School Research

[Maritimegod112]

Well the thing is, I have these LED lights that I got from a company named Solar Oasis, and have been testing them out on my 70g tank for the last couple months. They are red, but the tank is light by only 36 watts of these LEDs and 25 watts of T-8's, which is keeping everything I have alive (sps is alive so far, but am holding my breath).

I sold some stuff and now have enough money to take my testing to a more formal level in my school next year as an independent research project. I have enough money to get three 20 gallon tanks set-up, drilled, and hooked up to one 40 gallon sump with a pump to controll it all. The tanks will be right next to eachother, but walls will be painted black so light cannot seep between tanks. Each tank will have some sand for buffer and eggcrate shelving. One tank will have two of these LED bars (380 small LEDs), on will have the LEDs with a pvc difuser to lessen their intensity (they may actually be too intense), and one would need to have a conventional light that can grow sps coral. I have a t-5 fixture that would be strong enough, but is on my 22 right now and kind of need it. I need to get a light taht would work (would love to se metal hallide, would need to be aroun 100watts and lifted up so my system would not need a chiller). The light is the first issue.

The second issue is once the tank is set-up in school, the school may or may not volunteer to give a small amount to maintain it as all research fundings are hard to come across now in this economy. Need to figure out a way to pay for chemicals. The school doesn't mind about electricty.

Third problem is now I have a tank. Great. Where am I going to get sps frags to use for trials from the same colony when I have almost no budget!? The tank will be in a science classroom and would also benefite the Darien High School Marine Biology classes that are fairly new.

Over the last couple of years, few have come up with ideas to use coral for an independent research project and set-up tanks, but the cost and limited funding today makes these ideas shoved away and forgotten. I am one of the only students that actually may pull this off and I need ideas from people who have been around reef tanks for much longer than I have to give some ideas on how I can make this reality somehow. Reef tanks are expensive, but I don't want to just five up what I have been doing due to money (even though thats how much of life works). Any ideas to try to solve my problems the cheapest ways possible? I have no more extra equitment to sell for this. The set-up will be donated to the school when done for future research by other students to come.

 

[Kdocimo90]

If its a project/experiment for the school you could try to pull it off and get a grant from your town. If you have a good relationship with a teacher (preferably science) you may be able to get a few bucks.

When I was a junior in highschool I made a scaled replica of the long island sound (in relevance to water depth and land altitude). We were able to get something like 600 bucks for it.

Write up a letter or have your teacher do it. It may work

 

[Maritimegod112]

Yea, but right now the thing is there are so many students trying to get funding and there is no money that the school is really giving out, they are all trying to do this. Also, the town is not giving out as much as they used to right now, which makes it even harder. I am trying to get the Maritime aquarium that I work at to help, but they don't do that sort of thing and ther ehave been a ton of lay offs of aquarists there since the economy went down. Every time I will talk to my teacher about it.

 

[Maritimegod112]

O yea, thanks for your input and do you have pictures of that LI sound model? It sounds pretty impressive.

 

[Kdocimo90]

I surprisingly dont.
I THINK its display in the norwalk maritime aquarium.

 

[Maritimegod112]

What does it look like? I do tours at the Maritime and voluteer there regularly. I also may have found someone from the maritime who could help. Only time and (and writing up a detailed proposal) will tell.

 

[Maritimegod112]

By the way, the Maritime Aquarium has recently added a 450gal acrylic bowfront to be reef tank. Pretty sick, but is still empty as they got from a restraunt as a dontation and it needed to be recured completely. Its going to be an impressive set up (right across from the other large tank). Rumors are we are getting several other large tanks since people keep donating them due to not being able to take care of them in exchange for decent tax breaks as donations and we may have several new reef tanks in the future. Don't know how it deals with the Long Island Sound, but I am not complaining.

 

[Kdocimo90]

Pshh how bout people donate their 450g tanks to ME!!
Umm IDK where it's located, I never actually went to look for it. It may not even still be up becuase it was like 2 or 3 years ago that we made it. It just looks like a replica on a big board

I wish I had pictures. I was President of the Science National Honors Society in Highschool, so it was sort of a year project for me. (Others helped as well.. sort of lol)

 

[Maritimegod112]

Hi, sorry to revive an old thread, but I was wondering if it was possible to get some help from any other reefers in southwest CT. The project that I was talking about above has finally been set up after spending the summer gathering materials, and I was am now ready to actually carry out my experiments of the with the new version of the Solar Oasis Aquabar APB5 prototype to grow coral against T-5 lighting. I am attaching a picture of the tank set-up I have to carry out my experiments so far, and am ready to get live specimens soon. The picture attached is when saltwater was added to the tanks on Friday, but today I have added about 60lbs of live rock rubble and some sand as a start (going to be a low bio-load) for my project. I will add inverts to clean the tanks soon as well, and will post further pictures when of the project in a few days. The light bars I am testing can be seen in from of the left and right tanks, and I am almost done building metal legs to suspend them above each aquarium. Out of the three tanks, two will have two LED bars (aprox. 760 LEDs each) to test. One will have pvc diffusers to weaken the LEDs, as they may be too strong. The middle tank will have T-5's as a control. My budget can only afford a 56 and a 72 watt T-5 fixture, so I hope to upgrade in the future to around 100 so sps corals may be possible test subjects (I had a donation for such a light, but it fell through...).

This project is going to be set up in the Darien High School microscopy lab for this year and the next as an official Independent Research project set up by me for credit. The only problem is, the school is hesitant to supply funds, as there are little to none, and I have had to chip in a bit of my own to get to where I am now, even though most of it was salvaged and hand built over time. I know these light works because I have tested four of them over my 70 gallon tank with success in growing soft and LPS corals, however, I need to conduct a more controlled experiment to get better results for research. Also, the lights I am testing are a newer model, as they have been made 40% stronger with more LEDs and other materials, as well as holding a patent claiming to have the spectrum similar to the sun without the colors corals can not use as energy (i.e. greens). The school has also become very interested in this project, and the more coral I test, the more I can hopefully educate my piers on coral growth and captive propagation. However, to test these I need live specimens to grow. I currently have 9 one inch plugs of green star poly, a few frags of button polyps, and a mushroom or two, and maybe anthelia. However, this is a relatively small amount of specimens, and I really only have enough surplus of star polyp at the moment to put a good piece in each tank for accurate trials. Can anyone donate small pieces of corals of different types for me to test in the upcoming weeks? I hope to even try SPS, and am currently getting the parameters of the tank up par for such coral. My budget is low and I know there are people in my area that could part with a few fragments of a few corals, as they can be really tiny. Size doesn't matter as long as it’s healthy! The best thing would be to have three tiny pieces from the same mother colony, as it would eliminate gene variation within the samples, but I would be grateful for anything as long as its photosynthetic.

Pictures of the set up below. They are three 20 gal high tank attached to one 40 gallon sump:

Experiment Tanks in school below:

I will post pics with sand and rock soon. I also will be placing cardboard dividers between the tanks so light will not be able to seep through each tank. Thanks for reading !

 

[Kdocimo90]

Very cool.

 

[fishieness]

Well then, post some pictures of the stuff you have that these are running under! Let's see how they are growing, and most importantly, color!

 

[Maritimegod112]

http://led-grow-master.com/Coral1.html

I have attached a link to the companies website that gave me the lights, but unfortunatly no funds to buy more coral test subjects (please donate, they can be as small as a pea as long as they can grow!). I am by no means trying to advertise this product. This is pure research. The only reason I am attaching this link is for those who are interested in the few pictures. They are not very good quality, but they are pics of my 70 gallon tank when I started in November to August. I may post better pics soon. Currently I have switched the 70 gal tank to T-5's and to see how the corals changed in growth and apperance and the seem pretty comparable, except for the LEDs are not very good show tank lights, as they are pink. However, if one were want to propogate coral for reef restoration or the hobby in captivity with little expenses, if these lights work, on could save a lot of money on electricity as each LED light bar only uses 9 watts. I had 4 over my 70 gallon tank that the pictures from the article are from, replacing 216 watts of T-5 lights for the same growth, but much different apperance.

 

[Maritimegod112]

The article above holds some pretty poor pictures of growth. They are mostly from December. I will post August pics. The corals all look pink, but under normal lights they have full color, except the green star polyp which took on an interesting redish green, which reverted back to normal green when put back under T-5's.

 

[Maritimegod112]

Well, over the last three weeks I have started my project with a few soft corals that I have in excess in my own tank that I cut to check the stability of the system as well as begin comparisons. I was able to secure donations from major companies with a new abstract that I made of my project for the purpose with pictures, securing things such as a protein skimmer or two (Tunze and Aqua C), a stronger 100 watt T5 control for sps coral comparison from Current-USA (haven't received yet, but coming), heaters from Marineland, chemicals from seachem, possible magfloats from magfloat, a test it or two (but I still need some others) from various sources, and maybe a mag 3 from Danner Manufacturing. However, with all this stuff to upgrade my system that is coming in the mail, I still have one problem...I still need donations of corals in the high light need soft corals and preferably some in the LPS category to test. I only have green star polyp, hairy mushrooms, pink anthelia, a few green and brown button polyps, and a bunch of flower anemone to test right now. It is a start, but I would like to get more things that can really test the LEDs out. So far, everything is growing, but there are a few major differences between the T5 control and the LED full power and diffused variables. The T5 tank shows extremely high rates of diatom growth while the LED tanks remain close to diatom free, even when sharing the same water. The LED tanks also have the corals expanding more readily, but some specimens seem to be stretching towards the light more than the control, such as the anthelia and the flower anemone. However, I am getting a bit more growth in the anthelia and button polyps with the LEDs, and the flower anemone, a fast growing weed-like creature, has only yet to split under the LEDs (not pictured in all tanks as they move away from the center sometimes). It is too early in the game to make any conclusions, but I will not be able to do much more unless I can find more coral fragments. House of Fins donated the mushroom and the flower anemone, but they really only give me things that doesn't sell often and it is rare they have anything other than low light soft corals (zoothids and mushrooms) which I can test. The school may be willing to give a bit of money for coral, but I really need help of anyone who would be willing to cut a few very small pieces of any specimen they have extra pieces of. The problem is any specimen I test must have 3 frags of similar size so I can put one in each variable to see what happens and compares. The pictures below illustrate the tanks up until this point. I am sorry for the diatoms on the controls egg crate, which I have now cleaned off, but the diatoms just keep coming! My teachers seem very interested and I really want to be able to bring more coral into the mix, but I can't do it all alone!

This is a picture of the LED tank that is weakened by a pvc sheet diffuser:

This is the LEDs by themselves:

And this is the control (currently a 54 watt T-5):

-Matt

 

[Maritimegod112]

Well, sorry to revive an old thread, but I have new results from my school experiment that started last November. After 4+ months of growth, a lot has happened, which I tried to sum a bit of the important details below. The only problem is that due to the recent storm, even though I have power at my house to keep my reef tanks safe, this project at school is most likely dead. Darien is basically in a state of emergency and the school have been closed for today, tomorrow and maybe even Wednesday, which means I cannot get into the school to save my corals and live rock :sad2:... at least I have the data I collected so far, but restarting to test new specimens of lps and sps corals that I have been trying to find and grow now seem sadly out of the question. I tried to get into the school, but they have locked it down since Saturday when the power went out over there and the generator broke today, so I assume there is little hope for my project. I dread going in to see a dark tank full of dead matter after keeping it for such a long time each day!

Well, here's some updated pics after 4 months of growth that I took last Friday before leaving school to show what I did figure out for a science fair this April:

LEDs:

Even though it reads 9/3/2010, it really was taken 3/9/2010. I found this out and changed the camera date stamp the next day. I took one on the 12, but it was too blurry.

Control (T5 65 watt):

LEDs Diffused:

Over the last four months there has been a lot of difference found in how the coral grow under both the T5s, full strength LEDs and their diffused counterparts. One major difference is that under the LEDs, all the corals have shown a desire to stretch and/or move closer to the light. Some may think this means the coral do not have enough light to live, but when looking at the pink anthelia plugs in each tank that show this stretching characteristic the most, the fact that the one under LEDs measure over an inch and a half tall compared to the diffused the is a little over an inch and the control that is .7 inches shows suggests that the corals may not be stretching because they need more light, but because they like it. If it needed light, why would the anthelia under the same diffused LEDs in the same water and flow be growing more than a half an inch smaller than the anthelia in the tank with the full powered LEDs (same kind)t hat has more than twice the strength due to not being covered by a pvc diffuser (the diffused are just for experimental comparison, the light are not meant to run with them, leading to poor, but surprisingly sustainably growth)? The growth under the LEDs without the diffusers has been equal, if not greater than the control. I have also been trying a piece of purple digitata under the LEDs for the last month with no bleaching yet, but I was watching it vigilantly.

One other cool result, among many others including the behaviors of rock anemones and the other soft corals in the tank, the rate of algae growth diatom growth in general was quite peculiar. The T5 tank always grew a fine layer of diatoms and fibrous algae that needed to be removed every 2-3 days like most tanks, but the LEDs only needed to cleaned every 2 weeks or more as the glass does not get covered often. Somehow the LEDs do not promote its growth. However, when setting up the tanks, Coraline algae grew the fastest in the control at first, but now it is becoming less intense of a purple and is not as spectacular. However, when I put the same T5 light over the LED tank last Friday to compare coral color since the LEDs make everything look pink, I was surprised to find that the coraline algae was one of the brightest purple colors I have ever seen. Here is the picture for to compare with the control above of the LED tank under the same T5 for a 5 min color comparison:

As you can see, it is much more purple, which is a similar reaction that happened when I ran these light over my 75 show tank for 6 months last summer. Now after being under T5s for several months, most of my Coraline algae in my 75 now looks more similar to my experiments control above. What makes Coraline algae a much darker color and grow faster over time I do not yet know, but I will research to find out. If anyone has any comments, please let me know. I will be entering my findings (have a large logbook and lab report) in a science fair at NCC in late April. I wanted to try more hard corals, both LPS and SPS, but due to limited funds I could never get them in time. Maybe after I salvage the system to see whats left, I will try, but if not I will be looking to do more testing next year after the summer.

One exciting thing to look forward to is that the company who makes these lights has told me they have made a new grow light that I will get to test this summer/fall that is an LED light bar that uses different individually colored LEDs to emit white light through combining them in a fashion that is reverse to what a prism does to white light. Hopefully I can find more support to test these out next year, as the school and science department is really taking interest as other kids are starting to think about getting into the hobby and trying their own experiments that were once thought impossible due to the money and experience needed to keep captive corals. I hope it is not too bad when I get back to school Wednesday, but I have already prepared for everything to be dead... at least I still have over 200 pics from the last 4 months and have plenty of the soft corals at home to retest. The only problem is all the live rock and sand will most likely be dead, making it almost impossible to restart immediately with the lps and sps corals I wanted to test at the end of this year, but I have no choice to restart quickly due to limited funding. House of Fins may have helped this spring, but with a down system I don't know what I am going to do this year...

 

[Maritimegod112]

Also, completely unrelated, here is a fts of my 70 gallon softy/lps tank at home that is slowly maturing and being filled.

Any comments on my tank or experiment will be greatly appreciated!

 

[Maritimegod112]

Also, I have plenty of brown button polyps, kenya and GSP if anyone wants some. I have another 22 that is full of the stuff and can give very large pieces if anyone near the Darien, CT area is interested.