. Any ideas?
I was thinking about the same lights myself, not sure how much light they put out though.
I found a piece of petrified wood at my LFS I really like. I think this is the hard scape I'm going to run with.
Still don't know what kind of light I'm going to run but I think I will try one of those clip on LED lights. If its not bright enough I can always swap out the LED for a higher wattage.
I definitely want a carpet in front of the rock and something that will grow out of the water behind the rock.
Finally got around to setting this up in my cube but it ended badly. I work from home a once to twice a week and the time off over the holidays led to a bad crash and a gross looking nano.
I have a new scape in my cube now (emmersed only) with devils ivy growing in the back. I want to plant something in the foreground that will stay low and be ok in office type lighting (T8 5 feet above the nano, off center).
I have a new scape in my cube now (emmersed only) with devils ivy growing in the back. I want to plant something in the foreground that will stay low and be ok in office type lighting (T8 5 feet above the nano, off center).
Will Java Moss even grow in an emmersed state? My water level is right at the substrate.
I was thinking of Anubis but I don't know if its roots would grow into the substrate.
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