TimDanger's CADlights 39g Pro

[timdanger]

got my order from BRS today! great packaging, especially the t5 bulbs.

 

first impressions: the dual media reactor is HUGE. tbd how that's going to work out.

 

the air king fan is HUGE. reasonably quiet (much quieter than the stock fan), though, with good air movement. it's bulky and tough to position. it's going to take some effort to figure out how to deal with it. i might have to mount it on a wall of the cabinet rather than use it "clip on" style.

 

i don't know how i'm going to get all this to fit comfortably in the sump, but we'll see. i can probably cram it all in there, but it's going to take some maneuvering.

 

ati blue plus bulbs are gorgeous. my previously brown star polyps colored up quite a bit under the radium 20k bulb, but they GLOW green under these new blue plus bulbs. frogspawn and orange/pink monti cap are also giving me a crazy fluorescence. can't wait to see how the radium looks when paired up with these guys.

 

filter socks look to be high quality, same with the bone cutters.

[timdanger]

so, some unfortunate news... my branching frogspawn (which i've had for about 3 months, and has been fine) appears to be losing some tissue. it's showing a bit of the skeleton (septum?) where it lost a tentacle maybe 3 weeks ago... i figured it was because there was too much flow. and today, i noticed that it lost another tentacle 2 spots over from where the first one disappeared from. additionally, i noticed that it appears to be losing it's purplish tissue and baring a white skeleton along that branch, extending across a good part of the colony. i've also noticed that, while the colony still does "inflate" (extending polyps/tentacles) a fair amount, the average inflation size has been less over the past couple weeks or so. it gets bigger than shown in the pictures below.

 

my alkalinity has been swinging a bit lately (6.5dkh to 8.5 down to 7 over the past week -- i just can't get it to stay up. Ca is at 420-440. Mg is almost certainly low.). specific gravity is 1.024, temp is 80.3F. everything else in the tank looks fine.

 

does anyone have any ideas of what i could do? i was thinking of moving it to a lower flow part of the tank (somewhere a little better shielded from flow from the vortech).

 

 

pics of frogspawn:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

on a lighter note, kitties explore new things from Bulk Reef Supply order...:

 

and, a crappy actinic-only FTS, just to show what things look like. i am not proud of this photo-taking, but here it is. and, i do love that pink/orange monti cap in the middle - thanks dan!:

[steely185]

If you have an auto top off you can raise your alk by adding Kalkwasser to your top off water. It will be added in slow amounts over time and will eventually level out. I add about a 1/2 to 1 teaspoon per gallon of top off water. It did the trick for me. If you can raise your alk your corals will be able to actually use the calcium present. A drop in alk or raise in phosphates (usually hard to get an accurate reading on a test kit) will kill corals pretty quickly or at least damage them. If you want an accurate reading then swing by fishworld. They have a hanna phosphate colorimeter which Joe uses for water tests. It will give you the most accurate reading.

 

Glad you like the pink cap. It's an awesome grower with great color so I know you will enjoy it for a while to come. I just added a purple cap to my tank. Caps are about as simple as they go but one of the most enjoyable. Just make sure leave it plenty of room to grow. Give it plenty of flow and it will vase rather than plate outwards.

[timdanger]

just as an update, i haven't moved the frogspawn, but i turned down the mp10 to about 75-80% on lagoon mode. the frogspawn seems to be doing fine. i don't really understand what's going on with it. it stills inflates pretty well (even the damaged head). i may still move it, but we'll see.

 

i've still been brainstorming on exactly how i'm going to be able to fit all this new Bulk Reef Supply equipment into my sump. the air king fan is much bigger than the 6" they advertise it (the fan BLADES might be 6" -- the entire fan, though, is closer to 10", and the "clip" is too big for it to just attach to the side of my sump. the dual reactor is huge, and there are only really two places to put it, neither of which are particularly desirable. still, i went to Lowe's yesterday, and I think i might have found a solution. going to work on that tonight.

 

i also added 3 scarlet-leg hermits and 2 turbo snails this weekend, and i picked up some courser-grain sand to add to the caribsea fiji pink sand in my display that keeps getting eroded away from the front and piled up in the back (maybe too much flow for that grain size in this small of a tank).

 

If you have an auto top off you can raise your alk by adding Kalkwasser to your top off water. It will be added in slow amounts over time and will eventually level out. I add about a 1/2 to 1 teaspoon per gallon of top off water. It did the trick for me. If you can raise your alk your corals will be able to actually use the calcium present. A drop in alk or raise in phosphates (usually hard to get an accurate reading on a test kit) will kill corals pretty quickly or at least damage them. If you want an accurate reading then swing by fishworld. They have a hanna phosphate colorimeter which Joe uses for water tests. It will give you the most accurate reading.

 

i've thought about using kalk. i've done some research into it, but i haven't settled on anything. as of now, i've got a lot of 2-part to use up before i have to make another purchasing decision.

 

Glad you like the pink cap. It's an awesome grower with great color so I know you will enjoy it for a while to come. I just added a purple cap to my tank. Caps are about as simple as they go but one of the most enjoyable. Just make sure leave it plenty of room to grow. Give it plenty of flow and it will vase rather than plate outwards.

 

i definitely do -- it looks great in the tank. eventually, i'd like to think that my picture-taking will get better so i can actually capture what it looks like under the Radium+ATI Blue Plus combo. it's very striking!

[timdanger]

WOW I'm never buying from them.. that would piss me offf How are all the corals doing you got so far..?

 

just as an update on my ATL corals, the idaho grape montipora undata is still brown/colorless -- it irritates me every time i look at it.

 

the raspberry-tipped blueberry prostrata is also still brown/colorless (but at least shows good polyp extension).

 

the pink flamingo has gotten a bit pinker, but it's still more of a light pink than the intense/neon pink they show on the website. still not much in the way of growth, but it appears to be improving.

 

the best improvement, however, has been from the ocean blue acropora papillare. just in the past 2-3 weeks (i.e. about when i switched to the radium bulb), it has encrusted over the previously recessed tissue and onto the frag plug, and the blue color has deepened somewhat. it has also shown moderately good "upward/outward" growth over the past 2-3 weeks, as well. and, although the polyps are brown, polyp extension is very good, and the inside of the corallites show a bit of neon green coloration. it still doesn't look like it did in the "WYSIWYG" picture on the site, but i'm much happier now than i was when i first received it, that's for sure. i think it may look good once it's grown up a bit.

 

hopefully, the other ATL corals will improve like this.

 

the improvement may be attributable to my new light bulbs. the radium 20k running on my 150w HQI ballast is very bright, much brighter than the 14k prism that comes stock on the cadlights fixture. the ati blue plus bulbs are also unbelievably brighter than the older actinic bulbs that came stock on the cadlights fixture. what's interesting about this bulb combination is that i was worried about it being too "blue" -- but, honestly, it's almost not even blue enough. despite not being too blue, it brings out some great colors. the most striking difference (which i will show in pictures, i swear, at some point) is in my hitchhiker star polyps, which have gone from an unappealing brownish-green color to a glowing neon green with a neon purple mat.

[timdanger]

seriously, here's the sump after adding the new media reactor/fan (the light/fan will move, but still):

 

 

 

unbelievable. i'm going to cut down some of those pipes to try and help this situation, but i mean... wow. i remember getting this tank for "easy access for maintenance." not so much anymore, eh?

[timdanger]

while working on my sump last night, i observed my peppermint shrimp right up on my frogspawn directly where the tissue recession was. difficult to say whether it was the tissue recession that brought him there, or whether he brought the tissue recession. when i saw him, he wasn't actually ripping anything up (like i've seen peppermint shrimp do in the past to euphyllia), just loitering.

 

i fed the tank (for the second time that evening) to try and get him interested in something else. that worked, at least for now. to be observed.

[timdanger]

been on a bit of a posting hiatus lately (things are busy at work, other stuff going on, etc.) -- but, the tank is still rolling along. my water tested last week as:

 

0 ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/phosphate

450 Ca

9 Alk (my Elos test kit was giving 8 Alk)

1300 Mg

SG of 1.025

 

i'm getting pretty solid growth out of my SPS right now (green slimer has suddenly begun basing out after sitting in my tank for 4 months!), but i'm still having coloration problems with fading/brown corals. i've never had any measurable nitrates/phosphates, and i'm running a dual media reactor now. algae is subsiding fairly steadily, but corals don't appear to be coloring up much yet. so, to help this, i've done a few things:

 

1) added a fish to the bioload (McCosker's Flasher Wrasse -- beautiful!)

2) started feeding more, and more often, including using more roti-feast than i had been using previously (~2 tsp every other day). i also switched to a frozen cyclopeeze food from a freeze-dried version, and i just finished my package of hikari frozen mysis and will be switching over to PEMysis next time i make it to the LFS (soon, since i'm almost out of top-off water).

3) started dosing Seachem's AquaVitro Fuel (amino acids/carbohydrates) once every 3 days or so. This stuff smells like death, but i've noticed solid improvement in polyp extension and color in at least my pink flamingo selago and the pink milli i got from Dan, so hopefully some other corals will follow suit.

4) backing off my water change regimen a bit (i was changing 5g of my 40g total water volume every 1-1.5 weeks - i'm going to back this down to 5g every 1.5-2 weeks for at least a little while)

5) skimming a bit dryer to try and prevent excess trace element/etc. export.

6) i had tried dialing down the vortech a little bit in an effort to placate the frogspawn, but that hasn't appeared to help (or hurt) -- i'm a little worried about the frogspawn, but there really hasn't been any noticeable decline in its health over the past few weeks, so it's at least holding steady. like the sps, though, the colors in the tentacles are not quite as vibrant as they have been in the past.

[timdanger]

WHAT STUFF USED TO LOOK LIKE:

frogspawn used to look like this:

 

my green cap with blue polyps (seen as creamy in the right tier picture) used to look like this:

 

ATL ocean blue papillare

 

ATL pink flamingo selago

 

orange digitata:

 

my coralline algae used to look like it did in this FTS:

 

what stuff looks like now:

 

FTS

 

Right Tier

 

Left Tier

 

Sump Pics

 

close-up

 

 

Algae-in-the-GFO-canister-of-my-media-reactor pics

 

close-up

 

Some close-up coral pics:

 

GSP (with cotton-candy algae)

 

orange/pink cap:

 

spumosa:

 

formerly-pink mille:

 

ATL pink flamingo selago:

 

bali green (brown) slimer

 

blue (cream) tort

 

sad frogspawn

 

but at least I've got this going for me!:

 

 

 

 

and, comic relief from stuck hermit crabs:

[Rehype]

Hang in there tim. Im sure they will start to recover once you get a handle on the excess nutrients. What are your nitrate levels?

[timdanger]

Hang in there tim. Im sure they will start to recover once you get a handle on the excess nutrients. What are your nitrate levels?

 

since setting up, never had any detectable nitrates or phosphates. clearly, this can't be the case.

[Rehype]

What type of water are you using?

[timdanger]

here's my current tank situation (i was also posting this stuff over on the SPS forum on RC):

 

Tank/Equipment.

-39g 20x20x24" Cadlights Pro display (~40g total system water volume with sump), established in September 2009.

-12g sump, lit by 15w 6500k bulb - DSB with chaeto in refugium

-60lb live rock, 40lb live sand (including sump DSB).

-Bubble-Magus NAC3 skimmer, always on.

-150w Radium 20k HQI + 2x24w ATI Blue Plus T5HO.

-Vortech mp10 (100% reef crest), Tunze 6025, Tunze 1073.020 return pump

-BRS Dual Media Reactor, running BRS granular GFO and seachem matrix carbon (switching to Rox 0.8 when i next switch it out).

-JBJ ATO, using RODI water from LFS

-salt water is pre-mixed D-D h2ocean from LFS

 

Stocking.

Fish: ocellaris clown, royal gramma, bluespot jawfish, mccosker's flasher wrasse, all in good health.

CUC: 3x nassarius, 4x nerite, 4x red-legged hermits, ~4x blue-legged hermits, 1x trochus, 2x turbo, 1x peppermint shrimp, 1x skunk cleaner shrimp, 1x emerald crab (but i haven't seen him in a long while)

Coral:

1) ORA bali green slimer colony (mostly brown, but greener where it's basing out -- base is about 9" deep, top is about 3" deep)

2) ATL Pink Flamingo Acropora Selago frag (pale pink, but becoming more vibrant -- about 4" deep)

3) Orange Montipora Digitata colony (white "skin" but nice/full orange polyps -- base is 6" deep, top is 2" deep)

4) Purple Montipora Digitata colony (completely brown -- base is 6" deep, top is 4" deep, and I have a smaller frag of it that is 2" deep)

5) ATL Idaho Grape Montipora Undata frag (completely brown -- base is 9" deep)

6) Blue-polyped Green Montipora Capricornis/Foliosa(?) frag (pale/cream -- base is 10" deep

7) Blue Tort frag (pale/cream -- just moved this up from lower light to about 4" deep)

8) ATL Ocean Blue Papillare frag (blue, but pale/browned a bit -- about 9" deep)

9) Pink Millepora frag (pink/brown -- about 10" deep

10) ATL Blueberry-tipped Raspberry Prostrata frag (pale/cream -- currently about 9" deep, but I've been moving it around a lot)

11) unknown staghorn acropora frag (brown, some green -- about 10" deep)

12) Pink/Orange Montipora Capricornis frag (good coloration -- about 12" deep)

13) spumosa (pale -- about 5" deep and offset from the light)

14) neon purple/green frogspawn colony (paler than when i got it, but it's doing ok -- probably about 14" deep)

15) neon green star polyp colony (neon green, about 16" deep)

 

Feeding.

5x week 1 cube of PEMysis, some Frozen Cyclopeeze

2x/week 2tsp Roti-Feast, 5ml Aqua Vitro Fuel (started dosing that over the last 3 weeks)

 

Maintenance

10ml Alk, 10ml Ca daily Brightwell Reef Code A/B until I run out (at which point I have BRS 2-part to switch over to). ~20-25ml Mg (BRS 2-part) weekly.

~5g water change using D-D h2ocean salt biweekly (recently changed this from 5g weekly).

Photo period: Actinics 10am-10pm, Halide 12pm-8pm

 

Parameters.

Temperature: as high as 82.6F, but I've just added a second fan, which has brought the temperature down to 77.5-80F. This is not on a controller at this time.

Salinity: 1.024-1.025, per marine depot refractometer

Ca: 430ppm (Elos, checked weekly)

Alk: 8dkh (Elos, checked weekly)

Mg: ~1300ppm (not testing regularly, but using Elos)

Ammonia/Nitrites: 0 (API)

PO4: undetectable (never detected any since day 1) (Elos)

Nitrates: undetectable (never detected any since day 1) (API)

pH: 8.2, but I don't monitor this regularly.

 

The issues

 

1. algae blooms (no cyano). I have GHA, red turf, cotton candy in the display and in the sump. The biggest culprit is the sump, where cotton candy and dinoflagellates are PROLIFIC.

2. formerly very prolific coralline growth has stopped; almost all light-facing coralline is bleached out white/gray now.

3. and, most notably, the coloration of my coral (or, rather, the lack thereof). Almost everything in the tank is brown or very pale. I'd say that I'm satisfied with only 2 of my SPS (one pink/orange monti cap, and one pink selago). some of these corals came to me brown, some have lost color while in my possession. even the frogspawn is much paler than when i acquired it 2-3 months ago.

 

The potential causes/errors I have made

 

1. Temperature fluctuation. This is tough to deal with in the summer in Richmond without a temperature controller, but it is what it is right now.

2. Alkalinity swings. I had swings where the Alk would bob up and down between 6-8dkh until about 3 weeks ago because of irregular dosing schedule (now i'm locked in pretty well with daily dosing).

3. formerly low Mg levels (raised from 1000ppm about 3 months ago)

4. changed light bulbs about 6 weeks ago (went from 14k Prism bulb + generic dim "aquablue" actinic T5HO bulbs to brighter Radium 20k + ATI Blue Plus T5HO bulbs -- acclimated only by using reduced photoperiod for about 5 days, figuring I would have less par going to the 20k bulb). I don't know if my corals reacted badly to the change or not, because it's not like they were doing that great in the first place.

5. some deeper sand bed spots in my display tank -- sand tends to accumulate under the vortech and get thinned out in the middle of the tank due to jawfish construction. some places may get as much as 3" deep

 

What type of water are you using?

 

Lifecycle of my water:

 

as far as phosphates being leached, here is the path of my water, which comes from my LFS. The owner says they use a kidney-dialysis-level RODI filter (for whatever that's worth -- I never inquired further than that, but they maintain all their tanks with the same water). the water is used as follows:

 

1) i put top-off water into a yellow gas can from Lowe's. I put D-D H2Ocean water mixed to 1.025 into red gas can from Lowe's. [possible culprit?]

 

2) i immediately empty most of top-off water (if not all) into old IO salt bucket i use for top-off water. top-off water sits in the gas can for no more than a week at a time.

 

3) i dump new salt water into Home Depot bucket (dedicated to new salt water for water changes) within 1-2 weeks of acquiring it to heat it up and then do water changes.

 

that's it.

[Rehype]

To be honest tim that whole water life cycle sounds pretty suspect. Always make your own water and always start with a new 5 gallon bucket FWIW

The loss of your coralline algae and the browning of your sps is more than likely the result of the lighting change.

It also occured to me that since you have such a deep sand bed with a jawfish constantly stirring it,could it be releasing excess nutrients into your water column?

[timdanger]

To be honest tim that whole water life cycle sounds pretty suspect. Always make your own water and always start with a new 5 gallon bucket FWIW

 

that's a fair point -- i've planned since day 1 to just purchase my own RODI unit, as it would save me a lot of time/expense regardless of any quality/consistency issues that may come from LFS water (though I do trust the LFS -- it's owned/operated by Marvin from the Deltec board on RC). it just kind of sucks to take on that up-front cost of the unit, plus salt, and then plumbing it, especially when i have other stuff i want to buy (controller, dosing pumps, etc. etc. etc....). i agree that i really should do it, though.

 

The loss of your coralline algae and the browning of your sps is more than likely the result of the lighting change.

 

i figured that was the case with the coralline algae, but i did expect it to have recovered by now -- i've had the radium running for a pretty decent time, and i went from a 14k to a 20k, so i guess i didn't anticipate that much in the way of "light shock."

 

as far as the corals losing/gaining color, they've never really had much color in the first place, and there was no apparent change in their color/condition directly attributable to the timing of the lamp changes (though growth did pick up after the lamp change).

 

It also occurred to me that since you have such a deep sand bed with a jawfish constantly stirring it,could it be releasing excess nutrients into your water column?

 

well, my sandbed in the display tank isn't SUPPOSED to be that deep (my DSB is in the center section of my 12g sump). it started off at about a uniform 1". that 1" has, however, shrunk to 0.5" in some places, or as little as bare-bottom, and as deep as 2.5" in other places (particularly, the back walls underneath the powerheads). this is from a combination of jawfish and powerhead sand movement. i don't think that the jawfish creates piles that are deep enough to be anoxic, but the powerheads definitely do. i am particularly concerned about the release of hydrogen sulfide into the water column from the "depiling" of these sandbed accumulations. but, i don't really know the best way to fix that. the sand is already piled up, and i can't keep it from accumulating. i have considered adding a small powerhead near the sandbed, but i have no idea whether that would help.

[tundrashaul]

any updates?

[timdanger]

any updates?

 

well, i've been doing some research on sand beds and carbon/bacteria dosing, and just generally thinking about what i'm doing a little bit more. i've also just finished (mostly) reading Reef Aquarium Volume 3 (Sprung/Delbeek).

 

i have been hesitant to switch to any kind of ULNS strategy (zeovit/vsv) because of two things: 1) existing DSB; 2) being stuck with it once you start.

 

at this point, i'm keeping temperature stable (77.5-79.0 all day), trying to keep parameters stable (alk slipped ~0.5dkh, but it's back up now -- Ca is stable). I've also added a fair amount more GFO media to my reactor and had some turbo snails working on my sump. they got it clear in just a matter of a few days. i moved one of the snails up to the display and left the other to keep the sump clear. i feel like my algae growth has slowed, but i could be deluding myself. [no, i really think it has slowed]

 

meanwhile, i've noticed no real difference in coloration of the corals. my largest SPS coral is an orange digitata (pictured in the "Left Tier" photo), and it has been looking rough for 2-3 weeks now. it may be recovering, but slowly. polyp extension is pretty bad, and some of the polyps have actually turned pale/white. it has a small bit of algae growing on some of the tips. i tried to blast it off with my tunze 6025, but it was stuck on there. something similar started to happen to my purple digitata at about the same time, but it has mostly recovered at this point.

 

going forward, i have a couple items on my wish list: a controller, 2 peristaltic dosing pumps (for ca/alk) and an RODI unit. i'm going on vacation for a week in 2 weeks, and i'm trying to figure out what's going to be most beneficial in the interim (probably the dosing pumps, right? i'm having to add 10ml of Ca/Alk every day right now). i also need to buy new test kits. my elos KH is running on fumes, and i'm out of Reagent A on my Elos Ca kit (even though B, C and D are all still at least half full). I posted on the Elos board on RC about a refill for just the one reagent but got no responses (lame).

 

 

does anyone have any thoughts on flow rate over the DSB? i've got less than 300gph going over it (probably less after accounting for bio-buildup in my plumbing).

[tundrashaul]

By being stuck with the DSB, is this because of nutrient release when removed?

[timdanger]

By being stuck with the DSB, is this because of nutrient release when removed?

 

well, what i meant was being stuck with carbon (specifically vsv) dosing once you start.

 

as far as being stuck with a DSB, i think that's less of a reality. i've read (and it makes sense) that there is the potential for a nutrient spike when you remove a DSB, but i've seen examples of where this was a non-issue, especially when the DSB is separated from the display (in my case, it's in a sump).

[timdanger]

I just bought a couple BRS 2-part Dosers from Bulk Reef Supply today, along with a replacement Elos KH test kit to replace my empty one.

 

I can't say enough good things about the Bulk Reef Supply folks. Good products, good prices, and knowledgeable people on the phones, and my order shipped out less than an hour after I placed it.

[timdanger]

I've done something amazing (or, at least i'm pretty proud of it and haven't personally seen it done before anywhere else).

 

pics to follow.

[tundrashaul]

I've done something amazing (or, at least i'm pretty proud of it and haven't personally seen it done before anywhere else).

 

pics to follow.

 

tease.....

[steely185]

Waiting for these pics. Interested

[timdanger]

Waiting for these pics. Interested

 

working on it -- i took the pictures, but haven't uploaded yet. went on vacation last week, set up everything to auto-dose/auto-topoff, etc. -- nothing worked. came home to find:

 

1) auto top-off worked for a few days, but then the suction cup holding the line in place in the auto-topoff reservoir somehow uprooted itself, causing the inlet hose to float to the top of the water and start sucking air (and therefore no topoff water);

 

2) new dosing pumps didn't work. they were both on a 2-outlet digital timer that, when i returned, was flashing all kinds of crazy-looking alien symbols (not letters or numbers), and couldn't be fixed short of manually resetting the whole thing. i have no idea what happened there. anyway, my already low-ish Alkalinity dropped to 5.5dkh (from about 7.5dkh). Thankfully, I don't see too many negative effects. My frogspawn hasn't opened up at all and shows a fair amount of tissue recession (from the bottom-up toward the heads. That's about the only negative effect. in fact, i've seen a fair amount of growth over the last week. since I found the low Alk (Sunday night), I've raised the Alk back up to about 6.5, and I'm planning to raise it up to 8 by tomorrow morning.

 

All things considered, it didn't turn out that badly. Once I catch up on everything, I'll get to posting the good stuff.

[timdanger]

And now, my new pivoting light fixture suspension system! it's rough and definitely improvable with some more effort (e.g. painting with appropriate paint, adding hooks instead of just using loops to suspend the light, finding better suspension hardware...), but the concept is all there, and it is working perfectly. it's originally based on the concept from the DIY from Reefkeeping Magazine (here), but the pivoting arm is (as far as I've seen) a new improvement.

 

first, I made the necessary bends for the tank dimensions (harder than i anticipated because of the small tank dimensions -- actually had to make multiple smaller bends in order to get the second 90 degree bend fully in place). then, i spray-painted it black (with marginal success, but it was a rush job in high humidity, so it came out pretty well considering that):

 

 

 

now, here's what it looks like when it's pivoted out of the way for maintenance, feeding, dosing, fragging, or other hand-in-tank mischief!:

 

 

 

from the side, you can see how the pivoting works. basically, i took a 3/4" piece of electrical conduit and slid it into a shorter piece of 1" electrical conduit.:

 

 

up close, you can see that i added a piece of rubber to stabilize the two pieces. i bought a rubber end-cap from Lowe's (same one i used as an end-cap on the top suspension bar -- it's the type you'd see on the end of a walking cane), cut the end off, and slid it onto the 3/4" conduit so that it fit snugly into the 1" conduit.:

 

 

 

you can also see here that there are just 2 brackets that fit over the 1" conduit to hold the entire thing in place. it's very sturdy (though for a heavier fixture, i would definitely encourage going with a thicker conduit). the brackets hold the 1" conduit tightly in place so that only the 3/4" conduit will slide. as a sidenote, it was all sorts of tricky to screw the brackets in place without moving the whole tank. there was only 2.75" of clearance between the wall and the stand!

 

 

 

and, here are a couple other pictures to show the pivoting. it moves smoothly and sits wherever you want it to.:

 

 

 

 

Yes?