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Jared’s 40b - new light update


ef4life

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I’m Long time member here, but rarely ever posted. So I’ve had this tank up and running for a few years now, but never made a journal for it. Lately I’ve been trying to keep on top my maintenance routine and I’m also having to prepare for a 2-3 week vacation later this year. So I’m adding new things for that. Will be updating as I go along. 

 

So so here’s the tank - standard 40b with basically a giant hob 40b as a refugium/sump. I use a small overflow box in the corner of the tank which provides good surface skimming and a maxi jet 900 in the box pumps water up into the 40b on top of my gun safe into a filter sock, then gravity flows back into the display. The maxi jet 900 flows just enough water at water level I keep the tank so if I loose power if fills up to almost the top of the display tank. It’s a very fine line between the pump sucking air and having too much water possibly overflowing but it’s dialed in.

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i used a modified bicycle hanger to hold the light up and provide easy height adjustments or just to get it out of the way for cleaning.

 

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So the equipment

 

light

 24” reefbreeders photon 

A80 tuna flora for chaeto 

 

filtration

 maxi jet 900 return

penguin 200 hob I run filter floss and some carbon.

Aquamaxx hob protein skimmer

Felt filter sock

chaeto

 

water flow

jabeo 0w25 and 0w10 wavemakers in display

Jabeo rw8 to tumble chaeto 

 

2 heaters since one doesn’t keep up in winter time (we try not to run the heat in the winter since it doesn’t get that cold in Phoenix unless the house gets under 65 degrees)

 

ato

Xp Aqua duetto ato 

 

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since this tank is in my bedroom I use a piece of cardboard to hide the light so I’m not blinded while in bed. It’s been laminated in clear packing tape to keep it from getting soggy. And the ladder I need to use to do any type of maintenance at all in either tank. the stand is a solid wood dresser I beefed up that holds all my clothes, it’s the perfect height for in bed viewing. The 5 gallon bucket for the ato water, and until last week I’ve been filling it up manually for all these years. It’s so nice to have that ato now.

 

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So today’s mod was getting rid of the 3 separate power strips I had, and upgraded to 2 - 8 plug power strips which are individually switched, and adding a shelf in the stand for food and supplies.

 

Before was just a mess of wires going everywhere - after removing the 2 power strips

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Here’s the new dj power strips from amazon $32 each. Switches in the front plugs on the back.

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had some 3/4 mdf wood in the garage, used it to make the shelf and support for the new power strips. I cut the faces of the top 2 drawers off for this project so I lost some clothes storage. a hole saw was used to cut holes in the plywood back for wires to go through.

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And the power strips installed, they are just sitting there mounted on their little wood rack easily moved to have access to the plugs.

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its not 100% done yet, I had to order 1’ extension cords to have enough room since the little dc power packs clog up the power strip too much and I’ll add some wire ties to keep it all neat. I added some labels so I can turn stuff on/off with a quick glance instead of playing musical switches. everything has a drip loop for safety in case of a overflow, The blue circle is the duetto ato. amazon did not deliver my hinges so I can’t finish mounting up the drawer faces as flip down cabinet doors. I have some magnets that I will mount up  to hold the doors closed. 

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Door hinges were just delivered.

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easy job of getting them on, the doors are pretty “rustic” so they aren’t exactly square or the same size, but they won’t open, top edge is hanging up

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I needed to chamfer this top edge, the little harbor freight belt sander made quick work of it

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And here they are pretty much finished, a little light from the switches behind leaks through the gaps and I know it’s going to irritate me when I’m trying to sleep, so im headed to the hardware store soon to see if I can find anything to remedy that situation 

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I never posted any real pics of the tank and corals, going to change that now.

 

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This is orca, my domino clown. Her dorsal fin is flopped over to one side too like a captive orca. 

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Yuma and 2 babies but you can only see the bigger one

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My black ice clown Rob van winkle  😁

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an update on the duetto ato system, I’ve only had it for a little over a week and it stopped working, not sure if the tiny pump just went out or the ato control unit isn’t working properly, but I woke up to the pump sucking air at 4am. So I couldn’t fall back asleep and I sent out an email to xp Aqua, hopefully They can help me remedy this situation quickly. I really want this ato to work I like how small and simple it is.

 

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FISHnChix
On 5/3/2019 at 5:10 PM, ef4life said:

Door hinges were just delivered.

414206190.jpg

 

easy job of getting them on, the doors are pretty “rustic” so they aren’t exactly square or the same size, but they won’t open, top edge is hanging up

414206189.jpg

 

I needed to chamfer this top edge, the little harbor freight belt sander made quick work of it

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And here they are pretty much finished, a little light from the switches behind leaks through the gaps and I know it’s going to irritate me when I’m trying to sleep, so im headed to the hardware store soon to see if I can find anything to remedy that situation 

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Digging the power strip solution.. looks clean.. well done👏

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15 hours ago, FISHnChix said:

Digging the power strip solution.. looks clean.. well done👏

Thank you, it turned out pretty well. I got my 1 ft extension cords the other day and I bought some Velcro straps to tie up the cords to clean them up. Hopefully I’ll have time today to work on it.

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Update on the ato, xp Aqua has been great so far, they responded to my first email Sunday evening. They are going to get a new pump sent out soon. Let’s hope this does it.

 

in other news, i was up early this morning and did a 10g water change before work since I didn’t have time over the weekend. Its 4th time in 2 days I’ve had to pull off a blue leg hermit from my green candy canes. He was the largest one in the tank and I think he now has a taste for coral flesh, so he is now banished to the sump.

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Did a deep clean today, pulled a bunch of my aquascape out to get rid off an invasive purple sponge? That was taking over. I chiseled off most of the corals, but a wanted to get rid off some red mushrooms too. I’m giving the rocks a bath in muriatic acid and then will do a bleach soak to make sure they are super clean before adding some back to the tank. To make up for the rock I took out I already had some in my sump for about 2 weeks cycling. 

 

Im pretty happy with the way it all turned out. New scape is different, but there is a nice cove and the rocks have a bunch of holes the fish can go in. The big rock on top right side is balanced on the lower, with a bit of epoxy to hold it stable. It should be a nice spot for some corals that like a lot of light, then the rock underneath gets some shade.

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I also added some new fish in. I’ve Had them secretly for a couple weeks now in a quarantine tank I had set up. I added 8 blue/Green Chromis, starry Blenny, a tiny watchman goby, and a serpent starfish. So far everyone is happy and healthy.  It’s so fun watching the Chromis all school around the tank. The Blenny has a nice hole picked out to live in, but he’s pretty shy and mostly stays in there or out of sight of a camera. 

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Still need to frag these candy canes, they are shading over their lowest heads and dying off.

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some gel filters I ordered off Amazon showed up today. They really help to filter out the blues 

 

Tried a macro shot of the Yuma, The color isn’t really accurate though, too green, has not been edited just cropped

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Some of the green Palythoa, again a little too green but pretty close. 

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Arctic ice Palys if I remember correctly.

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Some zoas, any ideas of what they might be called. The centers are kind of pink, with faint green tentacles 

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Red and green fuzzy mushrooms

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And my order from algae barn showed up today. The pods were very much alive and you could easily see them all swimming around the jars.

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Lost 2 Chromis the other day, one Mia, one was half eaten By the serpent star. Decided not to work today so I cleaned all the hair algae off the refugium glass, added in the sea lettuce from algae barn. In other news I started to mix a new trash can full of saltwater for the next water changes, used a new bottle of calibration fluid for the Refractometer. I compared the new with the old bottle, the old bottle was giving me a reading 5ppt higher compared to the new bottle, so both my tanks were like 1.30 salinity which obviously is way high. Started lowering that ASAP. The shriveled up Yuma in my 29 is already starting to look a lot happier now thankfully. Probably also the reason I lost the Chromis.

 

Heres a video I took on the 40 just a few minutes ago

 

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Potential makings of a new less janky stand. 60” cabinet with a 62x25” granite top.

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if My friend gets the green light from his wife to get rid of it it’s mine. The Cabinet box is junk particle board with some water damage, but the cabinet face is still good and the granite is excellent and I like the color, white and grey/black mix. The plan for it would be to build a steel stand to support a 60x24 tank but just use my 40b until I can afford the larger tank. I would modify and attach the cabinet face to the stand, and build new side cabinet panels attached with magnets

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No cabinet for a new stand, my friend decided to keep it, for now anyway. 

 

Also, the  replacement ato pump went bad after 1 week. I got in contact with the company again, I sent back the entire ato system, they tested it and found no issue with the controller part, but both pumps were burned out. They replaced the entire system for me anyways and it’s getting shipped now. So great customer customer service.

 

Have a bunch of diatoms now, most likely because of the newish rock and removing a bunch of old rocks. 

 

Added Some led lights to the refugium. I tried a turf scrubber a while back, a clear water cw100 scrubber, it didn’t really work for me so I pirated the lights and put them over my Chaeto. Built a quick 2x4 holder for them. hopefully the Chaeto will actually grow now.

 

 

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Update for this week, I fragged my green and blue candy canes a few days ago, I removed all the dead parts from underneath and came out with about 20 frags with 1-3 heads and a couple small colonies of 10+ heads, the main colonies are still plenty big and my gcg is still living in them and never leaves. I moved the rock that holds them to the back of the tank and the rock with my red blasto frags up to the front. The Yuma on the candy cane rock has a 3rd baby now and I placed 2 green Ricordea by it in the sand for now, they seem pretty happy. I need more coral

 

something or someone took a bite out of one of rob van winkles fins. He hasn’t been himself lately staying in the corner and wasn’t eating, he was eating a little today though so that’s good. It’s a small nip I think it was one of the Chromis.

 

 

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Great work with everything so far - I think its a little funny that I have a similar setup with an overhead refugium on top of my safe - just your candy cane colonies look almost as big as my entire setup though :lol: - looking forward to following along!

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6 hours ago, Wonderboy said:

Great work with everything so far - I think its a little funny that I have a similar setup with an overhead refugium on top of my safes - just your candy cane colonies look almost as big as my entire setup though :lol: - looking forward to following along!

Thanks, this was the first time I ever fragged those candy canes since I bought about 4 years ago started with 3 heads of green, 1 blue

 

do you have pics of your setup? 

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1 hour ago, ef4life said:

Thanks, this was the first time I ever fragged those candy canes since I bought about 4 years ago started with 3 heads of green, 1 blue

 

do you have pics of your setup?

 

Yeah - I have kept some record of it over here: 

 

It's kind of a mini version of yours lol - I also need a stool to get into it :rolleyes:

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Changed a few things around today while cleaning. 

 

The red/green candy canes were starting to bleach so I moved them down lower and to the center of the tank. Scrubbed the rock to get some hair algae off too.

 

I pulled the big rock on the right out to scrub it down, and I chiseled in a few more small caves for the chromis to hide in. Changed the location a bit and added in another rock from the sump on top. I also added a few more rocks too the sump 

 

before

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after 

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I don’t have a journal for my 29g, so I’m just going to add a few pics here. Very simple tank that has been established for 6 years this month. Started with a 24g aquapod until it started leaking a couple months ago and swapped everything out  to a used 29g biocube. All mushrooms and Ricordea Yuma’s. Just the 2 clowns Bonnie and Clyde. Open top with a 70w mh light. Chaeto in the center rear chamber.

 

Last photo in the aqua pod

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A few other shots 

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