Imisky's custom 30g sps tank

[dailydriven911]

Great colors! Nice tank!!!

 

[imisky]

hey guys after like....a year i finally found out what it is that i keep forgetting to do whenever i update my tank on other websites like RC...I FORGET TO UPDATE THEM HERE!! so without further a due heres a few of the most important updates. Sorry about such a big update with a million pictures at once. I'll update here as well as RC everytime i do something new Enjoy guys

 

so here are some SPS shots first off

Taken on Feb.22.2009

pink porci turned rainbow

 

teal/pink base prostrata

 

this one didnt change

 

Taken Today:

unknown acro (tabling from what i can tell)

 

tenius sp.

 

ORA Borealis Acropora

 

granulosa sp: (seems to be purple tip)

 

bali tri color:

 

The equipments that i added to the system is a DIY dual chamber calcium reactor (2nd chamber is an addon), T5HO 24W suppliment lighting, DIY skimmer cup for my MCE600, automatic speed adjusting cooling fan.

 

here are the pictures:

 

DIY Ca Rx

 

this one shows the recirc's bleed valve to de-gas the cylinder in the case that bubbles get stuck up there.

 

 

T5HO supplement addon:

 

DIY MCE600 cup:

Comparison of DIY and Original

foamhead after 5 minutes

foam head after 48hrs

foam head and skimmate

after a weeks worth of skimming:

 

Speed adjusting temp fan:

 

Heres a video showing how much air im getting across the 3ft tank, as you can tell im using toilet paper as the way of showing air movement (i couldnt think of anything else:redface:) but i think you guys can see how much air is being moved by this fan driven at 3/4 of the spec voltage. The video seemed to have picked up my tunze 6055 ramping up and down in speed, but in real life you barely hear it!, weird haha

[scottyreef]

wow great tank you should post more than once a year

[imisky]

wow great tank you should post more than once a year

 

haha i should was busy with school and life that i had forgot about nano-reef!....you guys will see more of me around from now on

[imisky]

i think its time for an update to the tank, the tank has been doing well lately i suppose other then the fact that i cracked my DIY calcium reactor and had to buy another one, i went ahead and got a BM reactor, the build quality on BMs surpassed what i had expected from a china product. works well and it keeping my kH at 8. during the period i had my DIY off my kH was dropping at 1.5 degrees per day, 2 part couldnt keep up. and soon it dropped to 4 and stayed there without me knowing.

 

i also managed to remove all 5 of the domino damsels i had...omg where they hard to catch, i had to fish 3 of them out with a barbless size 2 hook and then drain the water for the last two as they got smart and wouldnt go for the PE mysis on hooks.. but now i only have 2 fish my coral colors are fading a bit, im assuming that this is because i now feed less and the corals are no longer getting enough nutrients so im getting zeo like colors which i dont particularly like, so i think im going to have to restock pretty soon, with either 3 lyre tail anthias or 3 blue eye cardinals....ive had bad luck with cardinals as they never do good in my system for some reason, what do you guys think? what fish would you add.

 

Heres a few update shots of the corals: you can see what i mean by faded colors like zeo.

 

skittles granulosa

 

borealis:

 

oregon tort:

 

rainbow milli:(bad pick *blue tips, green polyps, red base*)

 

pokerstar monti ( you can really see the faded zeo colors from this one)

 

forest fire digita:

 

green slimer:

 

purple tabling acro:

[pismo_reefer]

your tank is freakin sweet! defintly needs to poest moar!.

[bluenassarius]

first time i've seen acrylic tubes used like that! thumbs up

[imisky]

a little update

 

i finally broke down and added some caribsea seafloor special grade sande into the display but only a mere 0.5cm if not less. The reason for this is i have seen and heard from other reefers that white sand reflects light much better then well no sand and as a result the tank looks brighter and the colors under the corals start to show up as a result of the reflected light from the sand. in theory it sounds like it can work, it does look alot brighter so we'll have to see if things color up on the underside, will kee you guys posted.

 

Since i added the sand i had to mod my tunze 6055 face cover or else it would blow the sand all over. So now i have 3 tunze 6055s all running with the super flow mode and i must have the flow is so gentle that i would almost say its close to that of the vortechs on the short pulse mode as i have 2 of them on pulsing. corals are liking the much wider flow and so are the fish actually, they are out more so im not complaining.

 

The last change i did to the tank was changing the T5HO supps i had which were the Gman pure actinics and KZ fiji purple for URI actinic whites. I am liking the change much better, my pink corals are finally pink and my red coral is getting its red color back and not a rust brown color it had before with the pheonix 14k and old T5HO supps. The amount of florescence is still there from what i can tell, and the color looks MUCH more natural, i personally grew old of the blue hue color that the phoenix gives and am starting to grow a liking for natural tones which the 10-12ks give. So my next bulb set will most likely be the coralvue 12K but that wont be for a while as the bulbs i got now are fairly new.

 

on another note i went out and bought a macro lens!! the sigma 150mm macro. still playing with it and getting used to macro photography as i usually shoot with a zoom lens. here are some photos i took.

 

[MGDMIRAGE]

Awesome tank, awesome DIY, awesome pics, more FTS!

[Paleoreef103]

Love this tank. It's beautiful.

[imisky]

thanks guys, ill try and get some more FTS, the kit lens that came with the canon XSi is a "POS" and it takes alot of tweaking to get it to produce good photos.

 

I have taken a FTS with the new modded 6055s and my super shallow sand bed to show u guys using my old P&S pentax A20, its not as clear but i think it will show you guys what it looks like now. Ever since i started using the DSLR ive forgotten how to use my P&S

 

Ive been wanting to ask, if the tank was yours, what would be 1 thing that you would change to the scape. Hardware wise i know that alot of people would say add a sump and etc. but what about the actual scape itself, any critiques would be great.

 

a friend of mine said i need more green and yellow corals, currently in the search for new green and yellows..what do you guys think.

 

weird colored FTS, but it shows what it looks like now. ill grab a better FTS soon

[Paleoreef103]

I'd say it looks pretty great the way it is. Do you have the three 6055s hooked up to a multicontroller? Seems like overkill for a 30 gallon tank...

[imisky]

I'd say it looks pretty great the way it is. Do you have the three 6055s hooked up to a multicontroller? Seems like overkill for a 30 gallon tank...

 

2 of the 6055s are on diy wavemakers, running on 12V lowest voltage setting on the power supply. every pulse the water goes about 1/2 way across the tank before i see it die down. and by 3/4 of the way its just a calm motion.

1 is on the tunze single controller on 20V which ramps from 30%-100%.

 

i used to have 2 6055s in there, and found that there was some dead spots in the back of the tank so i added in a 3rd 6055 for that purpose (left back one)

[Clavius85]

That's a real nice FTS imisky. You've got some beautiful corals in there with lots of colors. Nice work!

[spanko]

Lighting looks like a starship. Great tank, thank you for sharing the pictures.

[Paleoreef103]

Do you have any links for DIY wavemaker like what you built?

[imisky]

That's a real nice FTS imisky. You've got some beautiful corals in there with lots of colors. Nice work!

 

Thanks! i cant wait for some of the corals to grow in on the right side of the tank as its a little bare as its mostly big frags thats still somewhat brown but lets hope the color choices are good!

 

Lighting looks like a starship. Great tank, thank you for sharing the pictures.

 

haha true hm.. but it works well! and the T5HO add on didnt cost me much!

 

Do you have any links for DIY wavemaker like what you built?

 

heres the thread on RC that teaches you how to make the wavemaker controller, only need to know basic electronics to make it, soldering and reading schematics. As far as i know it works on ALL the tunze controllable models and for only $30 instead of the tunze pulsing controller that is $90? enjoy:

 

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthre...hreadid=1411393

[divecj5]

This has long been one of my favorite tanks. I wouldn't change a single thing to the scape or placement of the corals. You can go ahead and bag and send that sweet Oregon Tort if it gets too big for ya That would be one change.

 

The new macro shots look really good, just need to make sure you get the focus down when using such a short depth of field...just takes some getting used to.

 

I'm sure this is one spectacular tank to view in person.

[imisky]

This has long been one of my favorite tanks. I wouldn't change a single thing to the scape or placement of the corals. You can go ahead and bag and send that sweet Oregon Tort if it gets too big for ya That would be one change.

 

The new macro shots look really good, just need to make sure you get the focus down when using such a short depth of field...just takes some getting used to.

 

I'm sure this is one spectacular tank to view in person.

 

thanks the oregon tort is getting a little big and require some fragging but its too bad you are in the charleston SC and im in Canada.

 

im still getting used to macro photography and the short DOF, it'll probably take some time before i really get the hang of it but everything in this hobby is a learning experience so its good.

 

and as for the tank looking good in person, come on over haha its not TOO far right?

[got2envy]

Update prz

this tank is sweetness!

[imisky]

so i thought id do a little update even enough nothing much changed, im starting to skim a little more wet now with the skimmer to remove more DOC and see how my corals react and because of this im starting to top off with lower SG water to help compensate for the water being skimmed out. i have no idea how to determine the rate of evap + skimmer removal to determine the SG needed in my topoff so i use top off with a bit of salt mixed in hoping it would help. before every water change my SG is at 1.0255 roughly so it is keeping up with it some what.

 

i think that about covers everything i changed to the system and now i got some macro shots of some of the corals

 

 

[1337TANKHAX]

WOW I can't believe I haven't checked out this thread yet. SICK macro shots, and great looking tank.

[imisky]

another small update with a few FTS and weird angle shots. trying to figure out what custom white balance setting to set it to to show true colors in shots but FTS is a little different than compared to the macro setting so i am fiddling with it again. the photos are a little on the pink side but once i get the settings right ill post another good FTS.

 

[JMAdams]

Sweet tank! Looks awesome.

[SmittyCoco]

Your friend is crazy for telling you to change anything ! Do you have any regrets to adding the sand?