Mini 0.9 Gal Iwagumi (Dry Start)

[Fuzz]

So this is just a little side project I've been working on that I thought you guys might like. It's a 6" solid glass cube that is roughly 0.9 gallons for a mini desk tank. I just collected the rocks locally and used soil and plants from my other tank so it's been a fairly cheap investment.

Right now I'm doing a dry start to let the plants get fully grown in before I fill it with water. I cut a glass top for it to hold in the moisture and the tank has a bit of silicon on the corners to grip the lid. Right now I have a halogen and weak LED desk lamps for lighting but I have a high powered 10,000k LED coming in the mail that I'm gonna use to mod the LED desk lamp and use as the primary lighting.

Once the tank is fully grown in and I can fill it with water I plan to possibly build a miniature pump and canister filter to provide water flow and filtration. I might even include a pressurized CO2 mod as well for the plants if I really feel like pushing it. I'll start designing it soon and see if I can get it made before it's ready to be filled.

I'll update as it moves along and the plants grow in, thought you guys would like to see this from the beginning. Sorry for the bad quality pics, I had to use my phone I'm hoping to get a new camera soon. Hope you like it!

Front




Right


Top



Specs:

Volume: About 0.9 Gallons
Dimensions: 6" x 6" x 6"
Plants:
Hemianthus Callitrichoides (HC)
Hemianthus Micranthemoides (HM)
Hydrocotyle
Livestock: Possibly shrimp and/or snails

Thanks for looking!

[trutrax]

Looks like a great start! I look forward to seeing how this turns out. I'm tempted to try my own hand at a nano of this size.

[frrok]

I just started something very similar. Very cool.

[Fuzz]

Late Merry Christmas!

Just got back home from a long break visiting family and I was excited to see that my LEDs had arrived in the mail! I immediately got to work modifying my desk lamp.

Here's all the parts: Cree XR-E Q5 LED, Driver, and Heatsink


This is the lamp I modified, replaced all 21 weak LEDs with the single cree.


Installed the driver in the base of the lamp.


Light by itself.


And the finished light above my tank!


I meant to take a picture before modification to show the little amount of light that the lamp alone provided, but I was impatient and hasty and wanted to get to work on it! But trust me it's WAY brighter. I'm excited to see the plants really start growing in now.

In my other pictures for lighting I was using the lamp and a halogen, which is bright and good for pictures but doesn't provide useful light for the plants to grow. Now with just the single cree it outputs 10,000K light, which the plants love! It also has a wider angle of light to cover the entire tank evenly, unlike before I modified it when it mostly just covered the center of the tank and couldn't reach the outer edges. All in all, I'm very pleased with how the lamp turned out

Since I left for the break I noticed that the plants in the back started to die off because of the transition between immersed to emersed, which I expected. But it is showing signs of new growth which is good and it should start to take off soon with the new light. If too much of it dies off I'll just keep trying with trimmings from my main tank.

Anyway, I'll keep you guys updated on how things are going and once it starts to fill in nicely I'll get some pictures up. I'm hoping to start working on a miniature canister filter system soon for when I get ready to fill it with water, so when I start working on that I'll get pictures up to show how that's going.

[Quentin]

Cute, nice light!

[Alplily]

This is REALLY neat... that is one of those contemporary flower vases, right? What fun. Can't wait to see how it matures.

[Msouza91]

Where did you get those led? I would like to do the same as yours.

Nice mini though very inspiring

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Alplily

This is REALLY neat... that is one of those contemporary flower vases, right? What fun. Can't wait to see how it matures.

Thanks! Yea it's just a cube vase I got from a hobby store in their glass section. They have even smaller and I've thought about doing a wabi-kusa style in one of those eventually. But this size is perfect for a nice little desk aquarium.

Originally Posted by Msouza91

Where did you get those led? I would like to do the same as yours.

Nice mini though very inspiring

I bought the LEDS online from Dealextreme.com and searched for high powered LEDS. I just needed one but I ordered two in case one came defective, and also ordered the driver needed to run them at 1 amp. They shipped from china so it took a couple weeks for it to arrive, but I was out of town anyway so it was fine.