Friar's 4 gallon Finnex - R.I.P.

[friar1]

yeah thanks Newman,

the orange one is my favorite too. But I like them all.

[friar1]

So I just realized, the emerald crab I had for a short time actually fragged a zoa colony for me. I found a group of three zoas floating around and couldn't figure out where they came from, but I just realized they came from my dragon eyes!

 

So, now, i think, I might try doing some fragging myself! Since I really like those dragon/eagle eyes!

 

Seems like it would be pretty simple?

 

Brian

[.Newman.]

it is simple. rock rubble, dry it up, put a tiny dab of super glue gel on it, let it sit for a minute or two then get the zoas, dry their underside and just put them on top of the glue. let sit a minute or less, then put the frag gently back in the water, away from the emerald crab (because he'll be after the fresh glue and weakened zoas and will detach them.

[friar1]

Yeah, I think I will try it in a few, I need to clean some blades. I might try my rics too, but that will be trickier. Then I can spread some coal out in the tank faster.

 

I am hoping to get some acans soon, i am looking for pink ones, or red ones or light purple ones.

[.Newman.]

scissors are my favorite fragging tool so far... but i usually wait until the target coral has considerable branching from its rock before i cut some off. in the case of zoas i wait until they have a few polyps that are clearly trying to grow on each other and are not attached to anything (maybe sand). i cut those off as frags.

 

in the case of mushrooms, i cut the polyp off and leave the base to regrow...best done when the mushroom is stretching its stem. idk if rics do that though.

[friar1]

Wow, to think this is where my Duncan first began in my old 1.5 gallon tank!

 

 

And the RPE, which is a colony of 17 now!

 

[friar1]

Found a baby Superman Mushroom, attached to a rock in the back. Hopefully I can get it to grow!

[friar1]

Here's the baby Mushroom

 

 

And here it is with the Cousin Rics

 

[jgpico]

Your tank looks awesome Friar. I love your duncans!

[friar1]

Thanks!

 

I would like more color though. What lights are you using for yours?

 

Brian

[iball1804]

Those are awesome duncans!

[friar1]

Thank You!. Began with one little one rescued from the LFS, now have nine or more heads.

 

Brian

[jgpico]

Thanks!

 

I would like more color though. What lights are you using for yours?

 

Brian

I'm using an orphek dimmable par bulb. Before that I was using a rapid led par38. I have loved the colors I get with the leds I have used.

[friar1]

Well,

 

With my White LED's turned off, it kinda looks like this:

 

 

 

[friar1]

And Sideways, Whites on:

 

 

 

 

[friar1]

So a few observations.

 

Getting closer to a year on this tank Yay!

 

My camera takes horrible pictures, white balance does not work in RAW

 

A Ric can and will consume a stomatella snail! See the picture

 

 

 

 

A mini-mini can divide in like a day! I saw this mini-mini start to divide its mouth and I thought cool, it is going to reproduce, thinking in a month it will become two. Next day, it was Two! Just ripped itself in half!

 

The second half moved a 1/4 inch away, then by the following week, it had moved up and above the first half.

 

 

 

[.Newman.]

good looking tank

I just finished my canopy build - it's going to look similar to yours.

 

rics can eat just about anything. a ric i used to have ate my feather duster worm. (well it couldnt eat it because the worm was too big, but it killed the worm quite effectively when the worm decided to leave its tube and relocate. the ric was right under the worm's tube...lesson learned )

[friar1]

Thanks newman,

 

I also have been watching my zoas grow out like crazy.

 

I had to take one of the candy cane colonies, out to scrub the bubble algae off it. Thought I might have killed it because I had a lot of tissue recession, but it has now bounced back quite nicely.

 

I am planning on a new canister filter (Don't like the HOB power filters). Need a little better filter cause of the Damsel. The filter I have keeps up, but just. I am thinking about trying to catch the Damsel, and bringing it to an LFS. But I have to wait a week or so. Kind of conflicted on this though Don't want to kill the thing, but it does dirty the tank faster. I can keep up if I do water changes more than once a week. We will have to see.

 

Also hoping to get some Acans, but a lot of expenses coming up so I don't know how that will work out. Might just let what is in there grow out, and I am getting a lot of growth.

 

That's all for now,

Brian

[Builder Anthony]

is that what they call that little nem?i thought it was a maxi mini.i dont know what there called but reefgardner threw it in as a freebie and they are very intresting ...ive never had it sting anything..........have you?

[friar1]

Yeah it is a mini mini not a maxi mini. Mine has not stung anything, but it has tried numerous times to eat a dwarf cerith hehe. I'll find the point of a snail sticking out of the mini mini's mouth, and then after a day or so, the mini mini gives up and spits the snail out! Tonight though I caught the new one trying to scarf down a paly RPE polyp that is right next to it, it had stretched all the way to the side and had pretty much engulfed the RPE polyp, but then it let go after a while and went back to normal. The RPE opened back up after a while, weird!

[friar1]

Oh, and a nother thing I have observed is that over the course of the last nine months, many (not all) of the animals have begun to lose color verrry slowly. I am pretty sure it is my lighting set up.

 

The Duncan used to be much greener. There is a small ric near the top that is also almost white now, but very healthy. However the RPE's, which are also at the top are still doing great.

 

I cannot adjust the height of my lights, so I began to only run the 5 royal blue LED's for a couple hours a day, and the rest of the time I am only running three cool white, 1 Royal blue and one neutral white. When I run the 5 royal blues, I also have them dimmed as low as the dimmer will go. I have two drivers, one for each set of five and one is not dimmable, or else I would turn that one down too. I feel that doing this has improved the color somewhat, but I will wait to see what happens. I am hoping to get another inventronics dimmable driver for the other set of five LED's and just turn them both down all the way. But then I will make a change to the wiring set up and move the drivers down to another enclosure outside the light fixture.

 

Hey Newman, can't wait to see your set up with your new canopy!

[friar1]

So, I have made the changes I wanted to in my lighting. Like I mentioned before, I changed the light schedule to having the blues on only a few hours a day, with them dimmed down all the way. I didn't really like this look, since the corals looked kind of dull under this lighting, but the color is coming back on most of them.

So I got another driver from ReefLED, another Inventronics. They are pricey, but they are easy to set up since they handle 120 Volt AC in and have their own 10 volt supply for the built in dimming. All you have to do is connect to your LED Strings and 120 volt AC and wire in a Potentiometer, good to go. I put this new driver on the whites (Actually, 4 whites and one blue). Dimmed the whites down significantly, turned up the brightness on the blues, but kept the same schedule, where the blues don't come on until I get home and stay on for only a few hours.

Corals look much better now though, especially with the ability to adjust both the whites and the blues. Really like it.

 

But... I have another surprise!....

For now, a few pictures, these are before the new driver though.

 

 

 

 

[.Newman.]

looking cool. whats the other surprise?

[friar1]

So I did not like having to turn off and turn on the blues by unplugging and plugging in. I did not want to spend 100's of dollars on reef keeper lite, although if I EVER have the money I will!

 

So I instead decided, after I saw someone else with this idea, to try out X10 in order to get more precise and versatile automation for my lights. I actually spent more than I needed to, because of trial and error, but I ended up with a nice system that allows me to control when the different sets of LEDs come on and i like this much better than what I had before.

 

X10, for those who don't know, is an automation system that uses existing house wiring to control devices like appliances (Think Swamp Cooler) and lights on a schedule you set up. Or by a remote control if you get one (I did not)

 

So what I did was get the controllable Outlets and wired three of them into two raceway outlet boxes attached to a board, added another regular switch/outlet combo to control the whole thing and voila.. a ghetto lighting controller.

 

X10 has its downside, devices are a little difficult to control unless the timer or controller is on the same circuit, but for my purposes, it works great, because the timer/controller is plugged into the outlets wired into the raceway boxes.

 

Just in case anyone wants to try this though i recommend NOT buying from X10, they list these things and then a week after you order, they tell you they are out of stock. There are lot of these on EBAY though. Which is where I ended up buying most of the parts.

 

Also, it probably is a better idea to invest a little more and get RKL. It is what I would do if I had to do it over again, but anyhow, I like what I ended up with and it is all on one switch so I can turn everything off at once for a water change or other maintenance. RKL at level one only gives you 4 outlets, I have seven, all of which are wired to a single standard switch. It was a fun project.

 

 

 

[friar1]

Oh and by the way, I am going to get a remote controller and a transceiver for the house so I can control the lights with a universal remote that also controls my tv and dvd player and satellite (I'm a gadget nut). Now the blues come on in the morning for an hour. The whites come on at about 11 AM and stay on until 8:30PM while the blues come on again at 5:30PM while the whites are on this time and stay on until 9:30 PM after the whites go off at 8:30 PM. Fan is on a separate timer and is on anytime the blues or whites or both are on. Also, when summer hits, I will hook up the Swamp cooler to an appliance module controlled by the x10 and have it all controlled from one timer

 

The thing I like best is that the corals seem to really like this lighting scheme, with the whites dimmed way down and the blues at about 50% when they are on. Color is looking good and polyp extension is great.