20G DIY LED SPS office tank w/ LED turf scrubber

[zachtos]

My new LED office tank

oh yeah, it has LED

DIY LED from rapidled

boring office

ballasts behind monitor

no sump, just an auto topoff device and some surge protectors w/ GFI outlet adapters

fish - Royal gramma, sixline wrasse, false clown, firefish

the filter, refugium/algae turf scrubber

DIY daylight controller

profile shot

The Challenge:
Keep SPS reef in a 15G display that runs silently, has fish, runs SILENT, no skimmer (silent!), low wattage/low heat... is that too much to ask?

 

[zachtos]

rough PAR measurements

12 neutral white xpg crees at 1.25A

24 royal blue xpe crees at 700mA

around 115watts w/ a fan

epoxied in place w/ 65degree lenses

7 RED osram LEDs and 2 cree xpe blues at 700mA. 65deg lenses on blue, can't recall what lense I threw on the reds... too tight. I get 900 PAR on most of the turf scrubber... oh I have a apogee PAR meter too.

 

[zachtos]

Day 7

Day 7

day 12

day 12

day 17

day 17

 

[Heavy Hittah]

Looking good, I like it alot. More than I thought I would. I'll be following for sure

 

[zachtos]

I'll be maintaining Ca/Alk/Mg w/ DIY 3 part solution of DowFlake, Baking Soda, MagFlake (each diluted w/ 50% water by volume). I also have 1/2gallon of water that auto-tops the tank via evaporation each week w/ Calcium Hydroxide/Lime. So far the alkalinity has stayed 8-10dkh. It will be tough once corals start to take off. It shouldn't be bad for an experienced SPS keeper like myself. Plus I can replace any failures free from my mature 240G SPS tank. Nano keeping is not for beginners!

Hair Algae is starting to die off already at 2 weeks, w/o a cleaner crew! I'm feeding 3X daily very small amounts. no food Sat/Sundays though. Tanks starts at 79F daily, and creeps to 81F by end of light cycle. I do not use the heater. The tank has 14Watts of electric heat from the tunze6015 and maxijet900. A maxi1200 overheated the tank to 84F w/ only 24W of load in the system. The lights, once again, are only 115Watts, so not much, and they are about 8" from the water w/ a 1/4" piece of solid acrylic covering the tank (not air tight of course).

I also raised the RED LEDs up a few inches because I think they were burning/killing the growth on the turf scrubber. Not sure how much it reduced the PAR (meter at home). I may have to take the lenses off the Fuge light.

 

[zachtos]

I ran this by our building supervisor and he ran it up the chain of command. I was able to make it by using timers, keeping it dead silent, low wattage and by using portable GFI outlets. I could not have a sump, and it had to be very reliable, so I put a divider in the tank to house the turf scrubber. It was a tough sell, but once I brought it in and got some fish/coral in there, they were amazed. I do water changes bi-weekly using regular old siphon. I store water in sealed 5 gallon jugs (from a local brewery). I was going to drill the tank to make easy water changes, but that would be another potential failure point.

 

[spudmclellan]

Sounds like a lot of work, I was told if it looks like a vase, its vase. otherwise, the rental agreement says NO aquariums.

 

[JasonBJones]

Nice looking set up. I hope I will be able to set up a tank in my office next this fall.

I am curious why you are using lenses on such a shallow tank with the light so close. It seems you would be getting more than enough light without them, plus less banding.

 

[zachtos]

Nice looking set up. I hope I will be able to set up a tank in my office next this fall.

I am curious why you are using lenses on such a shallow tank with the light so close. It seems you would be getting more than enough light without them, plus less banding.

The LED setup was never intended for this tank, it was to be for a frag tank at home to test SPS growth vs. 400W MH. I should put 80degree lenses on this instead of 65degree but I'm not that worried about my office tank. Lenses are necessary, without them the PAR is about 5 to 10 times less. Their is noticable color banding on the ends (white on one end, blue on the other). My corals are happy w/ the high PAR so far. Any green corals actually look amazing from the royal blues.

 

[llaferte]

Very nice. I'll be looking for more info on the turf scrubber, and red/blue lights for the refugium/algae.

 

[trigs]

very nice looking leds, i will be doing something similar with mine

 

[zachtos]

full tank shot - 1 month

turf scrubber - 3.5 weeks (cleaning weekly)

The turf scrubber is working so far after I raised it up a bit (400 PAR now). Hair algae in the display is slowing down and corraline is starting. All part of the normal tank cycling process. I lost my royal gramma, it died to ick. Now all the fish have ick, not sure how they will fair. All of the corals are bleaching, so I turned the intensity of the LEDs down by 60% and they seem to be stable. I've never bleached a coral w/ 400W MH, so I don't really know how to make them recover. I added a lot of frags leftover from our yearly frag swap event. I also added about 6-8 cerith snails for clean up crew. I would like to replace the fish I lost, but we'll see, depends on the ick outbreaks. I also grabbed a few zooanthids in case the SPS don't pan out in the tank. Keeping water quality high is not easy for a small tank.

 

[zachtos]

I'm already considering tearing this tank down. It's just such a pain to lug in a 50lb 5gallon container each week to do a water change. The turf scrubber is NOT BIG ENOUGH to stop nuisance algae from growing in the display. Macro algae in the display is taking over now though, which is fine, because it's less hideous and easier to manage then other algaes. Ca, Alk and Mag are a nightmare in this tank! I topoff w/ kalkwasser, but it's already a pain to keep them up w/ 3 part solution. Plus, whenver I'm out for 3 days or more, I have to ask someone to check the topoff and feed the fish. Not ideal at the office. I need a part time skimmer or a monkey to lug buckets into the office for me. The LED light bleaches the corals if over 50% intensity (been slowly ramping it up). Only 3 corals really look amazing under it, the rest, bleh. The point of the tank was to experiment for my future home builds. I concluded that LED works great, but certain SPS look like poo under LED, while others look amazing. LED easily will bleach corals, which is awesome, because that means I don't need to pack the LEDs so densely (cheaper). A DIY controller is a must for inensity ramping. I think I will remove this tank and move the fish/LED to my 240G display. I'll just slide my 400W halides closer together and let the LED cover my favorite coral (palmer blue mille & peach/green mille). Maybe I'll bring a tiny FW planted LED tank into the office instead, so I only need a tiny 1 gallon jug of RO/DI or something stupid like a zoa tank...

 

[Michigan Mike]

Crazy what a few months can do...Good idea just not enough tank and space.