# Marina 360? o:



## bettacrazygirl86 (Jan 21, 2013)

I was at my LFS, looking for tanks that would be suitable for a college dorm. I wanted something around 3 gallons, but not 5, around $40 as I plan to buy two (One for Patriot and one for Tiny Tina), and comes with a filter. I also thought LED lighting would be nice too, but I wasn't looking for that. It's just a plus.

Well, with the help of one of the employees, I decided to buy the Marina 360. She said she would be buying one later too. xD I was debating over getting this particular tank, or getting a Marineland/Tetra Crescent 3 gallon. But I hate the Whisper filter. It was too strong and I just don't like it.  I was going to get a HOB filter, but they were all too big for the cut out space on the Crescent. So I bought the Marina.

Overall, I like it. It looks really nice, and the filter is a plus. The intake is on the bottom of the filter/light console, and the outflow is a small little square in the top center of the console, just below the LED lighting. It also comes with a blue light for night time, an off setting, and the white, brighter lights for during the day. In the filter, there's a cut out for a Marina 10 watt heater. I had hopes mine would fit, but it didn't.  If the Marina 10 watt heats well, I might buy one just to free up space.

This tank has its pros and cons. I like it, but there are some things I'm not so happy about.

Pros:
Filter intake is on the bottom.
Has a cut out for a heater inside the filter, which hopefully means more even temperature throughout the tank
Very cool appearance
Lights are nice, and I like the settings

Cons:
Space for decorations is lacking. It's a cylinder shaped tank, and the filter console, while attractive, does take up some space. Instead of adding all of the decorations from Tiny Tina's old tank, I had to leave out one of the plants that I really liked, because there wasn't enough room for it.
The lid is sometimes a little hard to get on, but that may just be because I have the filter cord there.

All in all, I really like this tank. I wish it was a bit bigger, but for $40, I think it's good enough. It came with the filter which I'm very happy with. The outflow isn't bad at all. It isn't pushing around the plants as much as my 5 gallon hex's filter does.

I'm letting it run a while before I put Tina in. I might add some more water to it, to bring the surface of the water to the lip of the outflow to make it a little more gentle, just because she's so tiny.

Here are some pictures of the tank. :3


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## sarahspins (Sep 5, 2012)

I have several of the 10W marina heaters in use in my smaller 2.5g tanks and they seem to work fine, I consistently read the temperature at 77 or 78... however that's pretty much room temperature in my house, so it's hard to say how much they're actually doing... except that my shrimp tank which has no heater has dropped into the upper 60's when it has been cold (not a problem for the shrimp), the rest of the tanks do stay warmer.


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## bettacrazygirl86 (Jan 21, 2013)

sarahspins said:


> I have several of the 10W marina heaters in use in my smaller 2.5g tanks and they seem to work fine, I consistently read the temperature at 77 or 78... however that's pretty much room temperature in my house, so it's hard to say how much they're actually doing... except that my shrimp tank which has no heater has dropped into the upper 60's when it has been cold (not a problem for the shrimp), the rest of the tanks do stay warmer.


I'll look into them. They might do better than my 2-15 gallon Tetra heater.


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## bettacrazygirl86 (Jan 21, 2013)

Okay, so after a while of running it, I decided to put her in. I've been watching her swim, and the filter flow is definitely too strong for her the way I had it. She's very curious, and got a little too close to the outflow, and I was afraid she was about to pull a Nemo, so I stopped her and took out some water, dropping it a bit below the outflow. Now, instead of the current being only near the surface, it drops straight down. I may get a sponge to baffle it, so she doesn't have to fight the current to swim, but she does seem to like the tank. She's been swimming all over the place, checking everything out. The intake at the bottom isn't strong, from what I can tell. She swam by it, no problem. But whenever she goes near the surface, she gets shoved clear across the tank. After lowering the water level to just below the outflow, the current just pushes her down when she swims directly under it.

She keeps swimming under it though, intentionally! She gets shoved down, swims up beside the current, and swims through it again. It's like she expects it to be different the second time around or something. Silly thing. She'll learn, I guess.

I think she'll be okay with it, but I'll definitely baffle it tomorrow, once I go back out. Any recommendations on what sponge to get, or anything? I just need something to sit in front of the outflow and make it not so mean.


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