3 Foot Long Nano

[JayPagi]

Love this tank... the set up is so rad. Officially following.

[Scorched]

Thanks Jay

 

Its always a work in progress. I left my camera at work today so I'll make sure to get new photos up soon.

[Scorched]

I have updated post #1 with more organized FTS pictures and updated stats. Is there any other information people would like to see on post #1??

[Kfmmartin19]

Hey man, sick tank. Am thinking of getting same tank, but trying to decide if sumping it would be worth it for me. With a HOB filter like the Aquaclear 70 or 110 what kind of bioload do u think it could handle with predominantly SPS and intank media basket in the filter? Idk if u know about these filters but any info u could give me about whether or not I should sump this tank would be great. Thanks!

[Deleted User 4]

Thanks for the update man. Now I'm wondering, you still have the wrasse??

Glad you bought a red fromia star.

[Scorched]

Hey man, sick tank. Am thinking of getting same tank, but trying to decide if sumping it would be worth it for me. With a HOB filter like the Aquaclear 70 or 110 what kind of bioload do u think it could handle with predominantly SPS and intank media basket in the filter? Idk if u know about these filters but any info u could give me about whether or not I should sump this tank would be great. Thanks!

 

Sumps have lots of benefits. For me the main reason is to get rid of all of my equipment and put it somewhere else. It adds a lot of extra water for an already small tank, its keeps your display always at the same water level, and it allows for easier expandablity for things like larger skimmers, dosers, and more complex auto top offs. Is it necessary? No of course not. You could do sps as well if your lighting is sufficent and you are very good with water changes and keeping things balanced.

 

I do not run a skimmer on my tank so if you ran similar chemicals in an Aquaclear I see no reason why it couldnt work for you. For a very long time, 3-4 months I had lots of sps die. I was not doing large enough or often enough water changes, and my light was too intense. Once I dialed things in everything has started to work out, but it was a frustrating time with a lots of money and frags lost. So its possible but it is also something that takes lots of discipline and time to get right.

 

For bioload with my current system I currently have 2 fish, I had 3 for awhile but my wrasses have all jumped out. It got my butt in gear to make a top, especially after my blenny jumped while I was at work, luckily I heard the splash and was able to save him. When I had 3 fish my corals were suffering. Now which my more diligent maintenance I could probably do 3 again but 2 normal size nano fish is probably the limit, or 3-4 of the small gobies.

[Scorched]

Thanks for the update man. Now I'm wondering, you still have the wrasse??

Glad you bought a red fromia star.

 

The radiant wrasse probably jump a month after I got him, sometime in Sept or Oct probably. The starfish I've had since Halloween and has been a great addition. A nice splash of color and he is always cruising around somewhere new... sometimes in places I can never find. For the last week or two he has given me scares where I wouldnt see him for days and then all of a sudden a leg leg would poke out of a rock I had no idea he could squeeze into.

[Deleted User 4]

The radiant wrasse probably jump a month after I got him, sometime in Sept or Oct probably. The starfish I've had since Halloween and has been a great addition. A nice splash of color and he is always cruising around somewhere new... sometimes in places I can never find. For the last week or two he has given me scares where I wouldnt see him for days and then all of a sudden a leg leg would poke out of a rock I had no idea he could squeeze into.

 

Yeah, I used to have one in the manta ray 18 and it lived for alittle over half yr!!! It died because lack of filter feeds.... I had 3 clams at one time along with a coco worm which totally destroyed the little star. lol

Learned my lesson.

 

What kind of goby do you have in mind?

[Scorched]

Yeah, I used to have one in the manta ray 18 and it lived for alittle over half yr!!! It died because lack of filter feeds.... I had 3 clams at one time along with a coco worm which totally destroyed the little star. lol

Learned my lesson.

 

What kind of goby do you have in mind?

 

I hope he doesn't starve to death, I see so many tiny sponges and strange things in all the rock crevices he should be good for a loooong time.

 

Funny I also wanted to get a clam and coco worm.... they don't move though so I don't see how this could be too much of a problem if the star is always roaming around for food.

 

If I was to get another fish it would be a Helfrichi Firefish since I finally have a cover and I've always wanted one for about the last 10 years.

[Deleted User 4]

Nice, yeah if you do end up getting a clam/coco worm, I suggest a limit of 1 clam and 1 coco worm lol. You get two, it starts to become a tiny problem unless you feed phytoplankton/cyclops feast.

 

The helfrichi is a beautiful fish. Looking forward to it.

[Spirofucci]

Love this tank!

[Kfmmartin19]

Sumps have lots of benefits. For me the main reason is to get rid of all of my equipment and put it somewhere else. It adds a lot of extra water for an already small tank, its keeps your display always at the same water level, and it allows for easier expandablity for things like larger skimmers, dosers, and more complex auto top offs. Is it necessary? No of course not. You could do sps as well if your lighting is sufficent and you are very good with water changes and keeping things balanced.

 

I do not run a skimmer on my tank so if you ran similar chemicals in an Aquaclear I see no reason why it couldnt work for you. For a very long time, 3-4 months I had lots of sps die. I was not doing large enough or often enough water changes, and my light was too intense. Once I dialed things in everything has started to work out, but it was a frustrating time with a lots of money and frags lost. So its possible but it is also something that takes lots of discipline and time to get right.

 

For bioload with my current system I currently have 2 fish, I had 3 for awhile but my wrasses have all jumped out. It got my butt in gear to make a top, especially after my blenny jumped while I was at work, luckily I heard the splash and was able to save him. When I had 3 fish my corals were suffering. Now which my more diligent maintenance I could probably do 3 again but 2 normal size nano fish is probably the limit, or 3-4 of the small gobies.

Ok, thanks for the insight. Could u give me an idea of your maintenance when u were losing corals vs. what u are doing now that's working well? I have no problem doing weekly water changes up to 4-5 gallons a week (though I'm not sure that much water would be necessary)

[Scorched]

Ok, thanks for the insight. Could u give me an idea of your maintenance when u were losing corals vs. what u are doing now that's working well? I have no problem doing weekly water changes up to 4-5 gallons a week (though I'm not sure that much water would be necessary)

 

I have a 4 gallon bucket I am using for water changes. When I did my WC I probably changed about 3 gallons of water. I also ran an inefficiant 501 ZooMed Nano Filter. It was from my previous 5.5 gallon tank and it just didn't cut it in my opinion.

 

 

So I replaced my filter with the BRS Dual canister (way overkill) but it allows me to have one chamber with some biopellets and the other chamber with GFO and Carbon mixed. I've had fairly good results with this.

 

I now change about 6-7 gallons of water weekly and change the media every two weeks. The biopellets are just sloshed around in my WC water to dislodge any detritus to keep them tumbling and placed back inside.

 

Other things I improved on was raising my light and covering a few of the white LEDs to keep my frags from bleeching out, and I also thoughly cleaned my sump and return pump about a month ago as it was becoming pretty dirty so I believe that helped as well.

[odie]

You use biopellets without a skimmer?? My understanding is that you need a skimmer if using biopellets?

[Scorched]

You use biopellets without a skimmer?? My understanding is that you need a skimmer if using biopellets?

 

Yep I am using them without a skimmer. However I use a very small amount and keep my tank pristinely clean. I get that they create extra bacteria to finish the nitrogen cycle and that a skimmer is used to remove the excess, but I haven't had any issues with cloudy water or cyano so far.

[Scorched]

JANUARY FTS

 

 

Blue only LEDs

 

Daytime

 

 

And I am happy to say I FINALLY figured out how to photograph my tank as close to the way it actually looks. For the longest time I've been using my T2i in either auto or manual white balance mode. But the pictures always looked wrong on my computer.

 

I always shot RAW so I could import them into lightroom or photoshop and ajust the temperature and tint to be as close to what my eyes were seeing. However even with full RAW control the white balance always maxed out at 50,000 and still looked wrong. Well the last few days I've been messing around with the manual white balance even more and still got strange pictures. Ones that completely removed the blue and made for some psychedelic images, others that looked super pink etc. Well for some reason the RAW format just sucked when I imported so I switched my camera to take both RAW + Large Jpegs and low and behold the Jpegs capture it exactly like I took it (If I white balance correctly)! Look at the difference in the imported photos (Photos taken at the same time and with the same number are just using each of the file formats).

 

 

 

[Deleted User 4]

I got to try and see if my camera can do the same thing. I know it can shoot in raw/jpeg.....but I don't really know how to use the manual focus/white balance mode, are there specific steps for using it??

 

And what program do you upload your pictures onto for editing?

[Scorched]

I got to try and see if my camera can do the same thing. I know it can shoot in raw/jpeg.....but I don't really know how to use the manual focus/white balance mode, are there specific steps for using it??

 

And what program do you upload your pictures onto for editing?

 

I'm sure every camera is different but it follows the same principle. Everytime I would take an auto white balance photo the colors would always be way bluer than they should, magenta and green would be crazy. So you want to set the middle point for white to be a lot bluer than the camera normally allows. You do this by turning you tank lights on normally and then placing a white plastic object in the water or really close to the tank. Take a super close up photo so all you see is this bluish image. Then in your cameras menu there should be a set white balance or manual balance option. It should then ask you to select a photo, you select the bluish image you just took. Exit out of the menu and change the white balance from auto the the new manual mode you just set. Now the photos should be more realistic.

 

When I did this however I HAD to use jpeg. In the above examples the RAW images are unsuable as they go outside of photoshop and lightrooms color temperature scale. I use lightroom 95% of the time. The last two photos are straight from my camera and could still use a few minor tweaks but every photo I took before then (My FTS archive for example) was all done with RAW photos that were altered to get them as close as I could.

[Deleted User 4]

Wow, that's weird I mean ClaytonG said it would work better to upload raw to lightrooms and photoshop ahha. Here you're saying the opposite.

[JR!]

thats how most people do it is in lightroom or photoshop but somepeople have found better ways.

[ClaytonG]

There are different approaches. Like I have to use Lightroom due to my camera limitations. If you can set it up in your camera settings than go for it. I've just always found it easier to use raw then dial down the blues and greens in the post processing.

 

Scorched_ice7, did you use the color adjustment at the very bottom of the develop menu? It's in the camera calibration Menu. I've found that to be the easiest way to change the color. I try to leave the white balance alone and just use those adjustments.

[Deleted User 4]

thats how most people do it is in lightroom or photoshop but somepeople have found better ways.

 

What are other ways?

[ClaytonG]

What are other ways?

 

Some cameras have built in functions to filter the color spectrums or create an effect before the shot it taken and some offer in camera editing. Problem I see with it is it can be difficult to reverse those effects if your not happy with them later, since its written to the picture file.

[Scorched]

Wow, that's weird I mean ClaytonG said it would work better to upload raw to lightrooms and photoshop ahha. Here you're saying the opposite.

 

I do this to 95% of the photos I take normally, and did it with all my tank shots up until about Monday this week when I figured there had to be a better way. You can really change a photo if its shot raw and you use a a program to edit the values. I just always seem to reach the limit on the sliders and still couldnt get the correct colors.

 

There are different approaches. Like I have to use Lightroom due to my camera limitations. If you can set it up in your camera settings than go for it. I've just always found it easier to use raw then dial down the blues and greens in the post processing.

 

Scorched_ice7, did you use the color adjustment at the very bottom of the develop menu? It's in the camera calibration Menu. I've found that to be the easiest way to change the color. I try to leave the white balance alone and just use those adjustments.

 

I don't have the camera with me at the moment since I left it at work to take pictures. For a long time I used Magic Lantern as it had tons of extra options that Canon doesn't let the average user get to. I ended up deleting it from my memory card for some reason... there must have been a reason for it....

 

Anyway in that firmware they had manual green and magenta control as well as the ability to set white balance to a kelvin. So if I thought I had 14K lighting I would turn it to that amount and fire some shots. If it was still too blue I then knew I had 15K or 20K lighting over my tank and would adjust accordingly.

 

For some reason the import of raw pictures taken outside the usual white balance range caused those crazy pink photos. I would bring them into Lightroom and the image stored enough data that I could bring it back down to similar real life coloration, but with the color being so messed up to start with there introduces a lot of strange color shifts in things I didnt want or noise and other artifacts started to stand out.

[ClaytonG]

I do this to 95% of the photos I take normally, and did it with all my tank shots up until about Monday this week when I figured there had to be a better way. You can really change a photo if its shot raw and you use a a program to edit the values. I just always seem to reach the limit on the sliders and still couldnt get the correct colors.

 

 

I don't have the camera with me at the moment since I left it at work to take pictures. For a long time I used Magic Lantern as it had tons of extra options that Canon doesn't let the average user get to. I ended up deleting it from my memory card for some reason... there must have been a reason for it....

 

Anyway in that firmware they had manual green and magenta control as well as the ability to set white balance to a kelvin. So if I thought I had 14K lighting I would turn it to that amount and fire some shots. If it was still too blue I then knew I had 15K or 20K lighting over my tank and would adjust accordingly.

 

For some reason the import of raw pictures taken outside the usual white balance range caused those crazy pink photos. I would bring them into Lightroom and the image stored enough data that I could bring it back down to similar real life coloration, but with the color being so messed up to start with there introduces a lot of strange color shifts in things I didnt want or noise and other artifacts started to stand out.

 

OMG I just saw IMG_2165. Wow... Also, Adobe also has the lens/camera profiles that can be downloaded (don't know if you've used those. You may find that helpful if you try to edit anything else that you shoot.

 

IMG_2168 should be your new FTS! lol

 

 

Did you have ay ambient light during the daytime shot? it loks blue in the middle then turns golden around the edges. My tank shots during the day were really hard to edit due to the contrasting colors from the sunlight on the walls. Maybe that has something to do with it?