Who's Into Saltwater?
- Thread starter Tony
- Start date
Tony
Staff member
Haha, Can't believe I forgot to say what fish it was. It was the Cleaner Wrasse, my most active fish. Well, other than the foxface and the naso who fight all the time lol. But this little wrasse is all over the place. I'm guessing the naso tang and the foxface were fighting and scared it and it jumped. Glad I had the tops on my tank, that's for sure.
Here is a picture.
Here is a picture.
Tony
Staff member
Well, it's been a VERY long time since I made an update to this thread, so I think it's time.
Sadly, over the last few months, my tank has suffered. I lost my Naso Tang and two of my Engineer Goby's. No worry though, I have plenty of other fish and we all know, there is no fish purchasing in my future any time soon. Just means I have to feed less now and that saves me money lmao.
I have been needing to replace the sump light for a while. I just had a 60w equivalent CFL on my refugium since I built the sump (if you remember, I built the sump from scratch). Well, things are just not growing in there, in fact the only thing that is growing is red hair algae. With it growing down there, it's keeping it out of my display tank. But it's still choking out my Chaeto and Caulerpa even though they are hanging on. So I decided that I needed more light, and I had just the lights to do it without spending any more money!
The lights I'm talking about are the lights that I built and installed in December of 2012. They are a retrofit kit consisting of 3w LED's. However, I didn't need the blue lights in the sump so I'm only using one driver and powering the white and UV LED's. The video at the bottom of this post will show you what these lights look like.
I decided to do a little custom coding on my Apex controller and I have the sump light ramping up while the main display lights are ramping down and the opposite in the morning when the lights are coming back on in the tank. This is a whole lot of light for such a small little refugium lol. But I can assure you, things are going to start growing now. Not only am I putting white light in there (less red spectrum than what was in the CFL) but I'm putting much more light in there. I'm covering the whole refugium rather than just a small portion of it.
So I created three new profiles, sump_up, sump_dn and sump_day. sump_up will ramp the lights from 10% (the minimum for the lights to come on) to 100% in 40 minutes. sump_day just leaves them on at 100% power all night (should have called it sump_night, but that just didn't feel right lol) then sump_dn will ramp them down in 40 minutes. Then, I put it all in the outlet for my variable speed controller which is nothing more than a cat5e wire and put in a little code in there and presto, we have massive light in the refugium! We will see how my macro algae does.
It sucks that I lost my tang and my goby's but it is what it is. The corals that are in my tank are doing great. My hammer coral started with two heads and is over 20 heads now. The Acro I got from Matt is double in size (grows very slowly), the green stars are out of control as is the monti. Those two are all over the place and I'm about to start some serious pruning! But that is for later.
Here is the video on the lights. If you all are still even interested in this thread, I will post up some more pictures. Also, there is a video of the refugium the way it was right after I built it and got all of the plumbing the way I wanted it. still working like a charm!
New LED's on the 90g! - YouTube
Sump Overview - YouTube
Sadly, over the last few months, my tank has suffered. I lost my Naso Tang and two of my Engineer Goby's. No worry though, I have plenty of other fish and we all know, there is no fish purchasing in my future any time soon. Just means I have to feed less now and that saves me money lmao.
I have been needing to replace the sump light for a while. I just had a 60w equivalent CFL on my refugium since I built the sump (if you remember, I built the sump from scratch). Well, things are just not growing in there, in fact the only thing that is growing is red hair algae. With it growing down there, it's keeping it out of my display tank. But it's still choking out my Chaeto and Caulerpa even though they are hanging on. So I decided that I needed more light, and I had just the lights to do it without spending any more money!
The lights I'm talking about are the lights that I built and installed in December of 2012. They are a retrofit kit consisting of 3w LED's. However, I didn't need the blue lights in the sump so I'm only using one driver and powering the white and UV LED's. The video at the bottom of this post will show you what these lights look like.
I decided to do a little custom coding on my Apex controller and I have the sump light ramping up while the main display lights are ramping down and the opposite in the morning when the lights are coming back on in the tank. This is a whole lot of light for such a small little refugium lol. But I can assure you, things are going to start growing now. Not only am I putting white light in there (less red spectrum than what was in the CFL) but I'm putting much more light in there. I'm covering the whole refugium rather than just a small portion of it.
So I created three new profiles, sump_up, sump_dn and sump_day. sump_up will ramp the lights from 10% (the minimum for the lights to come on) to 100% in 40 minutes. sump_day just leaves them on at 100% power all night (should have called it sump_night, but that just didn't feel right lol) then sump_dn will ramp them down in 40 minutes. Then, I put it all in the outlet for my variable speed controller which is nothing more than a cat5e wire and put in a little code in there and presto, we have massive light in the refugium! We will see how my macro algae does.
It sucks that I lost my tang and my goby's but it is what it is. The corals that are in my tank are doing great. My hammer coral started with two heads and is over 20 heads now. The Acro I got from Matt is double in size (grows very slowly), the green stars are out of control as is the monti. Those two are all over the place and I'm about to start some serious pruning! But that is for later.
Here is the video on the lights. If you all are still even interested in this thread, I will post up some more pictures. Also, there is a video of the refugium the way it was right after I built it and got all of the plumbing the way I wanted it. still working like a charm!
New LED's on the 90g! - YouTube
Sump Overview - YouTube
callsign4223
Staff member
This thread needs a new FTS, your tank is so different from those vids these days.
Tony
Staff member
Well, here you go Matt.
This is a picture of my Zoa's and my Pipe Organ. The Pipe Organ was sold to us for a very deep discount. We were told it would not survive, but the wife loved it so we got it. When we got it, the chunk that was alive had about 10 polyps on it (each of the little flowers) and now, it's insane how big it is. And this thing is at the top of my tank. If you look at the picture at the top, it's in the top right center.
This is my Monti, or part of it. I keep breaking pieces off of it just cleaning the glass. This started out smaller than my hand.
I told you the green stars were out of control lmao. Need to find something that will eat it.
This is Matt's Acro. This is not a good shot of it bit it's grown a lot.
This is my Hammer Coral. Started with two heads, and now over 20 counting the small heads that are still developing.
And more Monti. Anyone want some of this stuff???
This is a picture of my Zoa's and my Pipe Organ. The Pipe Organ was sold to us for a very deep discount. We were told it would not survive, but the wife loved it so we got it. When we got it, the chunk that was alive had about 10 polyps on it (each of the little flowers) and now, it's insane how big it is. And this thing is at the top of my tank. If you look at the picture at the top, it's in the top right center.
This is my Monti, or part of it. I keep breaking pieces off of it just cleaning the glass. This started out smaller than my hand.
I told you the green stars were out of control lmao. Need to find something that will eat it.
This is Matt's Acro. This is not a good shot of it bit it's grown a lot.
This is my Hammer Coral. Started with two heads, and now over 20 counting the small heads that are still developing.
And more Monti. Anyone want some of this stuff???
murankar
Staff member
Dude the time in this tank is unbelievable and all the disasters along the way. Its still looking fantastic. I remember watching the live feed of the original install. That I watched through from almost the start while I was in texas. I was actually washing dishes (a lot of them, a story for later) during the install.
callsign4223
Staff member
Hey, it's not my fault. His steps are about half the width of normal steps. They were built by someone with size 5 shoes! 
Tony
Staff member
For anyone that wants to see the video again, here it is...
90 Gallon Saltwater Mixed Reef Setup Start To Finish Time Lapse - YouTube
90 Gallon Saltwater Mixed Reef Setup Start To Finish Time Lapse - YouTube
Tony
Staff member
The issue was with the rock. The tank sat stagnant for quite a while and even though I bleached the rock, something remained in the pores and eventually leached into the sand and plumbing. It was really bad and only a bleach bath for quite a while was able to remove it. Now, the tank is doing great even though I can't afford to do water changes.
Tony
Staff member
Well guys, here's an update on my tank, and it's not a good one. So far I have lost all of my engineer goby's and I just lost the foxface last night. I need to get some money so that I can do a very large water change once a week for about two months to get this tank back up and running like it should be. All of this happened while I had been gone and didn't really have time to watch the tank. But it is what it is. I'm thinking about just selling the whole thing since I don't really do anything with it. Now if the rest of the fish die, then I'm breaking it down and it's all going away. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.