*Johnseye's New 260g Build*

[foxt]

Originally Posted by sean obergfell

I love Sea Swirl's

One of the best ways to move water ....

I like the way that the Sea Swirls are mounted through the eurobracing on John's build - what size holes did you have Miracles drill to hold those?

[Johnseye]

Originally Posted by foxt

Thanks for your candor John. I am considering an almost identical build from Miracles, and this is very helpful.

About the attachment of the overflow, I was interested in whether the box was glued directly to the glass, or bonded to something else. Is the back of your tank painted black, or is that something plastic glued to it?

Directly to the glass. The back glass is something I was very impressed with. It's an internally colored black. Glass on the outside of both sides.

[Johnseye]

Once again it's time for an update. I've been extremely busy, making steady progress with the aquarium and things are changing every week. These updates go back a month or so and I'll start with the oldest ones first.

The ecosystem is still young despite the TBS rock and its going through its various cycles. I had a small amount of hair algae only on about 3 rocks, which were the Walt Smith 2.1 rocks. Once I added the fish from my 120g the algae was gone in literally one day. Then came the dino phase. I think that phase is ending now (God I hope so). I battled dinos and cyano in my 120g so knew a little about how to control it. I have no cyano at this time. Fingers crossed. Last time I had to use Chemiclean which worked well.

I had started dosing KZ ZEObak from day one with this system in order to get a good microfauna foundation. However I was also dosing Spongepower because I wanted to keep the sponges on the TBS rock alive, and once I added the coral from the 120g I started dosing KZ Aminos as well as 2 part. I think the Spongepower and/or Aminos gave the dinos enough of what it needed. I've since stopped the Spongepower and Aminos.

I cut the light back to 5 hours for MH and 7 for T5. I had 1 MP60 on the front left, 1 MP40 on the front right, and two MP40s in the back. I don't think the MP40s provide enough flow even at 100% so I added another MP60 for the front right. The added flow is helping a lot. I plan on putting the MP40 in the back middle. I believe flow is critical in controlling dinos and cyano. I'll share what I'm doing with the ZEObak a little later.

I trimmed down the skirt a little over an inch bringing it 1.5" above the bottom of the tank. There is internal eurobracing on the bottom that's about 1/2" high so the sand around the walls of the tank comes about even or just over the skirt. I secured the skirt to the steel frame by tapping holes in the steel beams and using L brackets. The skirt is now flush to the steel frame.

I finished off the stand with some themed knobs.







This board is under the tank. It's changed already as I've moved all the Vortech controllers to the left and plan on sawing off about a foot of the right side in order to put some shelving to the right.



I made some progress on the manifold. I recently added a ZEOvit reactor, which means I pulled the GFO out of my BRS reactor that I never mounted. You can see it sitting next to the sump. According to the ZEOvit system the ROX carbon I'm running in the reactor is too much and too fast so I'll be pulling the BRS reactor offline and putting in some passive carbon. You can't see the ZEOvit reactor in this picture. It's an Avast Vibe. I'm also in the process of adding a used Tunze AT-5000 chiller I just picked up this Friday. Hopefully it still works well. I've got some of the plumbing done. Because it has decent threaded in/ouputs I decided to hard plumb as much as possible.







The LifeReef skimmer with Vectra M1 is doing its job, and because my drains are so loud the venturi on this skimmer is no longer the loudest thing in my system.



Here's a shot of the Genesis Renew AWC and Avast ATO. The Avast has been working fine. Even though I've freed up my Spectrapure UPLC I think I'm going to keep the Avast in line for now.

[Johnseye]

It's time to start sharing the reason why I put all this time, money and effort into this hobby! The livestock!

I'm still learning my way around photographing inside an aquarium with the blue leaning spectrum. I used a flash for these photos. I'm sure we'll see my photo skills improve along with the growth of this aquarium.

My fine finned friends are not camera shy. I'm sure they think there's food coming. I haven't begun to name our livestock yet, because the first couple my kids named years ago died. They've come to accept the challenges of introducing new fish to the tank and the occasional mystery disappearance. All these fish were moved over from my 120g. The Clown pair, Yellow Tang and Melanurus pair were the first from the summer of 2014. The Flame and Multicolored Angels were added last summer. I also have a Bangaii Cardinal and McCosker's wrasse. Sadly the Cleaner Shrimp you see under the rocks was found the other day as a shell. I have a Mantis Shrimp who hitchhiked in on the TBS rock. I caught a glimpse of him once so I know he's there. I also have some unwanted crabs (not the friendly Porcelains) and several Pistol Shrimp. That's a story for another day as I have big plans for them. There's only one piece of live rock I moved over from my 120g and that's pictured in the bottom right. I wanted to start with new live rock for this tank, but there was too much life on this piece to let go. There's a rock anemone, zoas and superman mushrooms as well as years of coralline growth living there.

This photo was from June 14th with pumps stopped if you note the lower water level.



These photos were from July 30th. I've been taking pictures of the Acropora monthly as I want to have a visual record of transitioning from my 120g with Radions to this tank with MH/T5. I'll share some comparison or progression photos later.

[sfsuphysics]

Man that is a tiny flame angel, or a very large clownfish

[Johnseye]

Originally Posted by sfsuphysics

Man that is a tiny flame angel, or a very large clownfish

Baby Flame Angel. I've had him for about a year. Model citizen so far. I love getting fish as juveniles and watching them grow. Those clowns were smaller than the Flame when I got them. I've since picked up a few more baby clowns only a couple months old. There's a clown breeder in my area and I had the opportunity to see his setup. Walls of tanks, huge tubs of baby clowns. All different designer breeds. Really something to see.

[vinhle00]

It looks like you beat the algae problem or at the very least controlling it. Tank is looking good

[Johnseye]

Originally Posted by vinhle00

It looks like you beat the algae problem or at the very least controlling it. Tank is looking good

I think the tank is just cycling. My recent dino bloom is nearly gone now and I didn't have to resort to the Dino-X. I only reduced lighting by an hour or two, stopped dosing Aminos and continued to vacuum the sand bed with water changes every week or two.

[Johnseye]

I took some pictures last night of the corals, and a few fish, although some of the fish were a little shy this time. I did not use a flash. All 3 Radiums and 4 T5s on. Some shots were top down using a portal and some were through the glass from front and side.

Several of my acros are about 10 months old, although I do have an Acropora Walindii (Red Dragon), a couple stags, some plating monti, a Green Slimer that are about 2 years old. In the move I wasn't able to take everything without taking the rock so some of these are just frags of the original colonies. The Green Slimer was huge encompassing an entire rock. I only kept part of it however as I don't like its spreading growth pattern. The Frogspawn, Hammer and other LPS is about 2 years old as well. My coral struggled under LED by comparison and I tried many things. I ran two Radions over my 120g and later supplemented with two T5s. I tried a few different schedules, which was one nice thing about the Radion fixture. I think my biggest problem was that I had them in a canopy which limited the height and spread. Within two weeks I noticed a significant improvement in color and growth from my acros under MH/T5. Since the coral went from an established tank to a new, not fully cycled tank and showed such significant improvement so quickly, I can only attribute it to the lighting. I will show side by side shots for comparison another time.

I haven't glued anything down yet as I wanted to be certain of the placement and any other possible issues. Good thing as I may be doing some freshwater dips on the live rock to flush out the mantis and a few bad crabs.

Here's a Scolymia, Superman mushrooms and baby mini carpet anemone.


Red Cap Monti with purple/green Frogspawn under it


This Millepora's polyps retracted under LEDs and only came out to a limited extent at night. Now they are fully extended during full light.


These are a few Acros I got from Adam at Battlecorals back in Sept. They were under the Radions until this June. Still little frags but growing and coloring well now.
This one's a Red Planet.


To the right is Sanjay's Beard, left is either Copps Blue or Blue Matrix and I've forgotten what's the top right. There are some orange and green Ricordia mushrooms to the left.


Pink Lemonade and either the Blue Matrix or Copps Blue


Yellow Tang and a Clown


Left side shot of tank.


Bangaii Cardinal


Right front of the tank

[Johnseye]

Some Zoas and a Rock Anemone. The Zoas are fast disappearing. I had them in several spots and this rock was nicely covered as it was the one I moved from the old tank. I can only attribute the disappearance of the Zoas to crabs.



Right side of tank





This is either a BC Secale or Garf Bonsai

[Johnseye]

Two months without an update and a lot has been going on!

The biggest thing I've been doing is adding new fish. This has been tied with learning more about fish diseases and medications. My typical process is to do the TTM and use Prazipro. Here's how things progressed. I bought a larger sized Regal Angel which was eating but mysteriously died within 3-4 days. In the QT with it were 3 Bartlett Anthias. One died but the other two made it to the DT and are doing great. I then got another Regal Angel, this time it was a tiny baby, maybe 1-2". Sadly it died within a day. I still don't know why these fish died as there were no signs of any disease.

Because of what happened with the Regals I decided to try using CP (from Ebay) instead of TTM. In this attempt I chose a Mertensii and Saddleback Butterfly and 3 Dispar Anthias. Knowing the challenges with Butterflies from eating issues to the potential for eating coral I picked two lower risk, but still what I considered to be attractive. These fish would not eat anything. Nothing frozen, soaked in Selcon or garlic (which may be just a myth) or dry. I even tried fresh shelled clam, live tiny ghost shrimp and live black worms. The Mertensii would nibble for a moment but never really eat. I thought maybe there was an issue with flukes so I did a FW dip on the Butterflies and one Anthias. After the FW dip they went into a new QT without any CP. About a day later two of the Anthias died, the ones I didn't FW dip. Apparently there was something on these fish I couldn't see and the FW dip helped. I then added API General Cure to treat for what I thought may be flukes. After that round of treatment I moved them to a new QT with only CP. Things looked good for a couple days then I noticed some fin rot on a Dispar. The rot moved fast, eating away at his tail within a day. I added Kanaplex as soon as I noticed the rot. All fish were dead within two days. QT was heavily aerated with multiple air stones and circulation pumps.

My next attempt was with a Powder Blue Tang (PBT) and 3 Dispar Anthias. Given what I had read about PBTs, ich and flukes I decided to prophylacticly treat with CP right away, this time NLS Ich Shield, and API General Cure. All fish were eating like pigs and doing great for days. After the General Cure cycle I did a water change and added the CP back based on volume of water removed. The next day the PBT was dead along with a Dispar. In the end the other two Dispars survived and made it to the DT. The smaller of those two died as the Bartletts in the DT challenged the Dispars.

I got another PBT and this time went back to the TTM. At the end of the TTM cycle I treated with 2 rounds of Prazipro over a few weeks. The PBT did great, made it to the DT and has been integrating well, even with the Yellow Tang. She was eating frozen brine with spirulina in the QT, but now seems to just eat nori with only occasionally nibbling at the brine, Rods, or whatever other frozen food I use.

I currently have a Blue Star Leapord Wrasse and Ruby Head Wrasse in QT. They've nearly made it through TTM and are in their first round of Prazipro. They're both eating and doing well. I'll next be giving a Regal Angel a go with only the TTM and Prazi approach. Fingers crossed.

Here are some pictures of the PBT.

[Johnseye]

So that's where things are with my fish additions. Some progress, but it can be delicate and challenging depending on how the fish respond in captivity.

Lots of hardware changes to update on so...

ZEOvit! After several months of measuring higher than desirable nitrates and phosphates I decided to go the KZ ZEO route. I had used their products in the past, and although they are somewhat mysterious, I've found some benefit. As you read earlier in my thread I seeded the tank with ZEObak and was using KZ Aminos and Sponge Power. Unfortunately I had a dinoflagellates issue, but this appears to have been part of the tank cycle and was short lived. I did begin using KZ Coral Snow which I had luck with in the past for cyano. I'm still using it as more of a preventative but will stop when the bottle runs out.

So now I've gone to full ZEOvit. I first added the stones in a bag, and used up what carbon I had with my carbon reactor. I pulled out the GFO. Then I bought an Avast Vibe. What I love about this ZEO reactor is that I never have to shake the stones. Granted, I'm adding KZ something or other every day so shaking the stones wouldn't be a big deal, but it's nice to be able to put it on a timer with the Apex and forget about it. The carbon is now in a bag in the sump. I'm dosing ZEOstart daily along with Sponge Power and Coral Vitalizer every few days, but I have stopped Aminos for now.

And the result...Nitrates at 5 or less and Phosphates at .01. I have been battling phosphates for years and the fight is finally over. Thank you ZEOvit.

Here's a shot of the Avast Vibe reactor in the back. I'll take some better photos of it once I bring it out to change the stones. I built this one myself as opposed to Avast building it for me and saved about $100. It wasn't difficult. Also in the shot is my Tunze chiller and CO2 scubber (more on that later). Because the Tunze chiller is against a wall in the corner of this room I opened up the wall next to it to let the chiller's heat escape. There's nothing but my furnace and water heaters in the next room.

[dave.m]

Is it only heat escaping into the furnace room? If there is also humidity from the tank and sump you are setting yourself up for a lot of trouble as furnaces and their ducts can't deal with that much humidity for long.

Dave.M

[Johnseye]

Originally Posted by dave.m

Is it only heat escaping into the furnace room? If there is also humidity from the tank and sump you are setting yourself up for a lot of trouble as furnaces and their ducts can't deal with that much humidity for long.

Dave.M

Dave, I certainly hope humidity doesn't become an issue. The basement used to be very dry and this was my first summer with the DT and sump in the basement. It did get more humid in the basement than in the past. Every winter I always need to run the humidifier, we'll see how that goes this winter. The fishroom is separate and isolated by a door from the room where the DT is located. The furnace/water heater room is behind two doors, or a door and that wall. I have tops covering the sump to limit evaporation. What kind of furnace issues are you aware of with high humidity?

[dave.m]

Rust! Those galvanized sheets that make up most furnaces and ducts don't stand a chance against saltwater corrosion. Also any metal tools or appliances exposed will also start to deteriorate rapidly. Tanks should always be vented directly outdoors using plastic pipes.

Dave.M

[Johnseye]

Originally Posted by dave.m

Rust! Those galvanized sheets that make up most furnaces and ducts don't stand a chance against saltwater corrosion. Also any metal tools or appliances exposed will also start to deteriorate rapidly. Tanks should always be vented directly outdoors using plastic pipes.

Dave.M

Dave, thanks for the advice. I'll be looking out for any rust in my furnace area as well as looking to seal up the fish room even more, without defeating the heat escape from the chiller.

[Johnseye]

The next piece of equipment I put in was a co2 scrubber. Now that the tank is in the basement it doesn't get the same oxygen exchange as my old tank did. I noticed this with a slight reduction in PH from what I've been used to. PH would drop below 8 at night, then climb to just over 8 during the day. I wanted to get to that magic 8.3 and hold it there as much as possible. I do have a window well near the DT and during the summer I'll open up the top and slide the window open to let fresh air in. This in combination with the co2 scrubber got my PH to a fairly steady 8.3. Now that it's getting too cold to keep the window open I'll see how the scrubber does on its own, or if it was having any effect at all. It may have all been the open window.

So the scrubber is essentially a Two Little Fishies Phosban reactor filled with soda lime I got from Shopmedvet attached to my skimmer's venturi intake.

In the pictures you can see the soda lime is purple, it needs to be changed and I'm gauging when to actually change it based on PH levels. You can also see another shot of the Avast Vibe in the background. In the bottom picture of the skimmer is another improvement. I added a float valve to the top of the Lifereef skimmer. This is connected to an Apex breakout box. If the skimmate ever gets too high it will shut the skimmer off and alert me. I should never have a skimmate overflow. I just plugged the other end of the LR venturi tube going into the skimmer cup with paper towel. An inelegant solution but not sure what else to do with it for now. I suppose I could put a pvc cap in that hole.

[Johnseye]

Next up on the update list is the installation of a pair of Kessil A160 WE Tuna Blues into my Geissman Spectra. This was no easy task. It took the majority of a day to complete. I started the night before as I needed to minimize the amount of time the light was not on above the tank. That night I disassembled the Kessil lights. To do this I needed a very small hex key,or allen wrench. Home Depot didn't have one this small but I found one in a Kobalt micro electronics kit at Lowes. This kit also had some other tools which were helpful. Once I got the external can off I needed to separate the light and fan portion from the controller portion. These were held together by long screws. The electronics and wiring inside the Kessil are coated with clear rubber which is a great idea. This obviously helps with any moisture and it made working with the internals of the fixture much easier.

I did not remove the fan because of I would have had to disconnect the cable which was rubber coated. It would have been simple to do, but the fan didn't get in the way and I thought as long as it provides some cooling and doesn't cause problems I'll leave it. Now that it is all in place, there is a slight vibration from the fan to the glass and screen plates. As long as those plates are tight there's no noise. Depending on how they're positioned there can be noise. Easy to fix whether securing the plates, or going back in to remove the fans. I have the plates tight, so no noise.

With Kessils disassembled the night before, I was ready to pull down the Spectra. The next morning I did this and began figuring out how to run the cabling. I had an idea based on another person's experience with an Infiniti fixture posted in the RC Geissman "club" post. I had cut the Kessil power cords and attached them both to a terminal block, also from Lowes, the night before so I was ready to power both lights through a single power cord. This is the end power cord, not the power supply portion. I tried to run the power cabling through the T5 portion of the fixture, but the hole between MH and T5 was too small. I could have bored it but didn't want to mess with that, so I just ran the thin cabling of the power supplies behind the MH reflectors. I used cable clips to keep them from touching the reflectors or anything that could get very hot. I found these cables to be long enough so that I could run them all the way out the Spectra fixture itself and the power supplies themselves could be outside of the fixture. This helped a lot with the space constraints inside the Spectra and eliminated any heat concerns. I was also able to use new independent power cables instead of the ones I cut and connected to the terminal block.

The biggest problem was gluing the Kessil lights into the screens. With the 72" fixture there are two blank spaces between the halides in the middle, and two at the end. I wanted the Kessils in the middle spaces for spacing reasons. I tried to remove the halide reflectors so I could glue the Kessils to the screens outside of the fixture first. This was not easily done, they are very tightly pressure secured. I also tried sliding out the screen on the top to glue the Kessils in that way, but it was also pressure secured. The only way I saw to do this was to glue the Kessils in with the screens in place, but slid over. I cut the holes in the center of the screens outside of the fixture with a Milwaukee hole cutter. I think it was about an 1" or a little more in diameter. Larger than the glass lens for the LEDs so the Kessil reflector sat properly against the body, and no glue got on anything. I then inserted the screen back in, positioned the Kessil within the Spectra and applied 2 part, fast drying, Gorilla epoxy to the Kessil body. With the Spectra lights facing down, I then positioned the Kessil under the screen and had to hold it there for at least 5 minutes before the epoxy was cured enough to keep it without my pressure. Because the lights were facing down I had some flexibility, and it wasn't as hard to hold the Kessil in place. I secured the first Kessil with the lights facing up and it was much harder. Once the Kessil body was secured I epoxy'd the Kessil reflector to the outside of the screen.

Something I learned along the way was that the middle glass over the halide will be difficult to remove when time comes to change the bulb. I had the glass out when I glued in the Kessils. In order to put the glass back in I had to stretch the body of the Spectra a small amount so the glass would drop into place. I will need to do the same to change the middle bulb. This shouldn't be an issue, but will require two people and be a PITA. There was no way around this considering I wanted the Kessils in the middle blank spaces of the fixture.

[Johnseye]

I forgot to mention, both Kessils are 10v connected to my Apex.

[mpierce]

What color MH bulbs do you run? What setting on the kessil (apex) gets you a similar color to the MH? Just trying to get an idea what % = what K.

[Johnseye]

Originally Posted by mpierce

What color MH bulbs do you run? What setting on the kessil (apex) gets you a similar color to the MH? Just trying to get an idea what % = what K.

The MH bulbs are Radium 250w so 20k. I run them at 250 Super Lumens so I think that's like 280w. I will be bumping them up to 400w with the next bulbs. All my coral had been under Radion LEDs and I wanted to transition, not pummel them with 400w MH.

The T5s are a mix of actinic, blue plus and a coral plus.

The Kessils are there to provide the pop as well as a dusk/dawn effect. I already get good shimmer from the halides, but the Kessils do add a bit more. Right now I run them at a 0% spectrum and only for an hour at the beginning of the day and an hour at the end. That time may increase as I get the corals used to LED again. Right now I only run them up to 35% intensity.

I typically don't want the corals to "glow in the dark" but I want their florescence to stand out a bit. 0% makes them glow, and I'll tweak that up a bit to have it blend better. I have no need for the Kessils from a growth perspective, they are only to add color.

[mpierce]

Gotcha. I was jut wondering if you had tried to color match them out of curiosity to see what % color on the kessil is similar to a 20k halide. Or should I say, would you be willing to try and color match it because I am curious ha.

[Johnseye]

Originally Posted by mpierce

Gotcha. I was jut wondering if you had tried to color match them out of curiosity to see what % color on the kessil is similar to a 20k halide. Or should I say, would you be willing to try and color match it because I am curious ha.

I can definitely match the Kessils to the Radiums and let you know the spectrum percentage. Give me a few days as I'll need to sit down and spend some time tweaking. The Radiums are so over powering that it may be difficult, even at 100% intensity. This is part of the reason I don't bother running the Kessils except for dawn and dusk, they just aren't very visible even at 0% spectrum. They are present with the T5s and obviously light the whole tank on their own as you see in the one picture I posted.

[mpierce]

That would be excellent. Very nice looking fixture you have created.

[Johnseye]

I've always looked for ways to reduce the noise created by the system. My old tank had a Durso drain I converted to a Herbie which helped considerably. For this one I put in a Bean and it's been the quietest and easiest drain of them all. Even with the larger water volume and flow it's still quieter. It's also nice to have most of the noise isolated into the fish room. Now that the Lifereef is essentially silenced by the venturi drawing air through the co2 scrubber instead of the skimmer cup the loudest noise was the water falling into the filter socks.

As Advanced Acrylics made my sump I reached out to them for a solution. Looks like I wasn't the only one with this issue as they had already designed something they call the Diamond Filter Sock Silencer. This thing is great. it's essentially a disc with a lot of little holes allowing the water through. A larger hole in the middle has a pvc pipe stuck through it. If at anytime the little holes were to get clogged and the water level rises it can get through the top of the pvc pipe. Occasionally I'll get a larger chunk of food or some nori on top but I've never had the water level rise much above the disc itself. Flow doesn't seem to be inhibited by the discs. It's nearly silenced the noise created by water flowing into the socks! Now the loudest thing in the fish room is the water flowing through the sump which isn't loud at all.

http://advancedacrylics.com/collecti...-sock-silencer