another video of my tank
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_8yXFihiNs

The tank looks awesome!

Moar macro shots

Did you bought the Avast skimmer? Looks like fun to assemble and very well designed I'd like to see some review

Beautiful tank!

haha, thanks, ill take some topdown macro shots sometime this week. everything is growing well. i might need to trim some of them back.


i wont have the skimmer till christmas. i have a friend whos going back this dec and will pick it up for me. i cant wait to put it together. all the reviews ive read online are nothing complements. thinking of switching skimmer since your pump exploded?


thanks =

Don't think I'll switch just because of the pump but I really like the look of these skimmers. A friend of mine is looking for a skimmer and he saw Avast's and asked me about them but I don't really know anything except how cool they look

psk1000 pumps are known to be excellent skimmer pumps. paired with the recirculation model its gonna pull some nasty gunk.

as promised, here are some top down pics
















took some pics of my fish too, not a lot came out as nice
theres only a few

awesome pictures! I wish my SPS were as colorful. What's the first picture? Candlelight?

thanks =) they arent THAT colorful i still have some brown sticks which is struggling to regain their colors. seriously considering changing to LED next year. gotta gather up the supplies.

the sps in the first pic is called Acropora nana

Nice! You got some beautiful pieces.

Beautiful corals!

Woah that's a Nana? lol I have a frag someone gave me but it needs some serious color. At least I know is on the right track

Nice corals! I love that Millepora.

Those photos are incredible. Do you do any sort of editing? They are so crisp! You're one of my favorite photographers on the site.

Thanks

i do a little editing, shoot in raw, crop, rotate, adjust colors and exposure in photoshop and convert to jpeg. i try to adjust it so that it matches as close to its natural color as possible. i dont do any crazy saturation.

good news and bad news

good news is, my friend ordered and received the skimmer!!



bad news is i have to wait 2 more weeks to get it.

I NEED to learn how to do this! Any tips on shooting in general and any good programs to get? (I'm hopefully getting a laptop soon so I can finally get decent programs).

YAY! and boo!!! can't wait to see this skimmer

if you are shooting with a DSLR. its best to shoot raw, dont worry about white balance or the scene, you can change all that later. i shoot with center weighted metering. its nice if you have a macro lens, but you dont need to.

if your shooting it through the glass, keep the camera as perpendicular as possible to the glass. a tripod helps. if you can press the lens right up the glass is even better since you know for sure thats 100% perpendicular. thats how i usually shoot and i dont need a tripod. but usually that wont work for kit or zoom lens since the minimum focus distance is still pretty far

if you are shooting from top down its best to turn of all pumps to eliminate all surface agitation. using a camera box would be better since theres no deflection from the water surface, and wont have any ripples from the surface. you can buy or make one easily. get a couple acrylic sheets and glue them together. use the camera's tripod mount screw to secure the box to the camera so you dont have to worry about it flopping around.

lastly just practice and practice. you will get the hang of it.

as for programs. i use photoshop. ive tried capture nx and lightroom, but i gotten so used to photoshop thats the only thing i use right now. there are free ones like picasa but you wont get as much options.

hope this helps, let me know if there are other questions


your telling me. i went ahead and got a 2 little fish reactor just for this skimmer.

Awesome, thanks!

Any tips for shooting raw? I always use the preset settings

raw, as it name states, basically the raw image file from the sensor, it didnt go through the processing within the camera to produce the jpeg files. what the sensor sees is what you get. this gives far more adjustability than jpeg.

what camera are you shooting with?

I've got a Canon Rebel T1i. I am having some success with the ADEP setting.

not familiar with canons, nikon person myself.
but whatevers working for you keep at it. practice more and expereiment with different settings, youll get the hang of it.

so i know ive been talking about switching to LEDs for a while but i think i will definitely make the move sometime next month.

ive already did my research online and found a place that sells cree LEDs and meanwell drivers. my design will be based on the AI SOL fixture without the fancy controllers. i dont need the sunrise and sunset function nor do i really need to individually control each channel. my tank have been running 2 timers simulating the sunrise and sunset effect and things are growing nicely.

i will be running 2 modules with 24LEDs on each module. 8 clusters of 3 leds laid out like the AI SOL. XPG whites with XRE royal blues and regular blue. 60degree optics on all LEDS. will be driven by meanwell 60-48 dimable drivers. my local reefer friends all reported that their tanks are missing some colors while solely running on LEDs so i will keep 2 T5HO bulbs for added spectrum. the entire fixture will be wrapped with black acrylic to finish off the look.

this should be the final modification to my tank. ill probably not mess with it for another year until i bit the modding bug again and start upgrading/swapping out equipments.

stay tuned.

Sounds like a good plan to me! Your tank isn't too long, why not go for a one pice unit? kinda like I did in mine. An AI long version. My tank is 36" long and I built the lamp 24". If yours is 40" you could easily go with 28"~30" worth of heatsink and that will help a lot for cleaner look and ease of wiring everything and building an acrylic housing
Quick sketchup




oh nice... now that I post the images, the dimensions are useless... anyway, if you like it and need them I can send you higher res image to you or the original skp file

Why not add some red/green leds? My 60g is doing well with the new Radion. The colors look great and the tank is doing well.

hmm, ill look into it. would the extra spacing create the spotlight effects or it would be pretty well blended?



i guess its because they are all using the chinese LED and its lacking a bit of color even with the red and green. but theres also one guy who was using a fixture with cree leds and still needed some t5ho to add more colors to his tank. i guess i will see.

The spacing here is the same as mine, just added more clusters. I don't get any spotlight, blends pretty well in my case. I even use 60deg optics but my lamp is 18" above water

i will have to slightly modify my light hanger to see if i can hang my light higher.

what do you think about the LED choices i made? i know very little about them and hopefully i made the right choices. Ill give as much info as i can about them from what its written about then from the place im ordering from.

CREE XPG R5-1B, 6350-7000K, 3.2-3.6V, 350-1500MA
XRE series royal blue, 450-455nm, 350-1000MA
XRE series blue, 445-475nm, 3.2-3.6V, 350-1000MA

they have XPE series "royal blue" 455-460nm, 3.2-3.6V, 350-1000MA which is cheaper, but im really skeptical if they are truly royal blues.

WOOT!!! finally got the skimmer



25% assembled


50% assembled




initial impressions. everything fits well together. it is pretty easy to build. the video instructions helps. seams of the skimmer will not look as nice as factory assembled but its a small price to pay for a cheaper skimmer and the fun of assembling it yourself.

need to finish it tonight

wooot! nice!!!

finally finished assembling the skimmer and letting it break in, sorry i was too excited to take a picture of the finish product dry.




overall impressions, so far everything went smoothly. i did have to apply more glue to some of the seams because it was leaking. the only complaint i have is the silencer is placed too low on the skimmer. with the recirculating mod, water level in the skimmer is kept at a constant. so when i turn the skimmer pump off, water level is still pretty high in the skimmer, the water pressure forces the water through the air tubing into the silencer filling it with water. doesnt make a good silencer when its filled with water and gurgling at you. i will have to modify the silencer and make it draw air at a higher location.

you can see the silencer is submerged. only the top is above the water

sweet! now lets see how it performs after it has broken in nice work

heres a vid of it running
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSSUyKJv3oA

the skimmer now the single most nosiest piece of equipment in my tank now. i gotta figure out a way of quieting it down

had to do a little modification to the silencer to get it out of the water.



also i asked my friend to bring back some 1" tubing from the states so i can lengthen pipe and further rise the silencer.

You may have better luck if you just raised the skimmer a few inches. I have the same one and I believe it likes to sit in about 8 inches of water. Mine rests on an egg crate platform and is dead silent.

Keep in mind that if you do raise it, you will need to elbow the return and run a short piece of PVC so it terminates under the water level.

with a recirculation mod the it doesnt really matter what the water level is. its not affected by it.

so my tank been battling some brown algae problem for a while. i thought it was normal since when i moved my tank i cooked all my rocks to get rid of some macro algae and aiptasia, but that was almost 4 months ago. i would think my rocks should be filled with bacteria by now. the only other reason i can think of is im over due in changing my bulbs, which im waiting for my LEDs to come in. i read that the the brown algae is a sign that my bulbs need to be replaced.

checked all my water parameters and everything looks good
calc: 430ppm
alk: 10-11dkh
mag: 1200ppm
nitrate: 0
phosphate: 0-0.05
all tests are done with salifert test kit

my sps are still growing, but their color is lacking a bit probably due to the light.

new fish



FTS, lighting needs to be upgraded, colors are a little meh

no comments? i guess im just talking to myself here...

anyways, these will be going to my tank really soon...

16 XPG whites
16 XPE blues
16 XPE royal blue
4x ELN_60-48D (they are a lot bigger than i imagined)
2X 53(L)x12(W)cm heatsink (which will need to be cut down)

played with them a little, im surprised how freaking small the optics are.

gotta glue them on tho. any suggestions as to what kind of glue/


gotta get a huge project box, power supply and pots for dimming this weekend

That is gonna be awesome!

I have no optics on my LEDs, but I was told to use just a tiny bit of glue til hold the optic onto the LED.

Don't use superglue. It can screw up the LEDs. Use a five minute two-part epoxy. Are you going straight LEDs or are you going to incorporate some of those T5s into the build?

Tank looks awesome! It might be a bit small for that new tang though.

im gonna have 2 t5ho from my existing light for added light and to balance out the spectrum. might try the new bulbs from ATI

i had to glue my optics to my LED before but when it was time to remove them i ripped the LED off the starboard along with the copper "wires". it wasnt super glue but still a little too strong of a bond. wanted to see if there are better glue out there suited for the job

That's a good idea. I was thinking about adding a pair of T5s to my set up, but it's cheaper for me to add another 10 LEDs of various colors and an extra driver than buying a kit to add 2 T5s. If I had a kit lying around, I would definitely have added the T5s though. Make sure that one of the bulbs is a purple+!

im leaving myself the option of adding 12 more LEDs if its not enough. i should have plenty of light.

yeah im thinking using ATI coral color and purple plus

Exciting news on the lighting upgrade and that new fish is beautiful.

thanks, its my new favorite. gotta fatten him up and get his color back.

heres a video of my fish eating
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc6ilUOSImI

bump for real dudes got an awesome tank

Those optic look really small you sure your going to get enough coverage?

yeah i was kinda surprised to see how freaking small they were. but while testing them out last night with a battery and i did get a pretty bright circle on the ceiling.

i did a sketch with autocad and i did get a good coverage with 60degree optics. i guess we'll see if its enough or not. like i said i have enough space to add 12-24 more LEDs if needed

great build as i am studying your foot step to graduate from a nano to a large reef aquarium like yours.. can't wait to see your leds build.