Reefer Lingo

[sal-t-dawg]

Ok. so help me figure out what some of this stuff means:

FOWLR: Fish Only With Live Rock - is that correct?
PICO: ???

What are some of the other ones?

Dont leave a brotha in tha dark!!
:cool:

[TomStill]

yes fish only with live rock

[Angela Short]

http://www.reefcentral.com/modules.php?s=&name=Encyclopedia&op=terms&eid=2&ltr=all

A nice little list already compiled I have used many times :) We tend to forget new folks to reefing don't know all the shorthand yet and I still can't spell longhand right :lol:

[poolkeeper1]

Put in coral only? Just a guess, am I right? I'm not up with all the sayings either.

[james3370]

PICO is just a brand name for the small 3 gallon tanks....actually it's a JBJ Picotope

i have 2 of they & they are kewl lil tanks. when the new build is setup, i plan on turning 1 of them into a dwarf seahorse tank

[undertcontrolj]

Pico I think just means small I have a pico 2.5 gallons

[NeveSSL]

Thats my understanding, too, Justin. Just a small tank. :)

Pico, micro, etc.

Brandon

[sandalscout]

yeah, my understanding, nano = smaller than 30 gallons, pico = smaller than 3(?) gallons. I call my Pico a Nano all the time, got stop that!

[NeveSSL]

Where's micro? Less than 10g? :D

Brandon

[james3370]

i think pico came along from the small 3 gallon jbj picotope tanks like i mentioned & has now become synonomous for that size tank

like when you say "coke" to refer to coke, pepsi etc LOL

[sandalscout]

Yeah, I'm sure that's correct James, when I was first into reefing about 8-9 years ago, everyone called the little tanks (such as my 2.5 gallon back then) simply a nano.

[DMBillies]

Micro, nano, and pico are all SI prefixes for units of measurement (see the bottom of my post) that so many companies bastardize to sound cool... which is the case in the aquarium hobby.

The term Nano undoubtedly came on the aquarium market as a product name for one of the all-in-one small units we currently have (I would guess JBJ was the first, but I can't find proof of that online and they came out before I started in the hobby). I would have to say that Pico definitely started the same way with the picotope (as James already said). The confusion now comes in with people calling any tank smaller than 30 gallons a nano.

I generally think of Nano as a name for any self-contained all-in-one tank, not just a small fish tank. I'm not saying I'm right, but I am saying it leads to confusion any other way. I'll make an analogy to "nose wiping paper." If I ask for a kleenex, you're probably going to immediately think to give me a sheet of tissue from a box on a table whether it is a kleenex brand or not. You probably wouldn't run into your bathroom and get a sheet of tissue from the roll near the toilet... even though they are very similar and either would work.

To make it most simple...
You say you have a nano, I think of an all-in-one unit under 30 gallons. You say you have a pico, you have an all-in-one of 3 gallons or less. Otherwise, you say you have a XX gallon tank and I think of a tank with silicon on all 4 corners.

SI Unit Prefixes
10^15 peta
10^12 tera
10^9 giga
10^6 mega
10^3 kilo
10^2 hecto
10^1 deca
10^0 (none)
10^−1 deci
10^−2 centi
10^−3 milli
10^−6 micro
10^−9 nano
10^−12 pico
10^−15 femto

Some fun measurement facts:
Red blood cells are 7 micrometers in diameter.
Human hair is 100 micrometers in diameter.
The pits on a CD are approx. 100 nanometers deep by 500 nm wide.
A DNA double helix is about 2 nm wide.
A helium atom is roughly 31 picometers in diameter (including the electron cloud).
The highest resolution electron microscope has a resolution down to 50 pm.

The first 2 terabyte computer hdd's came on the market this year. That's 2000 gigabytes. In 1999, the biggest drives available were less than 100 gb's.

[sandalscout]

Awesome post Brian!

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14555366#post14555366 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by DMBillies
The term Nano undoubtedly came on the aquarium market as a product name for one of the all-in-one small units we currently have (I would guess JBJ was the first, but I can't find proof of that online and they came out before I started in the hobby).

Interesting thought. I'm not sure if this helps, but in 2000 people were calling little tanks nanos, here is a post from me in Jan 2000 about my 2.5 nano http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/f7/blytz-nano-reef-3740.html, I'm "blytz" on that site. When did those all one units hit the market? I don't recall them being out, but maybe I just missed them? I was poor back then! haha

[DMBillies]

Matt- I don't know. I maybe should not have used undoubtedly. This is what you get for posting at 2:00am hopped up on Mucinex and cough syrup. I have e-mailed JBJ to find out what year theirs hit the market. It is surprisingly difficult to find out information about products on the internet. Searches always just direct you to 500 places trying to sell you things. Old wizened ones???

[sandalscout]

yeah, I did a search to see if I could find that out too, but turned nothing up.... I'm curious to see which came first also. Isn't it funny the research into non-important stuff we'll do!?!?!?!?!?!