DaJMasta

Only a wee it remains, my kitchen table is getting cleaner!

Once more to the top. Got most stuff sold, but added the skimmer and still have the freshwater bits and the AC fuge.

I've got a pair lighting my 24g nano cube right now (will be three in about a week). With 40 degree optics I get pretty good coverage an no noticable spotlighting (blended beams in the center) when they're approximately 1" apart and 20"over the tank. With 60 degree optics you could probably do with 12", but with a smaller beam size from tighter optics they will need to be higher up to spotlight less. The nice thing is that thanks to the optics they will have better penetration at depth, so you should still be getting a good amount of light.

You will not be able to stop the spotlighting if the bulbs are too far apart, especially if they have optics.

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Look to the top right of the page and click on store.

The heads will grow much faster than the skeleton... so while a new frag will be a little dome of acan heads in only a little while (provided it's placed on the sandbed), it won't grow much faster than any other LPS simply because the skeleton doesn't grow extremely fast. Still, they grow at a reasonable rate.

I've got an AC70 which was converted to be a fuge for my 7.5G tank. it worked well, but I don't see one that small being much of a benefit in a tank over 20G. Yes it can grow chaeto and help spawn pods, but it's a relatively small space compared to a larger tank, and I think having some extra volume would be a good thing. That said, I got the filter for around $25, not $100+ like most dedicated HOB fuges go for. At that kind of pricetag, I'd go with the benefits of a sump and just get an overflow box.

Cyano and Diatoms can be dealt with fairly easily - feed less, water change more, more clean up crew if you're understocked, run a skimmer, run a fuge with chaeto, etc... My guess is it's diatoms and it's both part of a new tank cycle and not particularly deterimental to anything in the tank.

Dinoflagelates could be a problem though, I'm not extremely familiar with them, but it looks like there's a chance.... btw this algae guide is fairly comprehensive:

http://reefcleaners.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=54&Itemid=81

As a supplement to T5s, then pretty much any number of LEDs can work, but from the sound of the original post and the idea of even spacing, I figured he was looking for even coverage. My point was that especially with optics, you're going to need at least two rows, without optics you'll be getting very low PAR at depth, and to light a tank evenly with only LEDs and get a reasonable amount of output, you will need quite a few.

If those point's don't apply, then I didn't understand his situation completely... but that's what I had thought...

If you're not going with coral then that would be plenty, it's just to get photosynthesis happening you need a lot of light.

One point of clarification, you will get less spotlighting without optics, because the beam angle is wider. To find out how much spotlighting you'll get, let's consult math:

60 degree optics means the beam angle cross section at the middle is an equilateral triangle. That means the height off of your target relates to the diameter of the beam at the given distance in this ratio: sqrt(3) : 2, where sqrt(3) is the height component and 2 is the beam width component.

So with 3" LED spacing, just for the beams to meet each other (still spotlighting, but will look like a chain of circles) you need a 3 inch wide beam, or 1.5*sqrt(3)... just over 2.5 inches according to my calculator.

Ah but wait, 3" LED spacing means 6 inches between LEDs of the same color. So if you want meeting circles of alternating colors (so you get some overlap between colors, but each white or blue beam just touches the next in line), you need twice as much space, almost 5.2".

But again, this will look awful... you will get two overlapping chains of colored circles... so let's get the LED beams to the point that they more or less form a continuous line of red and blue combined. That means we'll need double the beam width to make it all stick together, which means double the height, just shy of 10.5". The largest portions of your beam are 12" wide, while the smallest portions are probably around 10". This isn't nearly enough to fully light the tank front to back, not factoring the bit of falloff you will get out of the end of the tank... so you can either raise it up more or you can add a second row.

But here's the kicker: the beam needs to look cohesive as soon as it hits your rock work or the spotlighting will be obvious... though with a little cloudiness in the water it would be obvious sooner. That means your now cohesive beam must reach the rock fully formed, so whatever value you get for your height is the minimum distance between your rockwork and your lighting system. If you're trying to adequately light the entire tank (18" of coverage on the small part of the beam), that value is approximately 20" with 24 LEDs spaced 3" apart. That means with rockwork within 8" of the surface (only 10" of rock work), you need a 12" deep hood (plus space for mounting/heatsinks). Now remember that the farther away the lights get from the system the lower the PAR for the corals.... yeah corals aren't happening in there.

So for a FOWLR without a super deep hood of those dimensions, 2 rows of 24 LEDs with 60 degree optics would be appropriate. Maybe one row will make do without too much spotlighting, but you're also getting much less light intensity at depth. If you want reasonable power output (high levels towards the top, moderate levels on the sandbed), you'd need to double that value - 96 CREE LEDs - as a starting point.

Metal halides get away with using reflectors to get better coverage despite being more or less point light sources, since LEDs are directional.... the best you can do is mess with the optics.

Stunner strips are supplemental lighting, the reefbrite tube fixtures are the higher power versions from the same company and several of them plus some supplemental stunners make up larger fixtures. They're a good option, but more expensive than a DIY for sure.

If you're going to DIY though, go with double the LEDs. Put simply just 36 in a tank that size will give you heavy spotlighting, lots of color shadows, and less coverage than you expect. The lenses get your depth penetration better, but restrict the beam angle. There are people with 36 LEDs over a <30G cube tank for growing SPS.... sure they're not running lenses or at 1A drive current most of the time, but to get really even coverage and a lot of power, you need a lot of lamps. Using the dimmable drivers will also give you the option of driving your array at lower power levels, increasing the life span of the lamps significantly.

While rapidled seems to get good reviews, if you can find a driver supplier there are other sites that supply the lamps for cheaper. One I know of that operates in an odd way is http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/ . Basically they will get LEDs at wholesale prices and sell them to individuals in on the order. It works like a group buy where everyone orders individually and then it's shipped out on one date, but it's shipped to each person. The downside is that there isn't many items to choose from.

If you're going to build them you also MUST factor in the price of a heatsink. Unless you go with an active sink (fans, ventilation, etc), the heatsink will be a significant price. If you go with an active option, things like square aluminum pipe and similar building materials can be used depending on the design, so the heatsinks are much cheaper. If you hadn't seen, it is NOT safe to run any of these high powered LEDs without some kind of heatsink.

Finally if you actually like the spotlighting effect, there is always the par38 bulb option. Basically you get individual lamps at around 20W each that have passive heatsinks to cool them, a track lighting system, and you mount a whole bunch over the tank. With that much tank to cover, I don't see how you would do with less than 5 60 degree bulbs though, and even that wouldn't be enough coverage to be considered high lighting levels.

I think an extra forum is unnecessary, and to be honest I like seeing info pertaining to small and large tanks alike - the principles are pretty much the same and they can be treated very similarly aside from stocking, though some solutions may be impractical because of the scale of either.

If you've got nano-specific questions, I'd check out a nano specific community like nano-reef.com.. then again, there's enough people here keeping nanos that if you post here someone will be able to chime in.

ATO is sold, the tank and T5 fixture are pending. Lowered a couple of prices for all of you cheapskates

In a tank that size, I'd say yes... just because especially only with fans for cooling, it will take quite some time for the effect to be noticeable on the overall temperature. That is a big tank, after all.

Most I've heard mentioned come from ebay. Cheap low power strips that are flexible... not sure how well they really work, but they could certainly grow chaeto (doesn't take much), but it would probably be a more effective nutrient sponge with more light.

Well if the temp is high, you turn down the one that is on all the time.... if it's low you turn up the one that's off. If you like the temp you can turn the on side down a bit and the off side up a bit. Treat the numbers as guidelines, not as absolutes.... even if they're perfectly calibrated, because of different flow and tank parameters, a calibrated heater set to 79 won't necessarily give you 79 degree water temps all over your aquarium. Generally more flow and fewer dead spots.... plus thicker glass or a top.... will make it a bit more consistent, but if you set your heaters to give you the proper output temperature measured at another source, you will be fine.

Also since they are so distant, it could be simply that the side of the tank with the on heater is actually cooler than the other.

I see a few flecks of white in the picture, zoa pox look like white lesions on the polyp or slightly under the skin layer. I've saved zoas using a fairly high power furan 2 dip several times (I did 3-4 days of dipping). Their melting away in my case included thinning of the stalks and general loss of tissue integrity. That said, I don't think I saved any of the extremely thin stalks, but the colony as a whole was fine afterwards.

Replied, ATO pending.

So I've got some equipment that I'd like to get out of my tiny apartment. All of it works well, and almost all of it is used. Here's a pic of everything and a breakdown of what's there and how much it is:

150W Coralife clamp on metal halide fixture - SOLD

36W Nova Extreme T5 fixture - SOLD

JBJ ATO Setup - SOLD

15 pound bag of Seachem Onyx substrate - SOLD

7.5G Mr. Aqua Bowfront rimless tank - SOLD

Aquaclear filter modified to be a HOB refugium - SOLD

AquaticLife internal mini protein skimmer 115 - SOLD

Kent blackwater extract, misc porous filter media (bio filter in freshwater tanks), small container of freeze dried bloodworms - $whatever each

JBJ Nano Glo 4x1W LED Refugium light - SOLD

I have somewhat limited availability during the day , but I can work a pickup time out - especially if you don't mind coming at night. I live in the city near 51st and Lamar, and thanks to not having a car I can't deliver anything to you. If you're interested in something, or many somethings, shoot me an offer and if it's good we'll make a deal. Drop me a line if you have any questions, I'll check back on the forums pretty regularly, but by email to robodude1010 at comcast dot net would work too.

Use your biggest cheapest pot to boil it all - then move it out to the sun to dry. May not dry real quickly in this weather though.....

Chlorine bleach seems like a bad idea.... that rock is very porous and it is very toxic.

There isn't a forum for it, so I thought it would go here:

In the last couple of weeks, whenever I click on a link in a post on the forums, it opens a new tab with the link location (good), and moves the current tab to the link location as well. This redundancy is unnecessary and if you're sort of a habitual clicker like myself, sometimes I don't see the little lit up back arrow on the tab that used to be the topic, and I close both before realizing that was not helpful.

I'm using firefox, and this has happened on two different machines running XP and Windows 7.

@DaJ; I agree with the low pH but I never did anything about it personally. I find that stability, and my tank runs around 7.8-7.9, is more important than hitting some supposed perfect number.

Yeah, I suppose.... but I was having problems. Lost a couple of small SPS frags very gradually and had a little tissue recession on some of the larger ones. Couldn't really put my finger on the problem because I was keeping up with the water changes and my alk was registering fine... so I started adding the buffer (which also raises alk slightly) and it fixed the problem along with raising the pH.

There is a chance that it is related to low alkalinity... I suspect my test kit is old, not in my possession but API kits don't have expiration dates and it's always run a little high, which is supposed to be in line with an aging test kit. Still... I've never had alk or calcium problems to my knowledge (and red sea coral pro has relatively high starting numbers), and the buffer and pH increase did yield me some success.

I use the coral pro... not exactly sure what my last bucket ran, but every time i mix up a new batch now the pH is a bit low. RODI is reading 0ppm, but pH is coming out around 7.8 for a freshly mixed batch... so I've been mixing in a buffer as well to try to keep my tank around 8.2. Seems silly that I have to do that though....

If by residue you mean sort of gray crunchy bits on the mixing bucket and pump, yes this salt has that problem. Sometimes the water is rather cloudy when beginning to mix, but i've never had a problem with that or undissolved sediment if it mixes overnight.

What do you need to fix about the calcium/magnesium ratio if the calcium is high and it's not precipitating? That means the magnesium is also quite high (though is the calcium test kit accurate/fresh?)... even without a test kit, if the magnesium was low - the calcium would be snow by now.

The cyano and nitrates are probably both related to the tap water.... but the T8s aren't helping and I wouldn't be surprised if the T5s were old given the state of everything else.

Increasing flow without outlets would be powerhead reorganization (no crossing streams, keep them mostly together and with an unobstructed path), or swap a powerhead for a larger one. No outlets can also be solved with a power strip.

The Pico branded aquariums are quite nice, and they come with the pump and equipment to get the back section running. Using a fluval edge has certainly been done, but to get coral-supporting lighting in that hood you really need an LED setup. I believe nanocustoms sells a DIY led retrofit for the edge.... I've also seen a fluval edge NPS tank which looks absolutely awesome.

The key to going skimmerless is frequent water changes (at least once a week) and not overfeeding.

I've actually got a 7.5G Mr. Aqua tank (from marine depot?) which is a nice sleek rimless option - though it is not an AIO. The nice thing about this tank is that it's 18" long so you can use some normal sized fixtures and there's space in the back for a HOB filter converted to a fuge or even a HOB skimmer.

I don't think there's anything wrong with pellets, but I do think a rotation or at least a bunch of types of food is better. I've used 1-1.5mm hikari pellets, nori, hikari mysis, P.E. mysis, rotifers, freeze dried phyto, and bluezoo mix. Currently P.E. mysis, bluezoo mix, and the phyto.

I think for my tank/corals, the P.E. mysis are too big, so when I run out I'm going back to hikari or another brand with smaller shrimps. The bluezoo mix seems to be good and has a wide variety in pellet sizes included, but I don't think anything in my tanks can really take advantage of the large pellets (6mm+) in the mix. I like having an option of food that sinks for spot feeding and to change up the diet some. Different critters get first dibs depending on what food it is - just because of location really, so I think it's good that the primarily water-column swimming fish don't get the first choice every time.