Cpllongjk's Red Sea Reefer 170

Ok.

Switched out the Reefbrite Halide Hybrid for a Giesemann Spectra. OMG I love this light. I should have bought one a long time ago! I don't have the t5s yet, still in shipping, but this thing is just slightly bigger than my old ati sunpower was.





I plan on running a 250w radium for 6 hours (11am-5pm)
2 Ati True Actinics 14 hours (7am-9pm)
1 aquablue special and 1 purple plus 10 hours (9am-7pm)

As of right now the tank looks rather green. There is a tiny bit of hair algae on the bottom left corner on the rock near the frag rack but all that green is coralline algae. It is popping up everywhere. Its on the glass, rocks, plastic pieces, everywhere. This is the fastest I've ever seen coralline pop up.



I added a few tester frags before my mystery pack comes from BattleCorals. I want to make sure I don't have any losses since Adam's corals are the bomb!





I drilled a small hole under my window sill for the skimmer to breath outside air. My pH was fluctuating between 7.8 at night to 8.0 during the day. If I open the window I can get 8.3 during the day and 8.05 at night. With the line plumbed outside I am getting the same results as opening the window. In the future I may place a reactor of carbon and co2 scrubber media on the line to get any chemicals that may be sprayed in the neighborhood and rid my tank of any co2 that may come in. The co2 might not be needed so I will try it but if I burn through media I will discontinue use.





Coming soon...

I decided I will dose Fauna Marin's Ultra Balling Light Method on this setup. I'll post pictures of the dosing setup when I get everything placed and hooked up this weekend. I'm manually dosing Alk right now and having to add 8mL of alk daily since I am depleting roughly 0.4 dKH a day. I actually cannot wait for the stuff to get here so that I don't have to dose manually and things will be a lot more stable.
 
How's the heat with that halide?

Also, that's an interesting modification along the front edge of the tank. Light shield?

Looking good so far.
 
BOBBY said:
How's the heat with that halide?

Also, that's an interesting modification along the front edge of the tank. Light shield?

Looking good so far.
Click to expand...

I'm planning on raising the light up to 8-10" the heat isn't too bad yet but then again it's not summer yet. The fan is able to keep up for now.

Yeah it's a light shield. I'm going to be making a new one when I raise the light up. I'll post Some photos when I do.
 
Small Update...

All parameters are doing well. I still have a bit of algae that the snails are slowly mowing down.

I ordered some 3/16" black acrylic from TAPPLASTICS in order to build a better and taller acrylic shield so I could raise my light a bit higher. My bulb is now 10" off the water surface. The shield was easy to build and only took 3 main pieces and 4 small pieces.

The cuts were:
(1) 24 1/8" x 8" (front)
(2) 10"x8" (sides)
(4) 1"x4" (bracing)

I didn't want the acrylic on the sides to extend all the way to the back because I wanted air to flow in and out from the fan on the back wall.

Left Side View... You can see why I didn't want the "shield" to extend all the way around it would block the airflow.


Right Side View... The air blows across the water and out the other side.


Inside View... The only thing holding it on the tank are (4) 1"x4" pieces. The shield just sets on top of the rimless tank. In order to pull off I just lift off and then take the screen out.
 
I'm very jealous of your acros from Battlecorals. Adam has great stuff. His collection is mostly what I'd want in my tank. :D

Cant wait to see how the tanks doing in six months time.
 
sahin said:
I'm very jealous of your acros from Battlecorals. Adam has great stuff. His collection is mostly what I'd want in my tank. :D

Cant wait to see how the tanks doing in six months time.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I plan on making sure this tank grows out very well. I don't want a "fragged" tank look. I like it when the corals are happy and health and only frag for trimming so they don't compete against each other.
 
sahin said:
Loving your acro selection. Old school acros, but way cool.
Click to expand...

Nah man they never get old. Corals go through phases. Buying the "in thing" is just too expensive. I would rather buy what I like than buy what's popular.

On a side note I spoke to a guy in my reefing club about starting up a business. I may start up a home business as things progress. Honestly, I would be happy just to break even. Once I get all the coral frags in the tank I don't want to frag anything unless it is growing over other corals. I want my tank to grow out for at least a year before I think about fragging.

What do you think, set up a frag tank (20x20x12, about 20 gallons) soon or later? I think I would probably place a single 250w MH over the frag tank. No supplemental lighting, just a single MH.
 
Learn It said:
Great start. I always thought the MP10 looks best on the back wall if your flow needs allow for it.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I love them on the back wall to. It makes it so much easier to clean the side glass for 3 sided viewing. I just hope the flow in the middle of the tank is random and strong enough.
 
My semi-auto water change setup.

I decided to build a semi-auto water change setup. For safety I did not want to make it fully automatic but it is close.

Pros of Fully Auto Water Changes
1. Can be completed while I am on vacation
2. Keep parameters rock solid and ensure that they actually get done

Cons
1. Requires a very expensive setup; 2 dosing pumps
2. Calibration of the pumps is difficult when pump flows can change
3. Salinity can change depending on how off the pumps are

Now for the setup and why I chose to do certain things...

First off - this is a picture of the unfinished laundry room. My office/man cave is on the other side of this wall and the tank is directly on the other side. For a while now my top off 14 gallon brute container has been taking up a lot of space on the counter top. Since this is my wife's laundry folding table she has wanted it cleared off of my junk. I still have some more stuff to remove but I believe this is much better than before.
I also didn't like the fact that the 14g brute container held too much water, while I could have just reduced the size of the container I also wanted to clean things up. Now there is a 5 gallon top off bucket with a 1 1/2" hole drilled in the bottom to accommodate a bulkhead. I wanted a 5 gallon bucket because incase something goes wrong with the float valve only 5 gallons will empty into my tank. This is not nearly as bad as 14 gallons.


Each bucket has 1/4" OD tubing coming from it that goes to a ball valve and then to the sump into a "Y" fitting before the float valve. I also use ball valves near the "Y" inside the sump but I will talk about that more below. The salt bucket is filled weekly and is only mixed and heated while mixing for the first day or two. Since my water changes only consist of 2-2.5 Liters daily I do not see any point in heating the water after the salt is mixed well.


I ended up placing ball valves near the "Y" because I was having a backflow issue when both valves were open under the buckets. For instance, if the top off bucket was full and the salt bucket empty and both valves were open then the fresh water would go down to the "Y" and back up to the salt bucket. Pressure would force is up the "salt" tubing. While I could just make sure the salt line was closed I wanted to add another safety feature.



After using this setup for the first time today I realized how easy it is going to be to do water changes now. There is only one problem I did not forsee. The float valve replaces water rather quickly at the beginning but then starts to slow down as the level is equalized. You really need to give the valve time. In my case I had to wait 20 minutes for salt water to completely top off. While this isn't a big deal it is worth noting. JUST DON'T FORGET TO TURN OFF YOUR SALT LINE AND TURN ON YOUR FRESH LINE, LOL!

To automate this a bit more, I plan on adding a dosing pump to pull water out of the tank and push it to the laundry room sink. Since all water taken out is topped off I am not worried about pulling out too much water. I can just set the dosing pump up for so many minutes and leave it then just adjust the valves when completed.
 
The DOS will allow you to do constant water changes if that's what you want to do. I'm using mine for dosing two part, but I may get another one for this at some point. Must be great to have a laundry room on the other side of the wall. I have my foyer. :rolleye1:
 
Frontier said:
The DOS will allow you to do constant water changes if that's what you want to do. I'm using mine for dosing two part, but I may get another one for this at some point. Must be great to have a laundry room on the other side of the wall. I have my foyer. :rolleye1:
Click to expand...

I really gave a hard look at the DOS but what made me steer away from using multiple dosing pumps was the need to calibrate both pumps and if one of them is off by a bit then my salinity will change. I do not trust something like that away from home. And if I have to be home I would be better off manually doing a wc.

It's nice but I will probably go into the attic and run the water lines to the other side so I don't have to stretch it across the 8ft space. It sounds crazy but my kids have been known to pull on things and I wouldn't want them pulling the running water line down.
 
A 20x20 is kinda small as a frag tank. I'd go 30x30 at least. If you want to grow out for selling then space runs out very quick. Once you get corals into colony sizes most grow fast and you'll be fragging weekly.
 
sahin said:
A 20x20 is kinda small as a frag tank. I'd go 30x30 at least. If you want to grow out for selling then space runs out very quick. Once you get corals into colony sizes most grow fast and you'll be fragging weekly.
Click to expand...

The biggest I can go is 72"x24" The limiting factor is front to back. I cannot go over 24" from front to back. However, my wife probably wouldn't let me go bigger than 48x24" and honestly anything more than 30x24 might not happen because I dont think my circuit can handle that much power on one circuit without updating the electrical. I might be handicapped to a single 250w bulb due to electrical concerns. My house runs on old bussman fuses and in order to do things right I would have to spend thousands updating the electrical to breakers and fixing the wiring.

On another note, I got my order a day late from Battlecorals. It was at no fault to the shipper and completely the fault of FEDEX. As it stands right now I lost 2 frags in shipping and 2 more are RTN'ing right now. I am crossing my fingers that no more die. But I don't blame them for spending 2 full days in shipping.
 
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