Jadette's 140g Rimless Build Thread

[Mr. Reef]

jadette,thanks for the encouragement. I will go for it

jadette,thanks for the encouragement. I will go for it

jadette, thanks for the encouragement. I will go for it, with one male and a few female Bartletts.

Thanks for all the compliments.

Mr. Reef - Unless I decide on stocking more wrasses, I plan on keeping my tank uncovered. I've kept anthias in my tanks since 2006, and the only time I had them jump was when my male lyretail died and the females were battling for dominance. That was a crazy week of lots of chasing in the tank before the pecking order was established and things calmed down. I'm sure if I had a larger tank, the problem wouldn't be so bad.

Bartletts are a great choice since they're hardy like lyretails but tend not to be as aggressive.

I'm going to try and find schools of Ignitus Anthias:

or
Carberryi Anthias.

I see them on sale at liveaquaria from time to time, so I wouldn't mind buying from them and having the 14 day stay alive guarantee to boot.

 

[Higgy2010]

Beautiful tank! The rimless look is worth it.
+1 on the Ignitus Anthias. I got mine from a local wholesaler through my retailer who makes trips every three weeks or so. Observation from my experience: just keep three in the school/shoal. For whatever mysterious reasons, the fourth one in my tank always either disappeared or died. It's happened four times, as recent as this week. I'm gonna stay put with my current happy and active trio.

 

[jadette]

Hi Kenith, I was wondering if there is a splash guard on your fixture? Also are you using lenses? Thank! Sorry to hijack the thread Shirley. Your tank is awesome. Some day I hope to have something like that.

No probs with asking questions on Kenith's tank here. I was so glad he posted info on his tank here. But to answer your questions, he didn't put a splash guard on his fixture, but said he was considering it. I don't believe he was using lenses. He has a build thread here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2032656

really nice setup Shirley.

Thanks Daniel! Can't wait to see the RP I got from you grow in here.

jadette, thanks for the encouragement. I will go for it, with one male and a few female Bartletts.

I hope you found the Bartletts you were looking for!

Beautiful tank! The rimless look is worth it.
+1 on the Ignitus Anthias. I got mine from a local wholesaler through my retailer who makes trips every three weeks or so. Observation from my experience: just keep three in the school/shoal. For whatever mysterious reasons, the fourth one in my tank always either disappeared or died. It's happened four times, as recent as this week. I'm gonna stay put with my current happy and active trio.

Thanks for the info on the Ignitus. I was hoping to get a large group of them though. At least 10. Hope it works out with a larger group. Not going to put much else in the tank except the anthias, my mystery wrasse, my kole tang, and my sunburst. I will probably get rid of my Lyretail pair when I take down my current tank.

Not really much to report on tank progress. I did finish wiring up my sump light:

Went with a ratio of 2:1 cold whites (yes, colder than cool!): royal blues in a pod formation and then on a separate dimmer/power supply, I have one red mixed in with two normal blues in the center that I will mess around with. I kinda screwed up though, b/c I thought the red LEDs would have the same or similar voltage drop as the whites and blues, but it's only spec'd at 2.2V, so I'm basically losing some efficiency there with the power supply I'm using. No big deal really, but it kinda bugs. (Yes, I do realize that this photo does not show the wiring completed yet!)

I also installed my fans in my stand. One pushing air in and the other pushing air out. These pretty white fans (to match my stand!) push out a good 65 cfm each. It gets really cold in the stand now! Yay! I have them both hooked up to a speed controller, but honestly, they're so quiet at full-blast, I don't see why I would tone them down unless I had evaporation issues.

That's it for now. My order from BRS is coming in on Tuesday, so I'll be working on my plumbing next. SCH 80 Unions FTW!

 

[cocoaandme]

Looks awesome Shirley! What fans are those on the sump? Did they come white or did you have to paint them? And what is the color rating on the cold whites?

 

[lowbudget]

If sump area too cool then it will make temp go down and heaters will kick on more offend. Just a thought

 

[bobafet1]

Wow! Looking good.

 

[jadette]

Looks awesome Shirley! What fans are those on the sump? Did they come white or did you have to paint them? And what is the color rating on the cold whites?

The fans came white. I got them from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/140mm-Performance-140RB-Black-White/dp/B0039825LW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1313339363&sr=8-3
So far, very happy with them. I might get more to cool my light fixture. I'm using 2" angle aluminum to build the frame for my fixture, so with the height of my heatsinks, these fans will peek out a bit. I might consider getting the low profile fans, but they push out less air with more noise for twice the price. It's a trade off I'll just have to decide on!
The cold whites are 18K. Other reefers that have used this combo (2 cold whites: 1 royal blue) say that it gives a radium look. That's a bit too blue for me, but again - I'm just messin with the colors. I've decided to build a modular fixture with LED strips that I can swap in and out alongside with T5 bulbs. Probably too complicated to be considered practical, and I can bet that once I have the lights up, I won't even fiddle with the combinations at all... But I am a dreamer. I'm also lazy, so I wouldn't be surprised if half way through the project, I end up succumbing to purchasing the AI Sol Blues.

If sump area too cool then it will make temp go down and heaters will kick on more offend. Just a thought

That's a very good point Sanh. Didn't think about it since it's the summer and my fans seem to come on all the time. I'm guessing I'll have to keep my fans running on low during the winter just to control the condensation getting trapped in my stand, but not high enough to drop the temp much. Now I'm glad I did put in that speed control. Thanks for the tip!
Btw, I mounted my fans with velcro. It's amazing what velcro can do! Not only does it keep the fans in place, it also provides cushioning between the fan and the stand so there's no rattling/vibration from the contact. It's seriously DEAD silent when the fans are on. It also makes it very easy for me to flip the fans around in case I feel a need to push more air in our pull more air out. Very versatile!

Wow! Looking good.

Thanks Mike! Now it's your turn to post your build thread.

 

[cocoaandme]

18K whites?!!! That's insane. Wow I really want to see what that light looks like when fired up. What brand and model are those whites? I might want to use them for future projects. Oh and can you get lenses for those LEDs?

 

[jadette]

18K whites?!!! That's insane. Wow I really want to see what that light looks like when fired up. What brand and model are those whites? I might want to use them for future projects. Oh and can you get lenses for those LEDs?

I got the LEDs from Satisled. I've been told that these are the same as the bridgelux LEDs. I bought extras so if you want to fiddle around with them, I can spare a few (along with the RBs and reds) for you to play with. I'll even throw in a PT4115E driver and trim pot. You only need to supply the heatsink and power supply. Catch is, you'll have to share your results with me. PM me if you're interested. I can mail them out.

 

[bullitr]

Looks great shirley very clean and well thought of!
I can't wait to see the set up

 

[MedRed]

This is looking AMAZING!

 

[jadette]

Let there be light!

Let there be light!

Pretty patriotic, no?

I have to admit. That red LED makes the fixture look pretty cheez ball. I felt like I was 21 again.. Ready to hit the club scene with my own disco lighting.

I'll probably remove the red LED and throw in a couple of violets that I picked up. They weren't cheap, so I'll feel bad throwing them on this frag/fuge light... but they'll just be sitting in my ESD-safe bag on a shelf collecting dust anyways if I don't use them.

I really need to rethink that middle string though. That voltage drop miscalculation is killing me. The driver got really hot.

Everything else stayed cool though.

Very fun project. I'm glad I worked on this little fixture before working on my main one. Lots of lessons learned. It was very hard working with products made in China. There was no documentation on anything. It took me forever to figure out that the drivers I picked up had bridge rectifiers on them to allow for AC voltage inputs as well. I was scratching my head trying to figure out where the positive/negative leads were when I finally figured out that it didn't matter b/c of the rectifiers. Also, the LED star pcbs had glue all over the pads, so it was difficult to solder them without removing the glue first.

After all that I went through with the cheaper LEDs/drivers, it should be a piece a cake to wire up the CREEs with the Meanwell drivers. Looking forward to it!

 

[cocoaandme]

Very very cooolll!! I don't think your sump will mind the patriotism.

Is this light for a refugium or for frags? Or both?

Oh and where did you get those violets from? I haven't been able to find any!

Thanks for the offer on the LEDs but I will be moving out of LA soon and won't have time to play with them before I go. I would have loved to though!

 

[jadette]

Richard - Hope all is well with you and your studies/travels! I got the violets from satisled.

Update: So I finished my Reef LED Controller!

This lil' hottie can control 4 channels independently (with multiple drivers on each channel). With it, you can set on/off times, intensity, and also fade duration for the sunrise/sunset effect. Since it's Arduino based, it's also expandable for other applications. I plan on putting a temperature control on it later on. Perhaps have it turn off the LEDs if the fixture gets too hot.

Here it is:

Apparently, I can follow instructions to build my own controller, but I can't seem to count the number of characters properly. Yeah, I meant to put "LE" instead of "LEDs" It's a limited edition controller!

Credit goes to this thread for showing me how to build one:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847680

It was quite simple really. The only difficulty I had was doing some guess work on the bill of materials (BoM) and soldering tiny through-hole connections. I was using the wrong soldering tip and was too lazy to buy the right sized one. Ended up spending an entire evening troubleshooting where my bad solder joint was when I couldn't get the controller to work. All is well now.

Placed an order from onlinemetals.com for aluminum channels and angles to build my light fixture already. That's my next big step in my build.

 

[kenith]

Looking good! Great job on the controller. I can't wait to see the finished product. Btw- I got a new 72x30x24. Now I may need to redo my leds :/

 

[jadette]

Thanks Kenith!

Wow. A 72x30x24 eh? Very nice! Are you going to build your own stand for this one too?

I got my rock order from Reefrocks.net today. Yay! Sand should be coming soon, but I'm still debating if I should go bare bottom. Most likely not, but it sure would make putting tons of flow easier.

I'm very happy with my order. I ordered 100 pounds and I think I'm probably going to be using up about 80 pounds of it. The rocks were very clean and came in various sizes. Very porous (though heavier than the BRS pukani I got). The best thing about the rock is how easily it stacks. No matter what I threw together, it fit like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Steve at reefrocks.net was also very pleasant to deal with.

Here's a pic of the rocks. I haven't aquascaped yet. Just threw it all into my tank (minus two large pieces that I'll be breaking up). There's actually two small pieces of BRS pukani rock that I have in there. You can tell which pieces they are by how dirty they are compared to the reefrock's.

Can't wait to start aquascaping. Actually I can wait. Unlike most reefers, I find aquascaping more of a stressful chore than creating art. I honestly don't think I have much of an eye for aquascaping.

Did I mention that I started my plumbing? Did I also mention that I'm such a ditz that I accidentally ordered 14 pieces of 1.5" elbows instead of 4? Here's the piece of art that I created with the elbows. Isn't it beautiful?

Sigh.

 

[kenith]

Lol 14 pcs! That's funny. With that many pieces, you can make a spiral drain for fun

I like the rock. Maybe I'll do dry rock this time around too. It would have to be a blend of both as I'm planning on moving the encrusted coral over to the new tank.

I'm definitely building my own stand. In fact, this tank is an in wall see through tank. I'm almost done bracing the wall with enormous 4x6's and 2x8's!

 

[kenith]

Oh and go bare bottom! The new tank will be bb

 

[jadette]

So my tank has been cycling for 3 weeks now. Can't seem to get my water to go crystal clear b/c my vortechs (2xMP40s) keep kicking up sand. Ah well. I'll figure something out.

Kenith - I went the bare bottom route once with my 40g cube. Watching the hermit crabs slide around was fun for the first 15 minutes, but after that, I just felt bad for them! Although it had its advantages, I just couldn't enjoy the BB look once all the corals started growing out.

I also got my fixture up and running. I went with a T5+LED combo. Pics here show 4x54W T5s and 2 strips of LEDs, but I'm thinking the final config will be 3x54W T5s and 5 strips of LEDs.

Holy Shimmer Batman! (I don't know why my photo came out with blue confetti on the water there. Trust me, I wouldn't know how to photoshop those in even if I tried).

One thing that I was really stressing over was deciding what to use for light poles. I wanted to use the nice squarish ones from Cadlights made for the Artisan cube, but they simply didn't reach out far enough to cover a 30" deep tank. Then I started to research aluminum T channel, but I wasn't sure how I would be able to mount them behind the stand with the stand already against the wall, and the tank already on top. I really didn't want to burden my two brothers to swing by to help me move the tank again just to mount light poles. My husband mocked my "over-thinking" and recommended just bending conduit. $3.50 light poles over my $2000 tank/stand? Sure, why not.

This pic would be half-way decent if I knew how to take proper pics and fix the white balance.

So here I am... Just waiting for my tank to cycle... and cycle ... and cycle... In the meantime, I must remind myself that I still have my 75g running that I have to take care of. It's still a good 1-2 months away before I can start transferring livestock over.

Here's a pic of the acroberry I picked up from a fellow RC reefer over the summer. It's growing very fast, and I'm getting decent polyp extension, but I'm seeing some die off underneath the colony. I thought it might be parasites aggravating it, so I took the whole colony out and dipped it. Nothing. Maybe it's just not getting enough flow or light under there. Who knows. I'm just glad that the growth rate is faster than the die off.

Next photo opportunity will be of my sump/refugium set-up, which was painful for me.. Literally... since I'm really bad at drilling holes and ended up cutting my thumb pretty badly. Bad Ryobi!

 

[SPICYcracker]

Lighting

Lighting

Hi.. Who makes that lighting fixture? It's very nice.