M1A1 - 29g LPS Reef

[Rehype]

Wow you did an incredible job on the lighting and controller. Have you decided on livestock?

[M1A1]

Wow you did an incredible job on the lighting and controller. Have you decided on livestock?

 

Thanks Rehype. I will be moving over all of the fish from my 75g system -two true percula, one large pajama cardinal, one royal gramma- so I probably won't add any other fish immediately. I'd love to add a wrasse and a few gobies once the tank is maturing in a year or so. For inverts, a cleaner shrimp and some sexy shrimp, but I'm not sure how they interact so it may be one or the other.

[M1A1]

"Surface" means just below the surface of the water and the 1/3 locations are approximately 6" from surface or sandbed, respectively. "LED Power" is the power of each color so 50% on the chart means that each color (blue and white) is at 50%.

 

The photographs a few posts above don't do any justice to the true color of the light these LEDs put out. With both colors at 100% the light is a crisp white with blue tint, probably comparable to a 10,000 Kelvin bulb. I will have to see how coral look under this light because it is just about perfect even before fluorescence.

 

Ammonia dropped to 0-0.25ppm while nitrite has spiked to 5-10ppm today. Using some cheap test kit so the color cards are a bit hard to read but I don't really care. I can tell when its 0ppm and when its above 0ppm and that is all that matters for tracking the cycle.

[Clavius85]

Wow, your LED setup is amazing. I think I'm going to go with LEDs to light my new 10g setup. It'll be a bit of a challenge for me since i'm not much of a DIYer. And it won't be anything like what you've got set up here. But I'm looking forward to trying. Again, nice work.

[pismo_reefer]

wow!

[M1A1]

Wow, your LED setup is amazing. I think I'm going to go with LEDs to light my new 10g setup. It'll be a bit of a challenge for me since i'm not much of a DIYer. And it won't be anything like what you've got set up here. But I'm looking forward to trying. Again, nice work.

 

For a 10g, DIY might not be the best route anyways. Two of Evil's (or RapidLED's) PAR38 bulbs with 80 degree optics would be great for a 10g. If you need a bit more power for SPS or stuff on the sandbed, switch to 60 degree optics. You'll have to play round with the height above the tank and the spacing between bulbs but it should be plenty of light. Check out this little applet someone wrote for height & spacing ideas: http://www.trashboard.de/wp-content/uploads/illumination.swf

 

wow!

 

Thanks!

 

I played with my LED options last night and now have quite the photoperiod:

- Whites dim 0 to 75% from 10AM to noon.

- Blues dim 0 to 75% from noon to 2PM.

- Blues and Whites 75% from 2PM til 6PM.

- Whites dim 75 to 0% from 6PM to 8PM.

- Blues dim 75% to 2% from 8PM to 10PM.

- Blues stay at 2% from 10PM to 11PM, then dim to 0%. ('Moonlight')

 

Can't wait til I can put some corals in there!

[M1A1]

Okay, before I do something stupid, I better get some opinions: SWC 200 overkill or perfect for 29 display + 20 sump? Actual water volume is 40 gallons .

 

I will be running biopellets 24/7 and GFO when necessary. Bioload will be two true percula clowns, large cardinal, large royal gramma to start with. They are fat fish and I aim to keep them that way.

[phi delt reefer]

Okay, before I do something stupid, I better get some opinions: SWC 200 overkill or perfect for 29 display + 20 sump? Actual water volume is 40 gallons .

 

I will be running biopellets 24/7 and GFO when necessary. Bioload will be two true percula clowns, large cardinal, large royal gramma to start with. They are fat fish and I aim to keep them that way.

 

 

swc150bmk - handles a 100 gallons HEAVILY stocked. Uses the same ATMAN2500 pump as the Bubble Magus Skimmers, but it pulls more air. You want a +1 skimmer on a tank using pellets so it provides sufficient O2 that the bacteria seem to heavily deplete.

 

here is a pic of mine (not setup yet cause i havent picked up my tank yet)

 

 

I had a group buy in November for this bad boy but regular price is $195 + $15 US shipping. Comes with a 1 year warranty. Luke at ReefFiltration is a stand up guy and he deals with the warranty stuff him self. He's sold a buttload of these and told me hes only had a couple pumps go bad - solid performer.

[M1A1]

Scraped some paint and replumbed the return pump, but she fits:

I didn't want to use the SWC 200 from my 75g cause its a bit loud but it was cheaper than a new skimmer obviously. If this doesn't work out I may try to trade down for a quieter, smaller skimmer.

 

Otherwise, I've been adding corals a few at a time over the past week since the cycle finished. Straight from the camera except for resizing:

 

 

Can't wait til things color up!

[Squared]

Your tank=awsome .

[DBarsotti]

my what a gigantic skimmer you have on that 29. awesome work. looks great!

[M1A1]

Had to sell a lobo and favite colony because they simply didn't fit. But the 75 is finally empty and everything that I'm keeping is now in the 29 so, straight from the crappy P&S camera, a FTS:

 

 

Specs of green are starting to reappear on the massive enchino, the SPS have polyp extension and have colored up considerably, and the euphyllia are starting to darken so I can only hope this means good things to come. I still have to glue some SPS into their final spots and move around a few pieces (duncans and blastos) but this is pretty much how the tank will look as it begins to grow.

 

I'm going to change the lighting schedule again next week to have even longer fade on/off times and a shorter full-blast period because it looks great and appears to be working great. It'll be four hours for each color to fade on, two hours at 'maximum', and four hours to fade off with an extra hour of 2% blue light for 'moonlighting'. The color maximums right now are 100% blue and 50% white which produces about 90 PAR on the sandbed. These corals were used to 110+ PAR on the sandbed in my 75g so I will eventually have both colors maxed out to hit that number again.

 

And hopefully I'll have the funds to buy an MP10ES for my birthday in March because although I love the silence and function of the Tunze 6025, it sticks out like a sore thumb. I considered a Tunze 6055 to replace it because I wouldn't need to buy a controller, I could just add on to my LED controller, but I'd still end up with a big pump in the tank.

 

Thanks for the comments folks!

[M1A1]

I kept a bunch of SPS frags that had browned out or bleached so I needed a couple more mounting spots high up in the tank for them to color up. Despite the massive rock wall there wasn't any room left so I had to improvise a bit.

So, MagFloat + Superglue Gel + Pukani rubble rock = Magnetic rock for SPS mounting.

 

 

I swapped the green acro frag for a smaller frag and did some other minor rearranging to try and clean up the sandbed. There is still a bit too much flow from the return hitting the front glass so the large fungia and open brain are not happy and inflated yet. I opened the Tee off of the return (you can see the nylon hose barb in the first Jan 29 photo) to decrease the water going to the display which helped a bit; eventually this will run to a carbon reactor but for now there's just a piece of hose going to the skimmer section.

 

I also picked up a small cleaner shrimp in trade for the 30 heads of euphyllia I brought in to my LFS. It hangs out in that spot on the overflow when the lights are on, and occasionally surfs into the overflow, but is all over the rockwork when the lights are low or off.