Jerone's 155 gallon reef tank

[Bdial]

Pics look awesome. Tank seems to be coming along very well. That unknown early on is a galaxea coral. They can grow fast and get very aggressive.

[jbfloor]

Aha! Mystery solved... I don't think I'll keep it.. It is ugly as sin and if it is also aggressive I'd rather not have it in the tank.

[Bdial]

I had one bout twice that size and it was throwing out sweepers probably longer than 8". They grow pretty quick and will easily take over a tank.

[jbfloor]

The quarantine tank lighting does not do the colors justice. The McCosker's are truly remarkable.

McCosker's flasher wrasse


McCosker's trying to impress the Royal Gramma


Yellow Eye Kole Tang


Not sure how long I can keep them all in this 20 gallon QT tank. I was hoping to get the wrasse at closer to 1" so they would be juveniles, but I am pretty sure all three are males. Not sure if all three have reached the terminal phase yet.

[jbfloor]

Well.. one of the brand new Cleaner shrimp is dead. Something took its head clean off. It was fine a couple of hours ago, so it died suddenly. I wonder if the Blennie mistook it for food.

[jbfloor]

More pictures:

The Tang and Royal Gramma have been moved to the DT. All are doing well.



The first coralline is starting to grow, finally!


Right side of the tank. The Watchman Goby and Randall shrimp have paired up and the second Cleaner Shrimp is also hanging out in this corner.


Torch coral is growing steadily. It also got all its color back after I turned the lights down to 50% for a couple of weeks.


This is what it used to look like about two months ago.

[PistolShrmp]

Lookin good

[jbfloor]

I went down even more with my lights. Down to 40-45% on 72x3W lights @8 hours/day. Cannot believe how powerful those little LED's are. It looks like this level has stopped the bleaching on most of my corals.

Will be starting my rebuild of the canopy in March or so. Will redo the wiring of lights and add some UV, red and green to the spectrum. I am looking for new lenses for the CREE's because the standard ones are nearly impossible to glue down properly.

Some more frags I picked up this week:

Not sure what the name is


Miami hurricane chalice


Birdsnest


They called it "Peppermint Mushroom"


Pink Leather Finger Coral

[jbfloor]

One of the hermit crabs finally decided to upgrade. Although the tank had plenty of empty shells available, it decided to wait until I put in the biggest, baddest shell ever.. It's way too big and heavy for him and he can't climb rocks any more, but he looks like a badass and that's all that matters .

Here's the new shell with the old one on the left for reference. Seeing this King Tiger tank lumbering through the tank is funny as hell.

[jbfloor]

This is a preview of what I am thinking about doing with the new canopy build.

I am thinking about either 6 (2 deep) or 9 rails (3 deep) with LED's and be able to move them back to front on a sliding rail. I am leaning towards three deep with the middle rail being UV, red and green LED's and the front/back being Royal Blue and a mix of Cool and Neutral White.

This picture is shown back-to-front of the tank.


Currently the lights are only 4" from the surface. I will raise this by at least 2" and possibly 4" to counter the over the top shimmering that I experienced. With 96 or so LED's with 80 degree lenses at 8" above the surface, I do not expect to have to run them at more than 30%. At that rate I can go with a low profile heatsink and a smaller, more silent fan.

[jbfloor]

The old canopy gots to go. I cannot use lenses (too much rippling), and I have lost three LED's due to water splash damage already. Also, yesterday one of my wrasses found its way into the overflow box and I could only barely reach to trap him (he's safe and sound now). Furthermore, I want to rewire my lights and add more colors to the LEDs. Most of all, I need more room to work in. It will still be a closed canopy though, because I do not want the tank to light up the entire living room. My house already looks like someone is growing weed in it at night....

The new canopy project is taking shape. I ordered the new LED's, heatsinks and have planned out the wood structure.

Front view of the tank with the wooden structure. I used 3ds Max for this, not really the right tool for the job, but we use it at work, so I have access to it. The different colors indicate different sizes of wood I need to cut. I am going to raise the lights by about 4". The total canopy height will be about 12", leaving the lights around 9" off the water. The front will get three hinged panels for access and I am thinking about simply laying panels on the top, but not glueing them down.


Inside view. I am replacing four of the Cool Whites with Neutral Whites and am adding UV, Green and Red/Orange to fill out the spectrum. All lights will get 80 degree lenses and I still intend to tilt the lights per the first page of this build thread.


The heatsinks will be sliding in tracks. I am thinking about using simple C channels for this. Preferably plastic or aluminum. However, I am having a hard time finding these channels or a similar method of sliding the lights. Can anyone help me out?

[scuzy]

Looking good there. Cant wait to see the finish product. My tank got ick cause i trusted a fellow reefer that he had good qt process and now i need to wait for my qt to cycle to move all my fishes into he 100 gallon qt for treatment leaving display fallow for 10 weeks

[cugly]

Well done great job..it looks great...

[jbfloor]

The frame:


The canopy so far is super light. I can easily pick it up with one hand. The one that is currently on my tank takes two people to lift, so it is definitely an improvement.

I have decided to not screw/glue the top panels on the canopy so I can have access from above, while at the same time have the advantage of a closed canopy (less evaporation, less noise, less wasted light).

[jbfloor]

On a side note:

I am in Vegas for business and my colleague and I just came back from ATM, where the show 'tanked' is filmed. They just moved into a brand new building and were still in the middle of setting everything up. Regardless of what I and many other people think of the show, these guys are a class act. One of their shop guys took us around the shop floor, they showed us their first new tank and all the birds they are now also keeping. They talked to us for a good 30 minutes about all kinds of stuff. And, to make everyone here feel better, they are cycling their shop tanks for at least another 30 days before the first fish are allowed to move in. Although it does not look like it on TV, they do know their stuff. Also, a lot of the smaller season 1 tanks were back in their warehouse, so it looks like many of the show's tanks are merely temporary and are not maintained by their clients. It's all a produced show... of course.

Here is a shot of their Bus for example:

[Reefed419]

I use to ride on that bus all the time when it was here in Pensacola, Before the blue wahoos gave it to the show for a tank project and backed out. stupid AA team....

[Reeftanks6]

This is a great looking tank? Just a few questions, i am going towards more of a reef and wanted some advice on corals? are you dosing?

[jbfloor]

I dose Alkaline buffer to keep PH above 8.0 and dKH at around 8.0. I have not found it necessary yet to dose Calcium, but will do so once it starts to drop.
I also add Seachem Reef Plus to the water and VitaChem to the coral food for additional nutrients. Not sure if that is all necessary, but the corals are doing well, so I keep it up.

[jbfloor]

Back from the trip and back to business.

The heatsinks came in. A little heavier than I had hoped, but they'll do the job.



I laid out the wiring of the units so I can easily remove and replace units. I am using Molex MX150L water proof connectors to connect one unit to the next. My super-pretty handwritten layout diagram shows that each unit will have 4 Whites, 4 Royal Blue, 4 Royal Blue and 3 'Specials' (may add another UV per unit though). Meaning that if I put three units in series I will end up with 12W, 12RB, 12RB and 9 specials. That will give me the four channels I need for the typhon controller.

[jbfloor]

Decided to go with 6 additional UV for a total of 96 LED's. This also makes the LED layout nice and tidy.

• 48x Royal Blue
• 18x Cool White
• 12x UV
• 6x Neutral White
• 6x Red/Orange
• 6x Green

[jbfloor]

Took the old canopy off and moving the LED's to the new modules. It took two people to take the old canopy off and I could lift the new one with one arm. The extra room to work with is going to be great!

First look at the new canopy frame on the tank.



Close-up of where the light modules are going to be. They slide on the rails and can be removed one by one for repairs if need be.

[jbfloor]

Testing the lights:



One set of modules is finished and looks to be working.

[jbfloor]

And it is up and running:

The lights have moved up from 4" to 9" above water level which allowed me to reinstall the 80 degree lenses.

I do not have dimmable drivers yet for the UV/Red/Green so they are running at full power right now, throwing off the color balance. I also did not put lenses on the red and green to spread the color more evenly.







Not bad for a couple of days of hard work. Now I just have to finish the canopy doors and I'm done.

[Showtime1]

how did storing you're rodi water outside work out

[jbfloor]

No frost this winter, so it is still working out well. Now that the garage has been cleaned up, I may move it there at some point.