The products for Modern Pet (a business I’m running with my sister and our other halves) are slowly coming in and we’ve just bought a cheap eBay light tent set-up to help with the product shots.

80cm light tent and lights all delivered for $130. The lights are awesome but the tent itself isn’t as white as I thought it would be, a little too thin, so thin that you can actually see the wooden floor through the tent.

My little assistant Mia couldn’t help but jump straight into the tent!

So here’s a shot un-edited. It’s not bad actually. With a more solid white floor under the products it should be a lot better (I’m thinking just white carboard will do).

And here’s a shot very roughly edited in Photoshop. No amount of levels/curves was going to work completely. I had to literally erase a lot of the shadow work by hand. I timed myself on this and it took me 10 minutes.

Nitrates are finally at 0! I don’t think they’ve ever been this low. Water is very very cloudy and smelly too. Yesterday I added a bag of carbon and the smell has gone away but the water is still cloudy. I’m hoping it’ll clear up by itself over the next few days.

My Uncle Tekky came around to test fit the hood he made.

The whole front panel opens up.

A sturdy and concealed shelf for the LED’s with bevelled edges for maximum light.

I then got busy with a screwdriver, hammer and crowbar and managed to get all the decorative trimming off.

I also ripped off that ugly black plastic corner trim for the cleaner ADA look.

Problems: The lights are sitting too far back of the tank and need to come forward about 9cm. That means he’s got to take it all apart, rip off the sides and pretty much put it all back together again. Lucky we did the test fit before painting though.

Feeling seedy and hung over Christina and I thought we’d better get some sun and yesterday we went to Botany Bay to collect some sea snails for Mr Mantis to eat.

Ouchies! Christina had a fall on the rocks.

I love rock pooling. Something Dad used to take me to do every week when I was a little kid (he’d go fishing and I’d play in the rock pools). There wasn’t much life in the rock pools though, water is still too cold.

This morning I broke out the test kits and tested my water parameters (I very rarely test it). My parameters are as follows:

Salinity: 1.027
KH: 13
pH: 8.4
Phosphate: 0.1ppm
Nitrate: 10ppm
Calcium 350ppm

They’re really quite good parameters so I’m super happy.

Also, my skimmer went nuts last night and it’s pulling out a lot of crap lately. All good signs!

In situ.

Still a mess (for now).

Live rock.

In other good news my nitrates have come down!

I’ve placed an order with Age of Aquariums for the ADA tank (a hang on back filter, led clip on lamp and a nano heater too). I’ve also added some live rock from the main display tank.

ADA Garden Mat. Basically a neoprene mat to replace ugly white foam that usually sits under a fish tank.

Whilst I set up his new home I moved Mr. Mantis into a breeder tank which just sits in my main tank. The guys on Reef Central have identified him as a male G. falcatus. Very aggressive and about as big as he’s going to get (phew!).

Ikea clip on lamp for now. Still no filter but I’m thinking of a huge Aquaclear 110 hang on back filter. I also need to find some very white and fine substrate (I knew I shouldn’t have thrown out all the substrate I recently vacuumed out of my display tank).

More updates as they come!

ADA Cube Gardens.

Christina and I dropped in to see George at Slippery Little Suckers in Kingsford today. George and his wife Michella looked after us when we set up Christina’s Dad’s ADA inspired tank a few years ago. He’s the local distributor for ADA gear (arguably the world’s most famous aquascaper and designer of the sexiest aquarium gear on earth. Visit: http://www.adana.co.jp).

I walked away with a great deal on an ADA Cube Garden tank. It’s overkill for a mantis set-up but hey I’ll at least be able to re-use it one day down the track when I want to go for a planted set-up.

ADA Cube Garden Mini L. 45x27x30cm/4mm (about 36.5 litres). I move fast (couldn’t help myself!).

Check out that detail. Made in Germany (not Japan like I had thought originally).

I could have gone for the same tank but in the Do!Aqua brand that ADA now makes (cheaper) but I had to have the best.

There’s no lid, but clips come with the tank to hold a lid. I’ll have to custom make one once I know what the dimensions of a hang on back filter are otherwise little Mia might just kill Mr. Mantis.

This is where the tank will sit (on top of the aircon/heater filter unit). More updates as they come!