Griever's 29G Serenity

[Spirofucci]

Love the concept of this. Looks like you're on the right track for some great aquascaping!

[RollaJase]

My concerns with the towers is that I'm limiting the area I can place corals. The last one is my favorite so far because of all the area to place coral on.

You are right, the space can be a bit limiting. I currently have a few steep 'walls' in my scape and I am hoping my mushies will grow up them. Originally I was hoping this of my zoas but they dont seem to like my light much and aren't open too often.

[Griever]

Updated the FTS on the original post! I've got the rocks all glued together (used a combination of gorilla glue and waterweld) and in the tank with the 40lbs of live sand. I'm dosing Seachem Stability to try and help the cycle along.

 

Keeping SG at 1.025 and Temp at 79.

 

 

You are right, the space can be a bit limiting. I currently have a few steep 'walls' in my scape and I am hoping my mushies will grow up them. Originally I was hoping this of my zoas but they dont seem to like my light much and aren't open too often.

 

With the vertical parts on the rock formation I chose, I'm planning on some Monti caps. Figured that'd be a good look.

[Griever]

LED Planning

I decided to go the DIY LED path for this tank. After doing a lot of research on this site and others, here's what I've come up with. I'm planning on going for a full spectrum build, with an 18" MakersLED heatsink and hanging it 6-7 inches off the surface of the water using the hanging kit.

 

LED Info

 

LED Voltage Calculations

LED Layout Design

[Griever]

LED Planning 2

 

So after doing a lot more research and pricing out a ton of options, I've decided to change my approach to the one with the least headaches. I decided on a custom full spectrum fixture from Reefbreeders. The features they offered at the price point was very impressive, I couldn't really replicate it in a DIY build in a package that would look as nice for the price. Toss in that it was fully customization and comes with a two year warranty, and it was a done deal.

 

This is the custom configuration I settled on;

 

 

20x Royal Blue (450nm) - 90°

10x Neutral White (5000k) - 90°

10x Violet (420nm) - 90°

3x Green (520nm) - 120°

3x Deep Red (660nm) - 120°

2x Blue (480nm) - 120°

Control C1 - 20x Royal Blue, 4x Violet = 24 Pcs

Control C2 - 10x Neutral White, 6x Violet, 3x Green, 3x Deep Red, 2x Blue = 24 Pcs

Control C3 - 3x 480nm (Moonlights) - 120°

Next Steps:

So the light has been ordered and will take a few weeks to get here, since it's a custom order. Cycle appears to be over, since I used live sand and have been dosing Seachem stability every day. I'm planning on picking up my first fish this weekend. Very excited!

[Griever]

Well, since everyone else seems to be posting what they had for dinner in their threads, here's what I made for dinner last night.

 

First course is a spanish style chilled red pepper soup with a citrus marinated avocado stack, topped with a butter seared scallop.

 

Main course is beef filet minion (mine wrapped in bacon, of course) on top of a garlic parsnip puree. Topped with a white wine wasabi cream sauce. Side of a fried sweetened rice ball.

Happy Valentines Day Everyone!

[specore]

Looks like a great build. That planted tank looks great and will look even better once you have your reef up and running.

[Griever]

Looks like a great build. That planted tank looks great and will look even better once you have your reef up and running.

 

Thanks! It's hard to be patient... I want to fill the tank already!

[Griever]

First Fish

 

First fish for the tank, an Onyx Ocellaris. Wife wants to call him Wiggles because, well he wiggles.

 

 

[Griever]

So it seems the secret to success on these threads is to also post pictures of your dogs/cats. So I took a walk down to the river back behind my house today, my dog thoroughly enjoyed herself.

 

Gota love these FL winters.

[jlbzixxer]

nice backyard, your tank builds are slick also.

[Blubbernaut]

Nice freshwater tank! I have a 3000 gallon pond myself w/ koi, goldfish, catfish, and a striped bass. I'm sure your saltwater tank will turn out to be amazing.

As I wait here (not) so patiently refreshing UPS shipment tracker every 5 minutes, I thought I'd share some of the pictures I'm using for inspiration for my rock work. I'm planning on using some concepts stolen borrowed from Amano's freshwater style. The idea of a mother stone and daughter stones, as well as attempting to force a perspective using a V shape. I don't have a ton of space in a 29G, but I'm hoping that I'll be successful. I'll take pictures of my different attempts as I go.

 

That 2nd pic is pretty awesome. I think you should try something like it.

[Griever]

nice backyard, your tank builds are slick also.

 

Hah, I wish I had the river right in my back yard. It's about a 5-10 minute hike from my back yard. I'm backed up to a nature reserve that runs a few miles out past the river. It was one of the reasons I bought where I did, my dog loves the woods.

[Griever]

So an interesting learning experience with refractometer happened today. When I first got my refractometer, I followed the directions and used RO/DI water to calibrate to 0. When I brought my water in to test it at my LFS, everything was perfect, except the salinity. The float hydrometer they used was showing very low, like 1.020. My refractometer at home was showing 1.025, so I figured that the LFS hydrometer wasn't properly calibrated, or inaccurate.

 

Well, it kept bugging me, so I read up on how to make a reference solution, and how refractometers actually worked here;

 

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-12/rhf/index.php

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-06/rhf/index.php

 

After mixing 161 mL of RO/DI with 1 tbsp of salt to make a 1.0266 reference solution, I was shocked to see that my reading was 1.031, meaning I had a .005 difference. This would fully explain why the LFS was showing 1.020 and I was seeing 1.025. I'm adjusting the salt levels slowly over the day today. I'm just glad I figured this out before I tried adding any corals.

 

Lesson of the day, always calibrate tools to the levels you're trying to measure!

[jlbzixxer]

a lesson worth learning, had the same thing happen to friend he could not figure out why his corals were not

doing good, he eventually found out his refractometer was miss reading. the stupid thing is that the lfs calibritated for him.

[RollaJase]

So an interesting learning experience with refractometer happened today. When I first got my hydrometer, I followed the directions and used RO/DI water to calibrate to 0. When I brought my water in to test it at my LFS, everything was perfect, except the salinity. The float hydrometer they used was showing very low, like 1.020. My refractometer at home was showing 1.025, so I figured that the LFS hydrometer wasn't properly calibrated, or inaccurate.

 

Well, it kept bugging me, so I read up on how to make a reference solution, and how refractometers actually worked here;

 

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-12/rhf/index.php

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-06/rhf/index.php

 

After mixing 161 mL of RO/DI with 1 tbsp of salt to make a 1.0266 reference solution, I was shocked to see that my reading was 1.031, meaning I had a .005 difference. This would fully explain why the LFS was showing 1.020 and I was seeing 1.025. I'm adjusting the salt levels slowly over the day today. I'm just glad I figured this out before I tried adding any corals.

 

Lesson of the day, always calibrate tools to the levels you're trying to measure!

I unfortunatly had the same issue with my hydrometer (cheap piece of kit I know) it was reading 1.025 when the true salinity was at 1.035. Now that I know its out of whack I'll adjust my salt mix acordingly, my refractometer is in the post.

[Griever]

Holy diatom bloom batman!

 

It always freaks me out how fast those buggers come and (hopefully) go. I went to work today, and when I came home I must have seen the peak of all blooms. Everything was brown, even the water from them still being stirred up. Even a few hours later, it looks a ton better. Guess this means I can order my CUC, hah!

[Griever]

The Dangers of Not Rinsing Your GFO Enough

So, in my last post, I was talking about how I had what I thought was an insane diatom bloom, which didn't make a lot of sense looking at my parameters. Here's a picture of what I was dealing with;

 

Ugly, right? Well after a lot of troubleshooting, including steps like water changes, running a UV filter, and scratching my head, I figured that there's no way it could be diatoms. I had never, in my years of keeping tanks, seen them cloud the water like that. It was also pretty clear based on the color of the build up in my filter sock, a weird rusty orange brown. Wait a tick! Eureka, that's the exact same color as GFO!

 

I unhooked the GFO/Carbon reactor and stuffed it with filter floss, as well as lining my mesh filter sock with a 100 micron filter pad. After only a few hours, I was back in business!

 

Also pictured, two large clumps of macro that will go into the sump once I get lights set up in there, and the ridiculously more than ordered amount of snails from reefcleaners.org.

 

To celebrate the solving of the mystery that was driving me nuts, I picked up a cleaner shrimp. He likes to hang out upside down under the main over crop in the center of the tank.

 

The lesson here is you can never rinse your GFO enough. I won't be making that mistake again, that's for sure!

[Griever]

 

LED Planning 2

 

So after doing a lot more research and pricing out a ton of options, I've decided to change my approach to the one with the least headaches. I decided on a custom full spectrum fixture from Reefbreeders. The features they offered at the price point was very impressive, I couldn't really replicate it in a DIY build in a package that would look as nice for the price. Toss in that it was fully customization and comes with a two year warranty, and it was a done deal.

 

This is the custom configuration I settled on;

 

 

20x Royal Blue (450nm) - 90°

10x Neutral White (5000k) - 90°

10x Violet (420nm) - 90°

3x Green (520nm) - 120°

3x Deep Red (660nm) - 120°

2x Blue (480nm) - 120°

Control C1 - 20x Royal Blue, 4x Violet = 24 Pcs

Control C2 - 10x Neutral White, 6x Violet, 3x Green, 3x Deep Red, 2x Blue = 24 Pcs

Control C3 - 3x 480nm (Moonlights) - 120°

Next Steps:

So the light has been ordered and will take a few weeks to get here, since it's a custom order. Cycle appears to be over, since I used live sand and have been dosing Seachem stability every day. I'm planning on picking up my first fish this weekend. Very excited!

 

Woohoo! After 3 weeks of waiting, I finally got a shipping notification. New lights will be here Tuesday!

[Griever]

Sump Redesign, Skimmer and ATO

So I decided that rather than going skimmerless on this tank, I'd save myself some headaches and extra effort down the road and just bite the bullet and get one. Here's a picture of my sump before;

 

I had originally designed for the refugium to be fairly large, and be my main nutrient export method. After reading the discussion in the very long thread and weighing the options, I figured I'd be better off with a skimmer, plus refugium. I'd have more active phosphate and nitrate removal, along with the benefits of the refugium.

 

So after an evening of draining, drying, cutting and reapplying silicone here's the new sump;

 

As you can see, plenty of room for everything, and still a decent amount of room for macro algae and pods.

 

I also took the opportunity to beef up my ghetto ATO with dual float switches, wired in parallel, to prevent an overflow should the primary switch get stuck in the down position;

 

I also added a nice big 5 gallon reservoir that I picked up on amazon for like $7-8 (Got to love Prime membership!)

 

So the skimmer I picked up is the ebay special SCA-301. It was very easy to set up (including some popular mods to improve it's functions) and after only 8 or so hours, it was pulling up some yellow crap. Keep in mind that I don't currently have any corals and only the two fish, so I feed very lightly. I'm sure once it breaks in and I get it dialed in it will pull some dark gunk.

 

To close out this post, talk about desperation, my poor clown is so lonely that he's attempting to host the Red Gracilaria that I've temporarily got in my tank until my refugium light shows up.

 

[Griever]

New Clown!

 

This is one of those Maroon x Ocellaris hybrids from akabryanhall. He's got a great chocolate color, and is getting along pretty well with my Onyx. Maybe they'll make little dark chocolate babies.

 

[akabryanhall]

Wow man, can't tell you how impressed I am with your concept here. Planted tanks are so beautiful and too rarely do people try for that sort of aesthetic in sw tanks.

Fish looks happy and healthy! Are you going with Lucky or Sergeant Steel McSlaughter? Lol!!

[Griever]

Wow man, can't tell you how impressed I am with your concept here. Planted tanks are so beautiful and too rarely do people try for that sort of aesthetic in sw tanks.

Fish looks happy and healthy! Are you going with Lucky or Sergeant Steel McSlaughter? Lol!!

 

I think I'm going with lucky.

 

I can't believe the tough little bastard made it. How the post office can loose a package between Tampa and the Orlando area boggles the mind. This poor guy was barely moving when I finally got the package, but a slow drip, a few drops of prime and an air-stone brought him back from the edge. Now the little guy is boss hogging around the tank like he owns it.

[Griever]

I just typed out a huge review of my ReefBreeders Photon 24 LEDs, check it out here

 

[box]

 

Where do you find this??? I have been looking for a nice jug for cheap