As Cheap as I can get it - Ghetto Beauty?

[yardboy]

Thanks Dude! One other thing I changed was I pulled the cheap 14000K Ebay chinese bulb out and bought an Ushio 20000K. The corals and tank seem much happier as a result, plus I really like the color. Maybe because I'm a diver, but I think the bluer bulbs look much more "natural" than 10000K's. Or maybe it's because my own eyes are blue so I can see that wavelength better!

Another little "frag that could" is this Yellow Fiji Sarco that, along with the other Sarco's in the tank, began as fingernail sized frags from Seacrop. They grew slow at first but I'll likely have to frag them after not too much longer. Here's the Yellow

 

[yardboy]

Speaking of frags, no tank is complete without a frag rack! Reaquascaping always ends up with bits and pieces of corals. I'm clumsy at best so I break tips off, and zoanthid polyps are floating around and when I fragged an overgrown Acanthastrea of course a piece of polyp ended up in the cutting tray, so I built this tiny rack using the smallest Mag-Float so it wouldn't shade the tank. It holds 6 plugs (using a babybottle nipple as a mold!) and as you can see I've got zoanthids, clove polyps, and Pocillipora on them .

 

[gulfsurfer101]

That's pretty genius.

[yardboy]

One coral grew faster than any other, likely because he'd kill and eat anything that came his way, a Green and orange Acan. I decided to take a section of new growth and put it on the edge, where the light levels are somewhat lower. It's also about where the main colony was growng so I figured he'd like it there.

 

I moved the green and blue Acan toward the outside also, ending up with an "Acan corner", opposite the "Sarco corner" The little guy in the very corner is a Favia, who used to occupy the very center back of the tank, but he has some vicious tentacles and dealt misery to all around him. When I changed bulbs, the chinese bulb had lost so much intensity that even the 20000K Ushio bleached him. He's recovering now, that corner gets a lot of flow, and the Acan's don't pay any attention to his tentacles.They'd probably eat them if they got too close!

 

[yardboy]

Well Guys. The tank is doing very well, and I think and hope that it will not have anything extraordianry happen to it for the three weeks I'm about to go on vacation to the Philippines. Topoff system good, did a water change today, hopefully it'll last for that long. I've added carbon to the sump, hoping to minimize the organic buildup. Everyone keep their fingers crossed.

See you in three weeks. There will be pictures.

[Mr. Fosi]

Good luck, have a safe trip and DON'T WORRY ABOUT YOUR TANKS WHILE YOU ARE GONE... Like you can help it.

 

Seriously though, have a great trip Rodg.

[yardboy]

Ghetto Beauty has been illuminated by a DIY 70W retrofit from a Craftsman 300W Halogen Work light that I bought for $10 from Sears. I've been irritated by the fact that it didn't have a good spread across the tank, with the corners not being well lit. In the thread where I first found the retro, Esper suggested a new type of halogen, from Lithonia so I went to HD and bought one (They don't sell them at Lowe's)

 

 

Here's a shot using the old fixture. I used manual mode, f/2.8@1/30th sec.

 

And heres and fts with the new fixture. I took both shots at night. The new fixture I may not have waited until the bulb heated up as it has more of a blue color and I used the same settings on the camera for both shots.

Clearly a better spread though. I think my corners will be happier.

[AdriftQuasar]

I'm really impressed by both of your tanks. You do a great job at keeping things as simple as you can.

[yardboy]

Thanks Adrift. What I really want to know is what part of the world you are in as I see you appear to have posted your comment on the 13th and I just received it on the 21st. That would seem to indicate that you sent the reply from Mars or maybe even Jupiter for it to take so long to arrive!

Yes, simpler is often cheaper, but not necessarily easier. I spend a lot of time with these tanks (2 of 10) but I heard a story on the radio today about lowering blood pressure through meditation and I think that I've got that beat. I came home from work, my wife arrived 30 minutes later and I was sitting there with a magnifying glass staring into the tank, entranced. No drugs were involved, not even blood pressure reducers!

[j0hnny]

Hi Yardboy, I read this thread earlier in the year, and used some of your ideas when building my fuge.

 

My question is regarding your light. Are you using a halogen lamp, or did you fit a Metal Halide bulb into a store bought reflector?

 

Thanks!

 

Keep up the great job, looks awesome!

[yardboy]

Hey J9hnny,

Thanks for reading the thread. Glad you found something you could use in your setup. I hope your refugium is running well.

Yes, I do use a halogen fixture, but mod it to take a 70W metal halide bulb. That necessitates using a ballast, that I got from ballastwise.com. The fixture that I've found works best is the Lithonia wide profile, which allows best coverage of the tank with light. On Ghetto Beauty, I simply attach the ballast directly to the fixture itself, but on a few other setups I have the ballast is placed remotely with a cord running to the fixture from the ballast. Works great.

Right now I'm experimenting with the Ebay 70W metal halide bulbs (cheap China bulbs) and am having good luck with them, though others have had problems. (Any manufactureer can have bad bulbs, key is ability to return defective bulbs for replacement)

Sorry I haven't added to this thread in awhile. The tank is doing very well. I'll post some recent photos as soon as I can. (I'm working on a frag tub project right now )

[EspiE]

Hey yardboy. I love the 10g. I am building one this week, and I'm planning to employ your idea of replacing the bottom on the display. Do you think Lexan would work instead of 1/4" glass? Did you have any problems resealing?

[yardboy]

I do not believe you wil get a good seal between glass and lexan. While lexan is often used for internal overflow boxes, it is inside the tank where water pressure isn't a factor. I'm afraid you will have a catastrophic failure if you go that route. 1/4" glass isn't expensive, is easy to work with, and readily available at local glass shops.

Have you considered an external overflow? I've used them on several frag tanks and they have worked out very well for me. The only con I can see with them is that it makes adding a background around the overflow difficult. Otherwise, it maintains all the space inside the tank that it is well worth it to me.

Here are a few shots of one on a frag tank. Located on the end for ease of setup, they can be put anywhere on the tank.

 

It could be made narrower if space is a factor, no wider than the bulkhead used for drainage. Especially for a small tank I think they are worth it. (Yes, sometimes good ideas come after you've set up your tank, which is the only reason why I didn't do it on Ghetto Beauty ) If you are interested and have any questions on how they are set up, I'll be glad to help.

[crrichey]

Very nice!

[yardboy]

I guess this will be my last post on the Ghetto Beauty, as I dismantled it this past weekend. The reasons were primarily economic, my power bill is way to high and it needed a new bulb on the 70W metal halide and I just couldn't justify it when the cost of a 175W bulb over a bigger tank is essentially the same. My tank collection had gotten out of hand too, at it's peak I had 11 tanks and just bulbs and water changes for all that gets quite high. Plus I only have so much time in the day to do maintenance and observation.

I did learn some useful information for myself on this tank though, all anecdotal to my system.

1) A predominantly sps tank can be done at a 10 gallon scale, but it takes as much work as a larger tank, maybe more.

2) a skimmerless sps tank can be done, but once again, is more difficult, and IME the corals grew much slower. In such a small volume of water, the sps corals sucked the calcium out faster than I could replenish it.

3) 70W metal halides are cool, but I think mixed bulb setups are better, a pr. of 18" T-5's would have helped the 70W, varying the intensity during the day.

4) While the internal overflow was okay, any other nano tanks I set up will have external overflows.

5) SCWD's are a pain in the as,s. Hard to clean and clogging frequently. The cls I had on this tank was cumbersome and a lot of time and money to get to work, which it still didn't do very well.

 

I have 2-20L frag tanks that I sold the frags in, and moved the jetties nano into one, and the Ghetto Beauty into another. A third 10 will also be going into the 20L with Ghetto Beauty. It housed a Goby/Shrimp pair I've had for over 4 years. It also has a very small BTA that the sexies from the Ghetto will find to their liking.

One surprising thing. When I first set up Ghetto Beauty, I put 3 sexy shrimp in it (supposed to be odd numbers kept at once). Within a day or so, one of them disappeared but the other two coexisted for over a year without serious problems. While I was removing the corals and rock, I caught one of the sexies unexpectedly (I might have hurt it with a piece of rock, not sure. He was real easy to catch) and when I put him in the tank I didn't acclimate him and I found him dead next to a warty mushroom the next day. While trying to determine if he was dead or molting, I pushed him away from the mushroom with a chopstick, and the shrimp goby promptly ate him, but I'm sure he was dead and not molted, I haven't seen him since.

When I pulled the last rock out, a piece of finely branched lalani, it had a couple of corals on it so I shook it vigously in the tank to remove detritus, put it in a dry container on my desk, removed the corals with cutters, and put the rock into the refugium which is connected to the Ghetto frag system (I don't know why I keep calling this stuff Ghetto, I'm a country boy and know nothing about the ghetto, it just sounds cooler than "Country Hick frag system"!)

A minute later I glanced at it annd there was the second sexy wagging his tail on top of the rock. A true hitchhiker.

Now comes the surprising part. The overflow had a durso on it so the overflow box was full of water. I removed the durso and unscrewed the stand pipe. All the water drained out of the overfloww box into the sump. I looked down inside and there was the third sexy in the overflow bottom. Apparently he'd lived there for over a year without me being aware of it. How he didn't get sucked into the sump/refugium(which was extremely funky at that point) I'll never know. Anyway, I flushed him into a net positioned over the drain, carefully acclimated him to the 20L and this morning he seemed right at home next to the flower anemone in the tank.

Thanks to all that followed this tank and I hope I gave some usefull info and inspiration to try similar experiments.

Thus ends the Ghetto Beauty since it is mixed with another tank. The jetties nano thread will continue since it has just moved to larger accomodations.

[Weetabix7]

Very interesting summary.

I look forward to more educational and interesting observations from your new systems!

[yardboy]

Thanks Weetie. In the new system I've got sexies in anemone, shrimp/goby pair, and am thinking of a clingfish/urchin pair too. The urchin I've had for a year, and just learned of the clingfish. Heard of anyone keeping them?

[Mr. Fosi]

I'm very glad you chose to take the time to write a summary of the experience... I wish I had done that on my previous tanks.

 

One thing I'd like to comment on:

 

5) SCWD's are a pain in the as,s. Hard to clean and clogging frequently. The cls I had on this tank was cumbersome and a lot of time and money to get to work, which it still didn't do very well.

 

These are complaints that I have heard often but I haven't had myself. It seems that modifying the SCWD with larger outlets an d a screw lid helps eliminate these problems because mine ran for 7 months with no maintenance at all and it never seized or stuttered once.

 

I pulled my closed loop off a couple weeks ago, not because of any problems but because I wanted to get some of my flow back by cleaning off the insides of the pipes. When I cracked open the SCWD to clean it out, it was already fairly clean and switched just as smooth as it always has.

 

As they are stock, SCWDs are waaaay too much dinero and prone to failure but if a person takes the time to do a couple easy (but quality) mods they become a more valuable bit of equipment.

[yardboy]

Thanks Isaac,

I'd hesitated to be too general about my experiences but the SCWD was a pain. I heavily modified mine, pretty much like you did, but maybe somewhere in there I damaged the mechanism someway, because every week or so it'd freeze up and refuse to switch. Maybe it was my suction pipe on the pump, or something else. I eventually just removed the mechanism and used the SCWD as a fancy tee fitting!

[Mr. Fosi]

I had forgotten you modded yours.

 

I wonder if they are just hit-and-miss? I don't want to accuse your mod job...

[yardboy]

You won't hurt my feelings! It looked like a robo-cop or something other than a SCWD.

Maybe I got overzealous with the Dremel?

[Mr. Fosi]

Well, I didn't open the bottom up as much and I don't know if that might contribute to tubulence-induced cavitation...

 

How about the outputs? Are they nice an flush on the side wall? I took great pains to make sure that mine were flush against the wall so the shutter wouldn't seize.

 

[bitts]

once again thank you to yardboy for such a great thread!!!