Eugenereef

As people above said... The Salanity should be 1.026 and temp should be around 80. And just cross check you hygrometer with refractometer. Another parameter to check in nitrite and nitrate! I have had the same issue but now it is resolved.

Thanks Drew. Thanks Jenn! Me too! I have been staring at this empty tank for nearly six weeks now and can not wait to put the cleaning crew in there this Saturday! and a couple of fish on Sunday. As far water changes, I have my saltwater prep station and utility sink out in the garage about 30 feet away from the tank. Here is a picture of my saltwater prep station: I transfer the water to and from the tank using a hose (specifically used for potable water). First, the old water is drained from the sump. On the sump end the hose connect to the T (with quick fitting and valve) that I have from return pump The feed to tank is closed and feed to the drain is opened and the old water is out of the tank! It take me about 15 mins to drain about 25 g water. While this is going on, I make my new salt water which mixes using Mag 24 pump. By the time the water has drained, the new water has already mixed pretty well. Then all I do is to turn off the return pump, connect the sink end of the hose to the prep station and transfer the new water back into tank. At the prep station, the hose connects to this end via quick fitting connection: The whole process takes me about 10 mins of "Hands-On" time and about 30 min of total time to change 20 to 25 g water. I used quick fitting for two reasons: 1. Of-course its easy to connect and disconnect 2. The hose end closes itself after the fitting is disconnected from the sump or prep station. This prevents spilling of salt water on the floor or carpet during connection/disconnection or moving hose in and out of the house. The whole process may look very complicated as I described (details, details (whistle)) but it is quite simple and fast in practice. I consider #1 reason why people fail in this hobby is water changes. They get too lazy to do it and that leads to all kinds of problems in the tank and poof! you see a post I am out of this hobby!(sad). And even to seasoned hobbyist, water change is a big chore that needs time and effort. When I got into this hobby (and knowing what a lazy a** I am, my (wife) can tell you all about that(laugh)), the first thing I did was to make this chore as simple, easy and effortless as I could. rest of the stuff is all icing as all the other maintenance chore (filling media, calibration probes etc etc) are once a month, water change is weekly. I think this is more than what you may have been looking for in my answer but I am a sucker for details! (scary)

Thanks Drew! Those zoas are from Josh (mohaynow). He did had additional frags.

An update on 90g Here is another update (from Nano to Ninety g). Finally the tank is completely cycled. Its processing about 2 ppm ammonia into nitrites in 12 hr and in 24h nitrites are processed to nitrates. It is really nice to see the spikes in the beginning, but now the processing is quite smooth. The rock work was rearranged and is now ready to receive some life on it (laugh) and that means another trip up north (naughty) Here is the picture... Again, its a blackberry picture so not the best I have!

Update Ok, it has been about 4 days since I put my new LED lights on (yeh! yeh! I am impatient), I figured I could give a small update with new citizens in nano country! I was checking some emails with my blackberry and took these pictures with the blackberry camera. Surprisingly they came out to be pretty good. By the way they migrated to my nano from Garrett and Josh's tanks and seems to be pretty happy. Here are some of the pictures. Enjoy.... I also took a video but now sure how to post it here. I guess, pictures are enough for now(laugh)

Hi Kim, Actually I am finding out that keeping a small tank is a lot more fun than a large one. If all things equal, a small tank is much more involved than a large one. of-course, you cannot have big colonies but then the small size actually enhances the stuff. I am going to have a one souped-up nano (plotting). I will add a coil denitrator so that I can minimize the water changes and start dosing alkalinity supplement. A super Nano (naughty)

Its totally LEDs now Just added a 1w blue light as moon light and a LED MR16 lamp (6500k) from Jerrys as a refugium light in the back of the tank. Now only if I can find a what to have a soft start and soft shutoff, I can wrap this project up. Next project is coil denitrator!!!

T5 are pretty good. You can overdrive them and you will have a very good output from them. How big is your tank?

Thanks Garrett! You have an impressive setup and excellent selection. After seeing all the corals I was thinking may be I should leave my credit card number on file with you (laugh) That way, I don't have to pull the card every time. If you did decided to switch to LEDs, let me know if you need any help (although, looking at your garage, you seems me way more skilled than I am!!) Thanks Aquaman30k. Since mine is a very small tank, you may want to add additional LEDs to your setup. One of the thing I want to experiment is to add 1 green and 1 red LED in the mix as well to complete the spectrum (I don't really know how the corals are going to react to it but I am hoping the reaction should be favorable. Also,I am still looking for a soft start circuit (Any electronic gurus here on the fourm to help me (scratch))

Hi Drew, I am out until 5pm today but anytime after 6 pm would work just fine. Send me a pm with your phone number and I'll let you know the address.

Thanks Drew! You are not too far away. Stop by some time to take a look at it.

Well the DIY thread is up... I was in the same boat for a while when I was trying to look for better lights. Settleing for LEDs was a good choice in hindsight as it is very bright and I may be able to keep some sps in the tank now. I had a Zoos colony that I bought about two weeks ago and half of them were closed. today after I put the new lights, the entire frag was fully open in four hrs. So LEDs is the way to go on small tanks, I think!!

Thanks Arsonmfg! Yeh, I wanted to go with thermal epoxy but couldn't find one. On searching the web, I found several posts on other sites where they successfully used normal epoxy (NOT super Glue). The heat conduction was very very good in my case (and hence my soldering problems). I don't know what the temp of heat sink is (did not measure it yet). But I know that the water temp use to go to 85 with CF lamps and now it is consistently 80 deg F. Good lucj on your build. After I have done it, I don't think it is that difficult, it just takes time. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks again.

Hi NoobtoSalt, I hope you see the costs info in the post. there were other very typical things like epoxy etc that I already had so I did not count them in. but the list is pretty much complete. I went for constant current driver ($18.00) rather than dimmable (>$30), but in retrospect, I should have send the money and got the dimmable driver to make a soft start and soft shutdown. I am looking for some cheap circuits that could do that, but no luck yet. I'll update the forum when I find one. Thanks for the compliments!

Pretty good suggestion!! I think the light meter is in PDX! And its too far for me to drive Unless somebody here in Eugene has it. I would be curious to see the par numbers too.

Continuing on... Got up this morning and went straight to HD (yeh! I did not even take shower (nutty)) Got the right size screws (2 inch) and attached the braces with the heatsinks... I cut one 14 inch piece of the C Channel and fit it on the hood where the reflector was screwed in. Made three holes there and this is going to be the mount for the whole contraption.. But wait (flame) Do you see that pesky fan transformer there(flame) its in the way So I had to rearrange the heatsink on the braces DOH!, Removed one in the middle and changed the direction of the screws in this one (the screw comes in from the bottom so that I can place the middle heatsink AFTER I had mounted the whole thing on to the hood. Now it fits perfectly... The final test fit was performed... Now on to LEDs. I had previously planned on mounting the LEDs with screws (and that's why I bought 100 screws/nuts) but when I tried it, I found the screw head was large and could short circuit the whole thing. By holding the LEDs with screws, I could change LEDs if I wanted to (try different colors, replace burned out LEDs etc) So back to the WWW to see if its on to use epoxy and so did I find. Mixed the localite epoxy and glued the LEDs to the heatsink. Care should be taken not to use too much epoxy as I want as much metal contact from the back of the LED to the heatsink. All the LEDs were glued on the the heatsinks (alternate royal blue and cool white) And soldering the wires started... But wait, suddenly I find that cannot solder these LEDs to the wires (I think I am pretty good at soldering stuff). I could melt the solder on the wires just fine, but when I go to attach the wire to the LED, nothing happens, the solder was not attaching itself and hard to melt when it was on the LED. (flame) Then it dawned on me that the heatsink was too good.DOH! All the heat used for melting solder was getting transferred to heatsink DOH! So, I had to put extra soldering paste on the LED, melt the solder on the iron and then immideatly transfer it to LED. Only then I could solder these things (flame). And even then, they came off several times while working on it and had to be resoldered. (solder your LEDs first before putting on to heatsinks!) Everything was soldered... And the other side after soldering.. Those fins on the heatsink really work ( and made me work too(laugh)) The braces were angled appropriately for the lights to distribute And now to mount the whole fixture on to the hood... After the whole fixture was mounted, wiring was connected, its time for moment of truth...(scary) And yes!!! it works! all the LEDs had survived my brutal soldering temperatures The plastic water sheild was placed back on to the hood and tested again.. And now on to the tank (clap)(clap)(clap) What a sight... I'll tell you, it was good enough to attract some very curious viewers too... So there it is guys, my final picture... Looks like I have a 14K MH bulb on the tank I would be glad to answer any question and take suggestions at this time. I am really looking for a soft start circuit that could go between the Meanwell driver and the LED string. That would help the sudden lighting and turning off of the light. Thanks all, Upinder

Ok, So we had put the two C channels together, now time to cut them into right length. Three pieces were cut each holding 4 LEDs... The sides were cleaned using rotary tool (Dremel mill) The LED grid was laid out on to the heatsinks.. And now on the the hood of the Nano that I want to destroy Do you see that small LED light at the upper corner, that is my refugium light (laugh) that works like a charm (I have some Cheatos in the back where the pump is! Thanks to Drew!) The plastic water shield was removed, followed by light bulbs and then the entire guts except the fan and its controller. The bulbs (~6 Months used, 2 yrs old) and ballasts along with bulb holders (4 pin square configuration) will on the for sale/for trade board soon (naughty) Now to the braces that's going to hold all the heatsinks together.. Please note the cuts that are made in the side wall. There were made to have the flexibilty to put an angle in the heatsink to direct light in the front and back areas of the tank (will have some pictures later to make this point clear)... I then proceeded to attach the brace with the heatsink, only to find out that I did not have long enough screws to reach the other side DOH! It was too late in the night so decided to pause here, go to HD in the morning and get some 2 inch screws. By the time I was done the room was in pretty bad shape. luckily the (wife) completely supports the hobby and projects (rock2). By the way, look carefully in this picture, you may find the tool I did not tell you about. on to next post...

Ok Guys! So here it goes... After rereading the thread, I apologize for the details but I want to make sure everybody understand what I am doing! Basically the LEDs ( 6 CREE XR-E Royal Blue 3W LED on Star + 6 CREE XR-E Q5 Cool White 3W LED on Star) and driver were bought from Rapidled.com. Total cost = $93.00 including shipping. From Lowes: 25 ft of 16g wire, a packet of #6-32X1/2 inch 100 bolts and nuts (a mistake, I could have done it with lot less), 3 X 5/8 inch aluminum C channels for heatsink (on sale, $7.80 reduced to 77 cents each (clap)) ~$11.00. From HD 2 packets each of #6-32 X 2 inch screws and nuts (5 in each packet) ~$2.00 Epoxy and other tools (I'll withhold one tool that was very important and let the readers guess it. ) Here is every thing laid out.. you see two tubes of heatsink compound that I did not use, so it goes back to radioshack tomorrow (naughty) I then took some pictures of me nano to make sure that I can get a good comparison. I know I don't want to load the thread with pictures but I think it is important for the readers to see the difference them self. So here are a few "Before" pictures: (see one above and one FTS here...) Some tools you will need for this project... 2 C-Channels were clamped together at two ends making sure that the bottom surface is completely plain. It is important because the LEDs sit in the middle and any uneven surface may lead to directional flux of the LED! The inner side of the C-Channel acts like a fin for the heatsink. A hole was drilled using drill through one of the sides and into the middle fin. The two channels were then screwed together like this.. The drilling of one side was necessary to put the screwdriver through it to tighten the nut. I'll post this now and rest in the next post... (i am afraid if something goes wrong with the computer, I'll loose every things here (scary)) on to next post...

Thanks guys! The thread will be up tonight.

Here is my DIY LED light fixture that I just completed and put it on the tank. To tell you the truth, as soon as I tunrned the lights on, my jaw dropped at the amazing brightness of these LEDs. I have pictures of the entire DIY so stay tuned for a DIY thread. Right now i am too tired to write-up a big post as I have been working on it since last night! But then couldn't wait to share with you all the success of this project. Below are the tank pics before and after and what the fixture looks like... Before: After: Here is what the fixture looks like:

I used LEDs bought from bestHongkong.com about 3 yr ago (before Cree was selling) and these were mounted on star pcb with extremely good spread. here is the link to data sheet of the blue leds I had on my 90g as moon light (actually I am still using them). http://www.besthongkong.com/files/1w_1LXS.pdf The spatial radiation pattern is very broad all the way to 100 degs. I had only two LEDs that were enough to light up my entire 90g tank (48 inch). Problem with T5/CF is the changing bulbs every yr and heat. Atleast in my nano (oceanic 14g) the entire system is enclosed and so it also produces a lot heat (even with the fan). My choice would be LEDs > T5 > CF Just my two cents here by the way, I received my LEDs and driver from rapid LEDs yesterday so I'll try to put the LED panel build here on this forum!

Nah! I have seasoned them over the last 3 years when I had tank in Madison. Infact, it is possible that they are glad that I am out of there hairs (laugh) Oh And for all those who requested the pictures here we go... The teal candy cane. This coral has been in my tank for less than 24h and look at the polyp! This was feeding time so yeh! everybody wants snag some food there and here are the two polyps of Nuc Green canycanes, a free bee from Miles! Even he is at home with large polyp extention. Here is the another Free bee, a montipora even this guy seems to have settled in the tank well. It even managed to snag a shrimp!(rock2) This is a Zoos frag I picked up from Aqua Serene It is a rather large colony of Zoos and so here is the back side of the frag So now its official Jenn

Why not use LEDs instead. I am in a process of changing my PC light on oceanic nano 14g! I calculated the two bulbs will cost me $40.00 ( and next yr I will have to change the bulbs again) so I decided to go the DIY LED route. 12 LEDS (3 w royal blue and 6 cool white) would be as bright as. 150w metal halide!