Hello Reef Central!
I bought a Nano Cube Quad about 6 months ago from Foster and Smith and have been doing modifications and gathering supplies and thought I could go ahead and post some pictures of the build thus far. You all know the specs of quad so I am not going to list those. I will just mention the things that I have changed and added. I am planning to have mostly sps and lps corals and a couple fish.
First the lighting. I have had a 96W power compact quad in the past over a 10 gallon and was pretty happy with it but not completely satisfied with the quality of the light. This 105W power quad is probably not even as good quality as the one that I had before so I knew I needed to do something. I decided to add LEDs due to all the hype and the available room in the hood. I got the 6 CREE XP-E 3W royal blue LEDs and the Meanwell non-dimmable driver kit from Rapid LED. I added in some 50 degree lens. He was great to work with and all the parts were top notch. I mounted the LEDs to a sheet of ¼ inch aluminum from home depot with the thermal adhesive. Soldered it up and plugged it in and burnt my retina. I wasn't expecting them to be that bright.
The next task was to figure out a way to mount the LEDs inside the hood. I could easily mount them in the front by the feeding door but they would be exposed. I wanted them inside to prevent water damage. In order to do that I had to move the quad bulb back about an inch to make room. After taking what seemed like a 100 screws out to expose the bulb I took it out and started working on the reflector. I took it out and bent it so it would allow the quad to move further back in the housing which would give room for the LED strip. I mounted the LED strip to the front side of the housing, made a couple of extra holes to mount the quad and buttoned it all up. Done. Added 18W of 460nm LED light. I have them mounted such that the main intensity of the light will hit the middle of the rock.
Due to the extra heat going to be generated by the LEDs I bought a couple extra fans to help dissipate the heat. The NC Quad only comes with 2 of the small fans where as the NC HQI comes with 4 but the mounts are still there on the quad. I added one fan to one of the free mounts. The other fan I wanted blowing over the surface of the water. I cut out a section of the hood in the back above the overflow to fit the fan. Then I bent the plastic such that it would hold the fan in place with tension. Now there will be air circulating from the back over the water and out the feeding hole. These fans will only be on when the quad is on.
The next thing I wanted to work on the water circulation. There is a right angle fitting in the back chambers for each of the pumps which I thought would decrease the amount of flow. So I got some ½ inch tubing and replaced it so the flow will be smoother. Something else I wanted to do was to have good circulation behind my rock work to kill dead spots and to have good flow across my rock. So I bent some tubing and added the right angles back on the display side in order to direct the flow behind the rock work. The circulation in the tank will be done with a Maxijet 900 with the sure flow mod and a Koralia 750. These will be on the wave timer and mounted on either side in the back. I had to modify both of the pumps mounts to make them flow parallel to the glass. The sure flow attachment was easy to bend after melting it with a blow torch. The Koralia was a little tougher with notching out a small section of the ball joint.
Next the rock. I got 40lbs of dead rock from Marco Rock. It came packed very well with minimal breakage. I knew that I wanted to make a rock wall so I started with that. I took one of the more porous rocks and smashed the heck out of it. I coated the back with 2 part epoxy and went to work with the small pieces and dust. I glued some of the larger pieces towards the outside and the dust in the middle so that there would be plenty of room for the flow to reach behind the rockwork. The next weeks work was to figure out how to fashion the aquascape. I must have tried it 30 different ways before I was happy. Then I took it apart again only to glue it together with putty. So now the rockwork is basically one rock.
The rockwork is currently cycling in a 20g plastic tub. The circulation in the tub is the Koralia 750. Heater is a Marineland 100W. I slapped on a small hang on the back filter just to get just floaters. I have been putting in some Brightwell MB7 just to give it a head start. I have ordered 10lbs of Garf Grunge for the substrate. It should be arriving soon. As soon as I get that in and settled I will get a damsel or something to help the cycle along. I also rigged up a small 10W 50/50 power compact for some light.
I will be adding a Eshoppes 75 hang on the back skimmer. I will be using both Seachem and Brightwell supplements. As for salt, I am using the new Kent reef salt mix. I have used kent salt for the longest time and have always had great success with it. They came out with their reef salt mix in December. They claim that their salt mixed at 1.025 will have a Ca of 350and a Mag of 1350. I haven't taken the time to test it yet to see if that is accurate.
I will be moving out of state in May so I will let the rock continue to cycle with the Grunge until then. Once moved, officially setting up the tank will be one of the first things I do.
Let me know what you think and give me any suggestions that you have. Thanks for looking.
I bought a Nano Cube Quad about 6 months ago from Foster and Smith and have been doing modifications and gathering supplies and thought I could go ahead and post some pictures of the build thus far. You all know the specs of quad so I am not going to list those. I will just mention the things that I have changed and added. I am planning to have mostly sps and lps corals and a couple fish.
First the lighting. I have had a 96W power compact quad in the past over a 10 gallon and was pretty happy with it but not completely satisfied with the quality of the light. This 105W power quad is probably not even as good quality as the one that I had before so I knew I needed to do something. I decided to add LEDs due to all the hype and the available room in the hood. I got the 6 CREE XP-E 3W royal blue LEDs and the Meanwell non-dimmable driver kit from Rapid LED. I added in some 50 degree lens. He was great to work with and all the parts were top notch. I mounted the LEDs to a sheet of ¼ inch aluminum from home depot with the thermal adhesive. Soldered it up and plugged it in and burnt my retina. I wasn't expecting them to be that bright.
The next task was to figure out a way to mount the LEDs inside the hood. I could easily mount them in the front by the feeding door but they would be exposed. I wanted them inside to prevent water damage. In order to do that I had to move the quad bulb back about an inch to make room. After taking what seemed like a 100 screws out to expose the bulb I took it out and started working on the reflector. I took it out and bent it so it would allow the quad to move further back in the housing which would give room for the LED strip. I mounted the LED strip to the front side of the housing, made a couple of extra holes to mount the quad and buttoned it all up. Done. Added 18W of 460nm LED light. I have them mounted such that the main intensity of the light will hit the middle of the rock.
Due to the extra heat going to be generated by the LEDs I bought a couple extra fans to help dissipate the heat. The NC Quad only comes with 2 of the small fans where as the NC HQI comes with 4 but the mounts are still there on the quad. I added one fan to one of the free mounts. The other fan I wanted blowing over the surface of the water. I cut out a section of the hood in the back above the overflow to fit the fan. Then I bent the plastic such that it would hold the fan in place with tension. Now there will be air circulating from the back over the water and out the feeding hole. These fans will only be on when the quad is on.
The next thing I wanted to work on the water circulation. There is a right angle fitting in the back chambers for each of the pumps which I thought would decrease the amount of flow. So I got some ½ inch tubing and replaced it so the flow will be smoother. Something else I wanted to do was to have good circulation behind my rock work to kill dead spots and to have good flow across my rock. So I bent some tubing and added the right angles back on the display side in order to direct the flow behind the rock work. The circulation in the tank will be done with a Maxijet 900 with the sure flow mod and a Koralia 750. These will be on the wave timer and mounted on either side in the back. I had to modify both of the pumps mounts to make them flow parallel to the glass. The sure flow attachment was easy to bend after melting it with a blow torch. The Koralia was a little tougher with notching out a small section of the ball joint.
Next the rock. I got 40lbs of dead rock from Marco Rock. It came packed very well with minimal breakage. I knew that I wanted to make a rock wall so I started with that. I took one of the more porous rocks and smashed the heck out of it. I coated the back with 2 part epoxy and went to work with the small pieces and dust. I glued some of the larger pieces towards the outside and the dust in the middle so that there would be plenty of room for the flow to reach behind the rockwork. The next weeks work was to figure out how to fashion the aquascape. I must have tried it 30 different ways before I was happy. Then I took it apart again only to glue it together with putty. So now the rockwork is basically one rock.
The rockwork is currently cycling in a 20g plastic tub. The circulation in the tub is the Koralia 750. Heater is a Marineland 100W. I slapped on a small hang on the back filter just to get just floaters. I have been putting in some Brightwell MB7 just to give it a head start. I have ordered 10lbs of Garf Grunge for the substrate. It should be arriving soon. As soon as I get that in and settled I will get a damsel or something to help the cycle along. I also rigged up a small 10W 50/50 power compact for some light.
I will be adding a Eshoppes 75 hang on the back skimmer. I will be using both Seachem and Brightwell supplements. As for salt, I am using the new Kent reef salt mix. I have used kent salt for the longest time and have always had great success with it. They came out with their reef salt mix in December. They claim that their salt mixed at 1.025 will have a Ca of 350and a Mag of 1350. I haven't taken the time to test it yet to see if that is accurate.
I will be moving out of state in May so I will let the rock continue to cycle with the Grunge until then. Once moved, officially setting up the tank will be one of the first things I do.
Let me know what you think and give me any suggestions that you have. Thanks for looking.
