MjP's Fluval Edge pico build

[tomduud]

FTS 17.10.2015

 

 

Tank & Equipment:

• Tank: Fluval Edge 6 Gal
• Filter: AC50 with media basket (filter floss, Seachem Purigen and Seachem Seagel), Oxydator mini with two catalyst and 6% H2O2.
• Red Sea Pro coral salt make with RO/DI Water
• Hydor Koralia Nano stream
• NeoTherm 50w heater with Aquamedic twin controller
• Diy Leds (Cree leds XP-G, XP-E, XT-E and Luxeon Rebel es, semileds ). Lights are: 4x Royal Blue, 2x Normal Blue, 1x Neutral White, 2x warm white, 2x lime and 1x cyan, 2x violet
• Red Sea Live Reef Base Substrate
• LFS live rock from Indonesia
• Tests by Salifert
• Grotech NG1 pump for ATO

Corals:

• Zoanthus Radioactive (little bit different mix what I already have)
• Sarcophyton sp
• 2 x Zoanthus sp.
• Ricordea florida Red
• Ricordea florida Teal (two of them)
• Acanthastrea Hippie Flavour and other
• Zoanthus Southsea Flamethrower (this looks awesome)
• Duncanopsammia axifuga
• Cycloseris sp.
• Pachyclavularia violacea
• Seriatopora hystrix
• Acropora millepora
• Acropora yongei
• Stylophora pistillata
• Seriatopora guttatus (small frag)

 

CuC

• Nerita sp.
• Strombus sp. (shell occupied by hermit crab)
• Calcinus laevimanus
• Tectus sp.
• Astraea caelata Spiny

Lots of images about build and the corals can be found in this thread or from my build https://mjpnanoreef.wordpress.com.

[tomduud]

I finally get time to assemble the tank with lights and controller. I also installed RO/DI unit but not yet tested it. I have to test it soon. But everything else seems to be working. Next phase is purchase live rock and start the cycle.

 

 

-- Edited from previous post:

 

This is my first reef tank. I have several FW tanks (148gal and 6 gal) and have been keeping FW tanks about 10 years or so. But early in this summer the reef tank bug bite me and here we are. So I have been spending my spare time to build light, buy items, read nano-reef.com posts, bought and read books (Alberts nano reef book, Aquarium corals by Eric H. Borneman, reef aqurium vol3) , read magazines etc.

 

The tank will be only for corals and cleaning crew (maybe one shrimp, if I can get one). I will but some zoas in the tank. But what else I can include is not known to me. I like to have acans and florida yuma but not sure if they are compatible with zoas.

 

I will post more detailed description about my tank to my blog but I will post progress here as well.

 

Diy Led controller have temperature sensors, automatic sunrise & sunset & moon phase and real time clock. The system uses MeanWell ldd-700h drivers and Cree leds (XP-G, XP-E, XT-E). Lights are: 4x Royal Blue, 2x Normal Blue, 3 Neutral White, 1x warm white, 1x lime and 1x cyan. DIY Arduino based software controls everything. No fan for lights at the moment, but I will add one if the temperature level is too high. Heatsink temperature stays around 50c / 122f (no problem with in our fresh water tank with similar temperatures).

[Neill.w]

Looking good!

[tomduud]

Finally I got change to order the live rock. The rock will arrive second week of December and the rocks are originated from Indonesia. I also secured CUC transport after the tank is cycled. In my area there is no LFS which sells reef stuff so everything is little bit complicated to get here (new EU laws also make shipments much more complicated).

 

So the next two weeks will be busy and cant wait to get my pico reef running.

[tomduud]

Today was the time for first batch of RO/DI water. I took me several hours to get things going. But now I can produce some RO/DI water for the reef. I tested water before ro/di with TDS meter (297) and after the device it was 0. So I think it will work .

 

One more week to get live rock.

 

[tomduud]

Salt is mixed and set temperature is reached (26.5c / 79.5f). The tank is ready for live rock and sand which should arrive tomorrow. Tomorrow I also have to check salinity levels and take first water measurements.

 

 

 

 

[Lobster]

Cool lighting DIY. Thinking of doing something similar. How do you plan to keep the whole thing from becoming a rusty mess?

[tomduud]

Cool lighting DIY. Thinking of doing something similar. How do you plan to keep the whole thing from becoming a rusty mess?

 

I'm not sure about the rusting. The heatsink is made from aluminium, copper wires. There is cover made from plexiglass which does not show in the pictures(I will add photo of it). If I have problems I will re-think my approach again .

 

Live rock and sand added. Not much to see yet:). I also add two vials of Prodibio Start up as well. Tomorrow I run first batch of water tests. Salinity is 35ppt regarding the Refractometer.

 

 

[tomduud]

Day after setup (before turkey basher operation). Sorry about blurry image (ixus is not pro camera ). Some rocks are still covered with sand. I will even the sand and blow it away from stones.

 

[tomduud]

Tank is little bit clearer now. I have not photographed aquarium in 5 years so I decided take few test shots. Tomorrow some full size tank shots when I have more time to play with camera. (I used Canon dslr and 100mm macro).

 

[tomduud]

Is this a bristle worm? I spot two of them.

 

And what might these be (1-2mm size):

[tomduud]

13.12.2014 FTS

 

 

[tomduud]

Yesterday first inhabitants arrived.

 

CuC

• Nerita sp.

• Strombus sp.

• Calcinus laevimanus

• Astraea caelata Spiny

I hope they are ok and do not eat my future corals:). Snails are cleaning rocks quite fast and the hermit is playing around the sand. Household girls like it already:).

 

Other inhabitants:

• Sarcophyton sp

• 2 x Zoanthus sp.

Water parameters have been quite good. nh4 and no2 zero. I have run tests tomorrow morning to determine if they are changed. I use Seachem Seagel with filler floss. I also added Oxydator mini in the tank. Seneye device will be removed when I got my arduino code fixed (I had bug in the code which crashed the system randomly and I have been rebuilding the system since last week). But here are some images. Please let me know if I miss something since I'm totally newbie on this . And feedback about photos also welcomed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dmasterx1x]

nice work on the lights/controller. Real clean

[tomduud]

nice work on the lights/controller. Real clean

 

Thanks for the nice comments. It looks home made when tanks top is off but very clean when everything is in place. The light does not affect water temperature and it seems to work well. I will add fan if the light temperature rises too much. Now the light temperature is around 113-115f taken from heatsink directly.

[tomduud]

Few macro photos from yesterday.

[tomduud]

Yesterday I got change to order some more inhabitants. So few more corals are on the way and should be here on tuesday. Meanwhile it was water change day today. I changed 20% of the water and changed one zoa position. Water parameters seems quite stable at the moment.

 

And here is few more photos from today:

 

[tomduud]

Few images from today. Also first attempt on capture fluorescent colors from my coral. Some corals look amazing under blue led.

 

FTS:

 

And others:

[reefernanoman]

Good work on that custom light. Nice tank.

[tomduud]

Finally had time to make timelapse of led controller sunrise ramp. Blue leds starts first for 2 hours and then the other leds come along in next hour. Full lights are on 6 hours and then sunset same as sunrise but in reverse mode.

 

Here is test video about sunrise ramp.

 

http://vimeo.com/115983636

[tomduud]

Tank is quite stable. Nothing special on water measurements.

 

Today I tried to play with photo stacking software. So here is result from live rock photo. It seems that there is lots of life in the rock.

 

[tomduud]

Changed 20% water today. KH was 9.3, salinity 35ppt. Other parameters will be measured tomorrow. Had change to take photo of leather coral. Quite eerie atmosphere in this image I think, kinda like it...

 

[tomduud]

New inhabitants arrived few days ago. Had little bit problems with the UPS (the parcel was exposed to cold winter weather (>32f) during the transport and the coral water temperature was dropped way too low. Parcel had heat bags, styrofoam box etc, but it was exposed too cold weather). I'm not sure if they damage too much to survive in a long run, but after a few days they seems to be at least alive.

 

Here is the list what I got to my tank.

 

• Zoanthus Radioactive (little bit different mix what I already have)
• Ricordea florida Red
• Ricordea florida Teal (two of them)
• Acanthastrea Hippie Flavour
• Zoanthus Southsea Flamethrower (this looks awesome)

Here is few images I took today. Sorry about bad images. I had time to test new camera equipment (36megapixels Nikon d810) and it seems this camera need little bit different approach to get best possible image quality what I have used to. But here is some examples what I get this new state of the art camera today. Have to try again and read that ........ manual.

 

 

edit: Just noticed that the blog address in first post was incorrect so here is the working one : http://mjp-picoreef.tumblr.com/

[tomduud]

Another photo update of new inhabitants. Now I got somewhat decent images from camera I'm testing on. Photos taken after a 18% water change.

 

 

 

[tomduud]

Another weekly wc (5 litres) and few photos as well. Started dosign of Salifert All in one this week. I will add 1ml per week. Have to add 0.5ml baking soda every other day to keep Kh near 9 and about a 50-100ml of top of water each day. I'm going to build battery operated top off device and use kalkwasser as top of water but I'm still waiting the parts.

 

More photos can be found from the blog.