Turtle's 1.8 AIO build thread

turtlesoup2 · Jan 29, 2015

howdy everyone, I finally received my AIO pico that I plan to take to college this coming fall!
It is a 9" x 9" x 9" glass cube made out of 1/4" glass. The tank has an 1/4" acrylic false wall which extends 3.25" into the tank.

For the actual DT it contains 1.8 gallons and in total(including the filtration section) it holds 2.7 gallons.
The filtration section is broken up into 3 different compartments.

the first: is an overflow onto a media rack. It will will hold a poly pad/filterfloss, a passive chemical bag(I'm still undecided) and some marine pure balls.
the second: contains a neotherm heater and the room for a gnome glass skimmer(if needed)
the third: a Ehiem 600 return.
My plan is for a minimalist reef with mainly LPS and no fish. I'm hopping for a simplistic maintenance plan to follow a weekly 2ish cup of water change and monthly/whenever is needed change out the chemical media.

here are some old dry photos of the tank

turtlesoup2 · Jan 29, 2015

In order to make a media bag fit I had to cut it and then re-stitch the bottom edge. Man sewing is a pain lol here are the results

turtlesoup2 · Jan 29, 2015

After some plumbing issues I finally got everything running! We did had an issue installing the bulkhead and the pipe thread piece since it is such a tiny space... Since the bulkhead I bought was threaded on the output side, but not on the connecting side, I decided cut the bulkhead to where only the portion containing the inner threads remained(see the stock image to see what I'm referring to). Thankfully the threads were long enough to share it between the tubing fitting and the Loc-Line return and now the fittings fit perfectly and room to spare.

I had to tune the eheim 600 down a bit, so right now its running at about 3/4 speed. Also, since the water volume is so tiny and slight displacement really affects the overall water level. My hand alone can dramatically change it.