scolley's Big Little Nano – yet another build thread

Still more to do...

Still more to do...

This weekend I was able to knock a few more things off the "To Do" list:


  1. Added more sand. MUCH, MUCH less silt this time due to more rinsing, having a water polishing HOB on hand, and using a filter sock.
  2. Replaced the pH probe. The old probe just would not calibrate correctly. But hey, it's way more than two years old. :o The new probe is reading a little on the low side - 8.11. But with the house shut up tight against the cold, I'm sure excess CO2 accounts for some of that.
  3. Finalized the ATS. That was a DIY PITA. Flow's great now. Quiet - no splashing.

Have gotten a bit more livestock to, of late. Including today. But more on that later. ;)
 
With the ATS set back up I was able to get my revised humidity and temp readings. And it DID make a difference.
Room readings: 34% humidity / 71 degrees F
Wet section: 45% humidity / 77 degrees F
Electronic shelf: 45% humidity / 85 degrees F
​
Not what I had hoped. :( Clearly all the work I put into keeping sump air out of the electronics shelf is not happening. That's my conclusion with them both at 45% humidity. The air exiting the sump on the left must be mixing with the air on the right. However, 45% humidity is not so bad. But it could be better.

And the 85 degrees - 14 higher than ambient - is not good. I'll have to retest all this after I change out the power supply to the fans, and start pushing more air through.
 
Not too bad for winter. I guess I'd get more concerned as the warmer months set in. You have me questioning building my own ATS now. This may be the tipping point for making a basement sump finally. Do you think its possible to build some kind of shield over the ATS to limit the surface area exposed to air? I haven't installed fans yet in my base but for the moment I'm trying to cover as much of the sump as possible to limit evaporation. I'd rather let it escape through the tank and let the skimmer help out. I realize this is somewhat of a challenge due to all the things typically in a sump .
 
There's all kinds of DIY LED's in this thread. I'm sure there's some way to trap that humidity in. Check it out, if you haven't already.

In my case I'm not particularly worried about it. My readings were only 10% more than ambient humidity. So sure, in the summer it'll likely be worse. But if it remains 10% ambient IMO its just not a big deal.
 
Thanks! I'm using a small electronic hygrometer made for placement in cigar boxes. Small. Cheap. Measures temperature too. :) Can be found at any online cigar site.
 
Just to document it, I've been chasing water parameters the last couple of weeks. First my Ca, Alk, Mg were low due to my having hypo-salinated my water. So I manually raised those, and tried to set my dosing pumps at a sensible level. But once I came close to having the dosing right, my numbers started climbing!

Of course! :o Now I realize why...

I've been raising my salinity through saltwater top offs. So naturally that's adding Ca, Alk, and Mg, just as it raises salinity. But I should be around 1.024 today, and should be to 1.025 sometime Sunday or maybe Monday. So soon, I can finally try to get my auto dosing set right.
 
2-part will raise salinity as well...I constantly have to check my salinity and remove saltwater and let the ATO replace with freshwater. It's pretty much the one factor I can't automate and gives me a headache!
 
tpallas said:
2-part will raise salinity as well...I constantly have to check my salinity and remove saltwater and let the ATO replace with freshwater. It's pretty much the one factor I can't automate and gives me a headache!
Click to expand...
I had that totally automated on my old tank. Will be soon on this one. My salinity is finally back to 1.025, so I can start zero'ing in on my automated dosing. That will take a good month or more to get to a "set it and forget it" level of automation. But that will be soon enough.

prjct92eh2 said:
hows it coming Steve? Any new developments this week?
Click to expand...
All's really very well thanks! A few developments...

  1. I've been adding more CUC.
  2. Got hair (thread) algae on the glass. Not bad, but it's there. It was worse before I got the additional CUC. It will pass with time.
  3. Got Cyano. That sounds bad, but I'm not real concerned. First, it's a new tank syndrome thing. Second, only have it on one rock. But it's all over that rock. So clearly that rock (a new one) is leaching something. That too will pass with time.
  4. My ATS is all set up. Very quiet and kicking butt. :thumbsup:
  5. Have purchased a few fish; Aurora goby, Clown goby, and a neon goby.
  6. Some of my original SPS are clearly dead - not coming back. Have removed the "bones".
  7. Some of my original SPS that looked dead are crawling back. So I've trimmed back the dead stuff, and am letting the tiny, tiny frags grow back into the SPS I loved in my old tank.
  8. Have procured a few new corals. Almost all small frags.
  9. Am acclimating a new tube anemone as I type this post. :D

I'll post some pics after I get all the SPS situated. Should be sometime later this week.

BTW - I'm buying small frags for two reasons. First, it's cheaper than buying colonies. And second - and most important to me - growing a tank is FAR more challenging than just buying whole colonies and filling a tank. Not a great deal of skill required to create an "instant tank". So I'm doing it the hard way. ;)
 
Finally got around to upgrading the power supply to the stand air circulation fans. That allowed me to pull the resistor that slows the fans down off the electronics shelf fan.

My original design called for the electronics shelf fan to be running faster than the wet section fan. Now that's happening and it made a big difference! Previously the electronics section had the same humidity of the wet section. The original design assumed a faster wet section fan would pressurized it such that if any air was moving between sections, it would be dry air in the electronics shelf leaking into the humid wet section, and not the other way around. With the faster fan that's happening now.

Also the electronics section was getting too hot. That's fixed now too. My readings were taken with the ATS LEDs running in the wet section, making it as hot as it will get. The readings:

Room readings: 29% humidity / 75.4 degrees
Wet section: 45% humidity / 75.6 degrees
Electronics section: 29% humidity / 79.7 degrees​

It's nice when things work as designed. :)
 
Glad to see things pulling together for you Steve. You've inspired me to get a build thread of my own up and going. I'll do that now and post a link in the ARKSC forum when it's live. Neither my setup nor my build thread will be as high tech and detailed as yours, but like this thread it'll give me a space to chronicle my triumphs and solicit feedback. Hope to see you there!
 
tyler91913 said:
Glad to see things pulling together for you Steve. You've inspired me to get a build thread of my own up and going.
Click to expand...
I gave it a look. Nice build you got going there Tyler. And you've realized that a nano can be a good bit cheaper, allowing you to splurge more on some things, like your light. :thumbsup: Indeed. :)

Siddique said:
Looking really good. I've also just started up a little nano but I don't really have big plans for it just yet.
Click to expand...
Thanks. And good luck!

tpallas said:
How about an FTS?
Click to expand...
I really need to do that, don't I? I'd prefer to wait until I pull a DIY frag rack I put up. But it's easy to summarize what's changed...

Everything is about finished, except running the tubing to my chiller. It's all mounted, the chiller is in place. It's just not run. Not that you can see that in an FTS anyway.

Have added a good bit of livestock:

  1. Aurora Goby - Big mistake purchase from my LFS. Let my son talk me into it. You never see the fish, and it will not come out for food. So, either it's going to starve, or it will squeak by as a large bio-load animal that you never see.
  2. Orange Lined Cardinalfish - Got two, hoping for a pairing. So far one hides (bullied), one out and in your face looking for that next meal. Not as yellow as in the pics online, but not bad. I assume it will color up more over time.
  3. Spot Glass Cardinalfish - Got a group of 5 from Divers Den. One DOA, the other four seem to be doing great. Really nice to have fish that actually shoal in a nano. :)
  4. Pink Tube Anemone - Got a nice one with a neon green oral disk from a local reef club friend. That was a got to have for me, and really glad to get a nice one.
And I've gotten LOTs of frags. Some from local reefers, some from Pacific East Aquaculture, and some from Vivid Aquarium. The Pacific East order was a massive disappointment. Weather caused a delay putting them in transit an extra day. PacEast was good enough to replace most of them. But not all. So some of them are still trying to recover, some eventually died, and some the colors are just disappointing. I mentioned this to someone from there on the phone, and I was told "Brown happens in shipping".

Funny, it didn't happen to my order from Vivid Aquarium. They are ALL awesome. What a difference between vendors. And I feel kind of bad for Vivid. They were kind enough to let me change my order over the phone, after I had placed it on-line. In the change I asked for a frag of one particularly sweet coral. And they only charged me for a frag. But what I received was a whole colony. Looks great, but was not what I had intended. Have been planning to grow things out. I guess one coral has a head start. ;)

Oh, and no update would be complete without saying I've got a real cyano problem! It's all over one of the two new rocks - the one on the right. So it must be leaching something. It's making me nuts, but I know this will pass with time. But it IS driving me crazy in the short term.

I've got some frags from Pac East that I'm hoping will recover on that frag rack. As soon as it comes down, I'll snap an FTS.
 
Sounds very cool Steve, looking forward to some pictures. What did you get some Vivid? I've been meaning to place some corals from them. What browned out? That does tend to happen. Sometimes it takes SPS a LONG time to color back up. I picked up a rainbow mille over a month ago that is brown, brown, brown. It's only starting to show hints of red (one of my favorite threads on here is "ORA Brown Planet"). In any case looking forward to an FTS. Is the spot with cyano getting low flow? You can also try using a baster or your hand to clean it off every now and again.
 
Sometimes I post from my HP Touchpad, whose browser software suffers from version one-dot-zero-itis. It has an auto-correcting spell checker that can be a real pain. And the browser can make it kind of hard to go back and check for unintended corrections so...
scolley said:
The chain is not a spot, its...
Click to expand...
Was supposed to say, "The chain is not a rock, its... "

And
scolley said:
...brown corals came from PreCast.
Click to expand...
Was supposed to be "...brown corals came from PacEast."

Sorry about that.

clittrell said:
Can't wait for photos!
Click to expand...
Not going to be much to look at in an FTS I'm afraid. Not yet. At this stage of its life, any FTS is going to look like an empty tank with little frags all over the place. It's going to take 2-3 years of growing for it to look like much. But I've very hopeful for what it will look like then. :thumbsup:

But now? "Not so much". ;)
 
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