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@ Bio - This setup had two sump tanks because of a divider in the stand and the bulkhead was connecting them. I don't know if you saw Mikes sump but now I design sumps to be bolted together with large openings for water flow so when this happens it won't be as much of an issue. I had cleaned it out with a screw driver once last year but knew we'd be upgrading the tank so waited until it had to be dissassembled.

Great article about Richard Ross' work to bring the

Article here

Lowes, Home Depot, and Walmart sell the screening kits for about half the price. Their is bird netting in the garden section used to protect your veggies from birds that works fine. If you use actual screening material be sure to get something with a 1/4" weave, and don't buy solar screen material or you'll block all your light. I'm partial to the black netting but it does show salt creep more easily.

Once clowns start hosting they tend to panic a bit if they lose their host. Assuming you can't put a real coral in with them, see if you can find something for them to host even if it's one of those fake plastic anemones.

There are a few RO/DI units that will be given away as door prizes at C4 as well....

I'd leave it alone.

I think you should source your items from another location and realize how much you will save.

RapidLED is a sponsor and donated two kits to the club last year. I'd love to hear a response from the winners of the kits and what they thought of them. The no-solder option is nice for people that want to try out different configurations and are afraid of doing that work themselves. Their kits contain all the necessary parts much like putting a model kit together.

Like everything else, you can always save money by sourcing from different places and doing more work yourself. You just have to decide how much time/effort that takes and whether the supplier backs up what they sell. I think RapidLED is a good option for members who aren't comfortable diving deeper who still want to "customize" their fixtures a bit more than the BuildMyLED site allows.

The club has a 150w MH clip on and a 2' power compact fixture with legs available to loan for Premium Members. PM me and we can work out pickup details.

I thought some of you might be interested in seeing how running the (9) BML fixtures has affected my tank temperatures and PH over the last week.

The cutover to the BML fixtures happend on 2/15, and took about a day for me to get the timing schedule automated in my Apex unit. I'm also running the new lights a few hours a day less than the old fixture to acclimate, but you'll see some significant differences already.

With the (2)250w MH and (4)54w T5s, my low Temp was occurring in the morning around 10am each day. This was generally around the 74 -76 degree range. My peak would occur around 9pm when the lights would turn off, somewhere in the 77-79 degree range. This meant a daily change of approximately 3.5 degrees.

With the BMLS, starting on 2/18 with the regular schedule, you're seeing my low around 71.5 - 72 and my high around 72-73. This cuts the swing down to 1.5 degrees on the 18th, less than a degree on the 19th and 20th.

If you look at the PH graph readings (same date range as the Temps), you'll notice that when the temp was high in the tank, PH was high. Low Temps - Low PH. The size of the PH swing with the BMLs is about half of what it was with the Metal Halide/T5 fixture. (the stagger steps in the end of PH are due to a few hour window mid-day when I turn the BMLs off while the corals are adjusting.

I'll continue to monitor the progress, but thought I'd share.

I'll be there as well.

Use Krylon Fusion, it bonds to the plastic and is reef safe once dry.

awesome build thread and an awesome setup. Great job!

I need some filter socks, count me in.

I work south as well, PM me and we'll coordinate.

I've got a few extra powerheads and will be up north tomorrow night if you want to me up somewhere.

Are you looking to QT coral, fish, or both?

Whst are silversides and where can I get them

Silversides are basically minnows and you can find them in the frozen food section of the pet store. You'll need to cut them up to feed the condy (pieces about half the size of a dime). If you give it too large of a piece it can actually rot inside the condy before it can digest which can sicken the condy or kill it.

Several members here have been able to get clowns to host condys. It's a trick of both the clowns and the anemone, but other anemones are easier (bubble tips, long tentacle anemones). Do a search for condy in the top right and you'll find some threads discussing it.

Ask questions at your fish store, but always verify what they tell you. Too many of the chain stores have well-meaning but uneducated employees.

Welcome to the club, and don't hesitate to ask here as well!

wow 9 fixtures?! can I borrow your amex?

At the moment it would be useless to you.

Here are some updated pics from when the lights went up this weekend. First up is a construction shot of the tank surround (open top canopy). The notches are to hold each end of the (9) 2' BML fixtures. I'm running (5) Custom Reef Spectrum fixtures - 75 degree lens and (4) DIY fixtures - 90 degree lens. The lights are alternated to get a good spread and mix between them.

The custom DIY LED pattern. BML lets you customize 12" and then clones that pattern for each additional foot of fixture. I wanted to make sure that with 2' that the light distributed on the kitchen side of the tank matched the light on the living room side of the tank. This pattern came the closest to achieving that while incorporating the red, green, and UV LEDs. The UV really makes the actinic corals pop even in daytime.

The power supplies for the fixtures are mounted on the wall end of the peninsula tank. The wood trim on the aluminum plate hides everything from view as the power supplies are nestled between the end of the aquarium and the wall behind it. Nick and Randy at BML were great about helping me customize the fixtures so that the power cords were the right length for my design.

Here is the 24"x18" aluminum plate that I attached the fixture power supplies to. Originally I was worried about heat and the configuration, so I put all the supplies on the aluminum, placed a towel over them and turned the lights on. 45 mins later neither the plate or towels were warm at all so I knew that heat accumulation would not be an issue.

Here the holes have been drilled, power supplies zip-tied in place, and the black wood trim added to the aluminum. The zip-tied side ends up facing the tank overflow. The power supplies are on the opposite side facing the wall. It's not shown here, but I added two hooks to the top of the plate to hang this power supply rack from the aquarium lip at the top.

A view from the front with everything in place. Custom plugs were added to the power supplies so that all will fit into the two power strips. The original plugs were much too bulky to fit side by side.

Power strips added, attached to the trimwork, and power supplies plugged in.

The surround in place on top of the tank (painted, light fixtures in place, power cables clipped to the surround and zip-tied together.

View in a darkened room with all lights on. Notice the minimal shadows on the rock work. Running the lights perpendicular to the length of the tank allows the light to hit everything from the bottom of the tank to the top.

Close ups of the livestock

Things left on the project list:

• Adding magnets to the cabinet doors (currently using velcro)
• Dealing with running all power cables through the white pvc pipe you see sticking up in the overflow. This will be cut shorter and all electric from the tank will run through this dry pipe into the sump.
• Adding the custom built live rock tower for the anemones to live on. The tower will have two power heads inside of it with power cords running out the top and along the tank surround. The end result should be a tank with no visible plumbing or wires (other than the two black return spigots).
• Post sketches of the overflow (drains, returns, and hidden full Tunze wavebox), sump design, and dry section of the stand.
• Take final PAR readings of the setup. Initial readings are showing around 110 PAR at the sand level.

In person the tank is lit in a cool white, slightly bluish color. The tank glows, and the UV LEDs cause the colors on the zoas, anemones, and palau to really pop. I'm incredibly happy with the whole setup.

It's not clear from the description on your website. Is this an algal turf scrubber (ATS)?

We've had several discussions on them here (I even built one but ultimately never used it). Nice to see a small, easy to use package. Do you have any reviews of it?

I'm in talks with one of our sponsors. They're checking to see what pricing would end up like. I'll post more here when I hear back.

Mike, will another local sponsor (LFS) step up like Jake has in support of the club and cover the other 2 quarters of the year? I find that I frequent Jake's store (RCA) often and more than the other LFS b/c of his support for the club...

That's a good question and one I don't have an immediate answer to. I'm in constant contact with our sponsors to try and elicit group buys, sales, and other means of saving for our members, so I'll be sure to bring this up during those conversations. Additionally, if any of our sponsors see this and would like to offer a similar deal we'll be happy to help coordinate it.

Announcements of any such deals will be made in the Group Buy forum.

Understood, but it's one of those things that is out of ARC's and Jake's hands, he was just informed by his supplier of the limitation. It does go to show that our local fish stores often have to wheel and deal to continue to get us special deals, and it's sometimes difficult for them to compete with online stores. I think we all appreciate Jake's effort to provide these group buys last year and to continue them this year despite the limitations that are being imposed.

To answer your other question, check with Jake at RCA or Gary at Aquadome. They can take the details of the tank you want and get estimates for them. The tanks are delivered to their stores for pickup so you can often avoid shipping costs. That's how I handled my recent upgrade from 90g to 230g.

It's my understanding that the starfire glass scratches much easier as well. RichardL has a DSA with starfire front.

I was able to talk to Jake, here's what I found out.

Jake is now limited to twice a year for the promotional rates we'd been getting on salt. He utilized the promotion in December for our last group buy, so going forward he'll only be able to offer these kinds of prices twice a year (June, December). Of course you should always talk to him if you need large quantities of salt in the meantime.

ARC will continue to run a thread in June and December for the promotional rate group buys.