45 Galllon Cube. My dream tank...only smaller!

[chrishayes]

Oh, and on a brighter note, IM DONE CYCLING! ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 20. Ive gotten this reading for 2 days straight plus had the lfs check it as well just for kicks. They used test strips! lol boy oh boy. WOOOOO HOOOO. Now im going to finish the 2 week loading of MB7 along with continuing to feed pellets every few days then ill be moving the fish over slowly.

 

[chrishayes]

After scouring the web I have found the first to in fact be a squat lobster Allogalathea elegans which is a docile even sought after crustacean. So hes in the fuge. They are thought to prey on sesile prey so he may have to live in the display as to not eat off a ton of pods.

The other in the acro is sadly a Xanthid sp. which are thought to help protect the coral while at the same time eating small portions of it. Well, after further inspection, hes eaten quite a bit of the coral! Like a trail of breadcrumbs leading right to him only instead of bread its coral tissue loss. So, his fate will have to be decided upon tomorrow when ill call the lfs and see if theyd like a snack for their triggers. Darn, I get a coral crab and it just HAS to be the wrong kind. Shucks.

 

[chrishayes]

I was able to get a little more work done today on the light. This week has flown by and ive had a lot of dr appts to deal with so things arent going as quick as I would like.

First I started by attaching a strip of double sided tape in between where the 3M tape was on the back of the stunner. My tape was off white colored so I painted it with a sharpie paint pen, black to match the 3M. Then I mocked up the location I wanted it in on both sides and made a pencil mark for the screw hole. I drillled it with a bit smaller than the screw thread then chased it with a tap tool. Once I was happy with placement I started the screw and pressed the tape onto the fixture, repeated for the other side and viola.

You can see I mounted them outboard of the lumenmax so that they do not affect the halide spread much. Although once the reflectors are on I imagine it will slightly...

After that I ran the wiring behind the inner reflector using stickybaks and zipties to keep the wiring from touching the inner surface as it gets pretty hot with a 250 halide running. The wires are about 2" away from the back of the reflector and there are cooling vents right next to them so I think theyll be ok. If not then ill have to jacket them with thermal tape. May do it anyways for good measure. Here is the completed fixture, its now a three in one!

For the wiring to enter the housing I drilled a hole with the uni bit to fit a gromet and will be shrink tubing them when I get the wires through the hanger. The larger open hole is where the halides wiring grommet goes.

I have babysitting duties all day tomorrow so I guess hopefully Sunday I can wrap this lighting project up.

 

[chrishayes]

Another weekend and my light still isnt finished! im ashamed...I never realized how precious spare time was til I had my son! His first sandbox under the playset was more important than my fishtank this weekend.

I snuck out to the garage saturday night and got all the wiring done and had to make a few tweeks to the fixture to screw back together. The screw I put in the housing for the stunner was stopping the endcap from being flush which confused the heck outta me for half an hour. I was retracing all my steps and going, how the hell did I bend this thing up so bad? duh. But as it sits now the endcap just needs screwed back onto the fixture and its done. I should be able to get the light in the house and mounted today. Ill take pics of course but there doesnt seem to be much interest in it so ill just do a before and after without all the step by steps of install. So let me wrap the lighting up with the last few steps then itll be all livestock from here on out.

Ok, so since the power supplies for the stunners and the moonlight didnt provide enough wiring to run all the way through my conduit, I had to drill another hole with the unibit and put a grommet in it. This hole is just below the offset I made. It should be high enough to clear the minis on the stand even when the light is adjusted high or low. If you copy this idea make sure u measure for this so you dont end up with your wires interfering with your mounts.

At the other end where the fixture is, I had to splice extra wire on to extend the tiny little factory wire amount. I dont see how folks can get these plugged in when using them on a high canopy unless you have a power strip up there...oh well, anyways to do that you have to make sure everything goes over the wires in the proper order or youll screw yourself. First you need to put your grommet on followed by your heatshrink tubing for both sets of wires followed by the heatshrink for the individual wires. Like this.

Next its time to solder. I use a butane torch/solder iron as its way nicer than being tethered to a wire and with a blue flame itll shrink your heatshrink as well.

You MUST use solder flux on stranded wire or youll have a loose weak connection. I splice the two wires together with a pretzel twist. Think of the center X of a soft pretzel. I twist the two into an X then press the X down flat, flux it then solder. After the solder cols a few seconds I slide the heatshrink over it and heat it slowly to avoid burning it. All done.

 

[chrishayes]

after extending the wires I shrunk the heatshrink tubing to protect the two sets of wire for the stunners and moonlights then inserted it into the grommet to finish it off at the conduit and the lumenmax.

After that, I stripped the wires inside the lumenmax and crimped on male/female insulated spade terminals so that the wiring can be disconnected if I need to remove the lumenmax for any reason.

I used these to crimp, they are ratcheting crimpers and make a very nice professional crimp.

All plugged in, just needs the screws put in the endcap and itll be done.

 

[chrishayes]

Finally done with this stinkin light! It was worth the amount of time I put into it and taking my time with the details really made the difference in how the finished product turned out. Im satisfied and its function and form work for me which is always nice. MUCH nicer than the hardware store chain and knurles cobble job of my first attempt!

After I buttoned up the endcap I got the fixture eyebolts hung on my j hooks then brought it inside to finish the rest. I used some plastic wire wrap loom around the section where ill be adjusting the height of the fixture.

I knew from using it at work before that it could act as a bearing. Once the pipe wrapped with it is tightened with the minis you can still twist the pipe back and forth without loosening the bolts. The loom expands and contracts as you twist and has the bonus of not scratching the paint! It still provides enough tension for the pipe not to slide down or up but as long as you wrap in the direction opposite of the way you will be twisting the pipe, the wrap will open up allowing the pipe to turn.

in posistion

complete access to the tank!

Sorry, the pipe is leaning because I used drywall screws in the minis and when the weight was on them the 1/4" hole alowed the minis to slide sideways. I fixed this with lag bolts the same 1/4" dia as the hole in the mini. Just took the pictures before I did this.

Heres a shot of the mounting.

And I found this after searching every hardware store there is at Ace. Works perfectly for finishing the open end of the conduit.

 

[chrishayes]

Now, the money shots!

moonlight only

moonlight and stunners

Radium and stunners first shot is on auto settings and second is my best attempt to show the true color, its really close but a little whiter than in real life.

 

[reefsurfing]

Chris great work on the build, light and aquascape. I really enjoy the slendor type overflow they use in your system. Really frees up the real estate in your tank to aquascape.

 

[chrishayes]

Well, I dont know who THEY are but the overflow in my tank was built by chrishayes! lol

Thanks for the comments! I appreciate your reply.

 

[Dana42078]

Your a DIY machine. Once again very nice job. I like the swivel light for full access.

 

[chrishayes]

Your a DIY machine. Once again very nice job. I like the swivel light for full access.

Thank you so much for your compliment! I love to build things and have missed doing projects since ive been down with my back for the past 3 years. Its nice with tanks because the projects are much smaller and theres no heavy lifting and each step can be done fairly quickly so im not bending or kneeling too long which is hell on my back.

The diy'ing is pretty much done though now as ive run out of things to do. Im in the process of building a new lighting system inside of the stock hood for my sons biocube 8g. Once thats done, if I have time before my surgery ill make doors for the stand on the 45 as I want to run the fuge on a reverse light cycle. I also decided to use the coralife mini pc that I originally had on the fuge since it looks cleaner and doesnt spill light everywhere. Thats the reason im building my sons light since the coralife mini is on his tank now.

 

[chrishayes]

The moonlight is FAR too bright to run for any length of time after lights out. It is however one of the most beautiful lighting ive ever seen! The deep purpleish color and the shimmer is incredible. It brings a whole new dimension to the tank that ive never experienced since on my old nc28 the moonlights took a crap only 2 days after I bought it. Never used moonlights before but I plan to runthem from here on out now if only for the coolness factor plus allowing just a bit more time for me to view the tank along with giving a full dimming effect from dawn to dusk to darkness. Im also going to have to figure out a way to shade the led caues it is so bright and the fact that it is below the edges of the lumenmax, it hurts your eyes when the room is dark. So I need to bend a piece of alluminum in a half moon to glue onto the heatsink in front of the bulb without interfering with the light spread.

 

[chrishayes]

It is time, duh duh donnnnnn! I am going to do a full brute water change in a few minutes then start acclimating my clowns and moby the goby! Wish me luck. I have a feeling I am going to go through a cyanobacteria bloom. My fuge is covered in it but without light in the main tank it hasnt shown up. I have started the lighting now though, but will only run actinics for the rest of the week and see how it goes. If no crazy algae blooms happen I will start transferring some of my hardier corals over.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

 

[nate82]

I have the same tank, awesome scape! Good luck with the fish looks like youre off to a great start. If the moonlights are too bright, you could always buy a cheap dimmer from radio shack and wire it right into the power cord. I did it with mine and its great to be able to play with the intensity when youre staring late at night.

 

[chrishayes]

I have the same tank, awesome scape! Good luck with the fish looks like youre off to a great start. If the moonlights are too bright, you could always buy a cheap dimmer from radio shack and wire it right into the power cord. I did it with mine and its great to be able to play with the intensity when youre staring late at night.

I didnt know you could do that. What type of dimmer is required? I mean as an electrician i know what im doing but the only types of dimmers available are incandecent and flourecent. I assume youd need a pot for the 24v leds?

 

[Dana42078]

I have a question if your "moonlights" are to bright what does that do? I mean I think mine are to bright but I've been running them 24/7 with no problems . Then again I'm still only a noob with a year experience. Educate me. I also want those magenta stunners!

 

[chrishayes]

I have a question if your "moonlights" are to bright what does that do? I mean I think mine are to bright but I've been running them 24/7 with no problems . Then again I'm still only a noob with a year experience. Educate me. I also want those magenta stunners!

If the lights are too bright, the corals and fish will not go into "sleep" mode. ie not extending feeder tentacles/polyps. The fish will stay active as well. For the photosythesis plants/animals this is harmful as it doesnt allow respiration and in corals it has been documented that the bulk of coral skeletal growth happens in darkness with fleshy growth happening during daytime. As for fish, this causes stress which makes them more suseptable to illness.

Since ive not run them before I cant comment directly on whether the moonlights will cause this to happen but my "gut" tells me this is enough light to continue the "daytime" portion of photosynthesis...

 

[Dana42078]

Hmmm I've never ran into any issues so far but I've debated on putting the moonlights ona timer...thanks for that info tho.

 

[chrishayes]

I know the photos are horrible and extremely unexciting but hey, I got a FISH tank now! I tranfered over my percula pair and moby the yellow watchman yesterday after drip acclimating them to their new home. I did this after doing a full brute trashcan waterchange to try to flush the nitrate out along with any byproducts of the cycle. It was probably 35 gallons.

I tested the water an hour after doing the change and I read 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, just a hint of nitrate(using api goes from 0-10ppm) and 0.00 p04 using a hanna checker. Im not real sure about the hanna test because it flashed--- after the countdown was up then diplayed 0.00 without blinking but the reading stayed on the screen for well over 30 seconds which from what ive read including the instructions, it says the reading will only stay up for 10 seconds. I will test it again later today when a full 24 hours will have passed since the last test. If anyone knows of a better way to get the reagent from the packets into the test vial, im all ears.

The fish seem to be a little lost in their new home but are active and exploring plus they ate this morning so I assume all is well. Like I said, I will give the tank a week from yesterday running 10 hours per day actinics and feeding the fish once maybe twice per day. Then, I will test the water to see if the nitrate climbs again. If it does then I will have to wait until it stops before tranferring any corals over. I have an itch to get a few of them in there now due to my impatience but also because they are not doing well in the temp tank cause they keep falling over and being stung/stinging other corals as there just isnt any room in there.

August 31st will be the end of my two week loading phase of mb7. If I still keep registering nitrates I will begin a very small dose of vodka to boost bacterial populations further to help reduce them along with hopefully outcompeting the cyano thats in the fuge. Im also going to be ordering a bottle of kent chelated iron to dose for the macros as I typically have no luck with chaeto in my water in my current house and this tank is no exception. The caulerpa is doing pretty well and actively growing but the cheato is not. The ulva is doing exceptionally well to my surprise. It has even dropped portions of itself to start new pieces. The cheato just gets covered in microalgae and cyano in every tank ive had here but in my old house it grew like mad tripling in size every month at least. So, ive done some research that adding iron to a NSW level or above helps to keep the algae lush green and growth is also enhanced which helps the macros to get the upperhand on micros.

I had also purchased the kent tech M but seriously underestimated how much I would need. I shouldve tested my water before ordering but since my previous NC28 always ran in the over 1500ppm range I just assumed this was from the reefcrystals salt. When I started the tech M I measured mg and it was only 1380 so I needed 270ml of tech m to raise mg by only 100ppm. My 16oz bottle only gave me 2 1/2 days worth...the level is sitting at 1550 currently which has made a noticable dent in the byropsis but did not eliminate it. Ill order more along with the iron today.

Well heres the pictures. Have a great day!

 

[Reef_Noob]

hiya Chris a.k.a DIY machine

Congratulations buddy...Happy fishes in a Happy Reef!!
Now...You absolutely sure adding Iron to the new tank is gonna boost macro algae? Iv only come across of the micro going all freakin crazy once you dose Iron or Iodine into a "new" system.

I had just read your post on my thread..i never added iodine or Lugols to any of my systems...i never felt it was necessary..regular water changes did the trick always. Adding iodine just leads to unnecessary algae bloooming all over.

You thought about adding an "Algae Scrubber" ? It might help.
Me too need to get my Mg up...also got Tech M, will start dosing, i read that it helps prevent bryopsis blooms...has a dual effect ....ups Mg and kills Bryo.
If you having Bryo trouble....hope this helps...http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1113109&highlight=tech+m+bryopsis

Just a suggestion...try adding Tech M first.. see what happens....wait with the Iron.

Aquascaping looks sweeet.....love the tiny arch.

Good luck...May the force be with you...:strooper: