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57g Illuminata Build


CaptainK

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Congrats on the move. I love your pink birds nest. If you ever have a tiny stick please let me know. It is the exact color I am looking for. Your tank is amazing.

I always have frags. Just a heads up though, the color is dependent on your lighting. Under metal halide it was purple.

timsish showed a picture on here once of the same colony that had gotten so large to get into different PAR values and it was a different color on one side than the other. it was neat. i think it was in one of the lighting discussions, but shrug...i read a lot of threads.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Anyone have any recommendations on hanging a canopy? Currently I have it mounted with a TV mount and 2 metal chains. It doesn't look that good and it's not as level as I would like. I don't want to set the canopy on the tank because it is rimless and I don't feel comfortable hanging it from the ceiling. I saw some shelving mounts at Home Depot but none of them were big enough. I would like to have the floating canopy look. Any ideas would help!

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Too bad it is unstable, it looks pretty slick.

i'm not sure what your needs are as far as ease of removal and all, or what options you have for "shelf mounts". but you can build your own shelf mounts that will probably be robust enough. basically using lumber (2X4, or 1X4 maybe) build a triangle. one side will mount to the wall, one will hang your canopy (or have it rest on it) and the other will come back to the wall at an angle to the bottom of the wall 2X4. odds are, the critical element in this will be the attachment to the wall itself. lag bolts into a stud are highly recommended. depending on the size and weight, sheet rock anchors may work, but it would take more of them. i'd avoid molly bolts for this application.

duh, i guess for your TV mount to work you must have a back on the canopy, so those shelf brackets wouldn't work well. what is the back made of and how is it built? if it is too thin your sagging may be a result of the back piece deflecting (could be the mount, too). you may be able to counter that by simply adding a shim at the bottom of the canopy so that it has a point of contact with the wall. it can either be one long piece attached all the way across or some discrete pieces lining up with studs. your TV mount is made for something that is only 6" thick, which will pry it away from the wall (and the angles it hangs on). your canopy is much bigger. contact with the wall at the bottom will reduce this prying by distributing the load out. of course, there is also a weight limit on the mount, so before you pull off the cables you may want to make sure that you are near that limit and that the attachment to the wall is good enough to take it. i'm not sure how your tv mount is mounted.

caveat: i work with metal and composites and not housing materials. i am unaccustomed to some of the nuances of housing materials. they tend to deflect more than i expect and the tolerances are much lower. also, consistency of the materials is lower, so i'd overbuild rather than underbuild.

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Removal isn't a big deal as long as it's 3-4" above the tank. I was thinking about doing what you're talking about but with metal braces and using an L shape mount. The only reason I can't use a triangle is because the T5 fixture hangs inside and takes up most of the room and length of the canopy.

Maybe something like this...

http://www.thehardwarehut.com/catalog-product.php?p_ref=37128&gshop&gclid=CISYnNDCob4CFcpcMgodBUEAMA

http://www.etrailer.com/Accessories-and-Parts/Rackem/RA-24B.html?feed=npn&gclid=CJipmpXDob4CFdSMMgodnz8Axg

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The second one looks like a better bet to me, but i don't see that either has a load rating. it just seems to be longer (if the 187 on the first one is 187 mm). also, it gives you more options to attach it to the cannopy (either from the bottom or the side. of course, the problem with hte second is the lip on the end to catch the shelf. but, it may not be an issue depending on your canopy design.

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  • 2 weeks later...

That's cool! Out of curiosity, how did you determine that was spawning and not expulsion of zooxanthallae or some other form of expulsion from the fungia body?

I only ask because I have noticed my fungias doing two different types of expulsion. One was slimier and my best educated guess was that it was removing zooxanthallae from the tissues and releasing it into the water column. The other explusion I observed was similar to yours and what I would assume is releasing of gametes but I'm not 100% sure.

I've had the fungias for 5+ years (I have over 40 of them at one time or another) and have never seen any buds around the tank that may be products of sexual reproduction via gametes in the water column. It would be interesting if one popped up one day.

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I don't know if it was actually spawning or removing zoo. The fish were very interested in it so I assumed it was spawning. For sexual reproduction there has to be another fungia that fertilizes the eggs.

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  • 1 month later...

Thanks for the compliments! How often does everyone dose KH? Seems like I can never get my alkalinity above 7 and if I do it only last a day or two. I'm having to dose 2.5 teaspoons every 2-3 days. It's a 57g with a 20g sump.

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Once you have colonies like you do, I would highly recommend two-part dosing, kalk in your ATO, or a CaRX. I tried hand dosing to keep up when I initially started SPS and eventually, it was needing way more than I could ever keep up with on a regular basis. The resultant spikes with alk while I was trying to keep up probably wasn't ideal either for my SPS either.

The demand on my old system at its peak was ridiculous. If my CaRX shut down for a 24hr period, it would easily drop from 8,0 dKh to 6.8 dKh.

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  • 1 month later...

Tank is officially 2 years old now! I would be lying if i said I expected it to be where it's at now. I'm still battling bubble algae and alk swings but everything seems to be growing well. Here's some pics!

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  • 4 weeks later...

So I was glueing over some aiptasia that came in on my clam and I noticed four of these. Not sure if they are clams or mussels. They do have the zig zag pattern around the mantel.

This is the closest thing that I have found. www.melevsreef.com/node/1723

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