Turbo`s Reef Project

Ever since I bought a 92 Corner Bowfront tank and started maintaining the tank owned by the guy I bought it from, I've been itching to set up my first saltwater tank. So far, I've just been maintaining for others:
Tank Journal - 125 Reef (AA)
Tank Journal - 125 Reef (GIRS)
Tank Journal - 125 FOWLR (AA)
Tank Journal - 180 FOWLR (AA)
Tank Journal - 225 FW Cichlid (AA)


...trying different filtration methods...
Algal Turf Scrubber DIY Build (AA)


...making mistakes...
I lost a razor blade (AA)
I lost a razor blade (GIRS)


...you get the idea. Priority right now is to take my Professional Engineering Licensure Examination on April 8th, which in case you don't know that is an 8 hour exam that requires about 300 hours of study for most people, and about 65% pass it on the first try. This is job related, if I pass then I can stamp & sign plans & spec for construction projects, studies, reports, etc related to the commercial construction industry (I work at a Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing consulting firm). If I don't pass, I have to take the test again in October. I have made a pledge that I will take on no big projects until I pass this test. This project (in addition to advancing my career) is my motivation. Plus, who really wants to take an 8 hour exam twice?


However, timing is never perfect...


Yesterday, I stopped in at Seascapes and paid for an All-Glass / Aqueon 120G tank, 24 x 24 x 48, black trim, undrilled (I'll get into why). The tank will be delivered on Wednesday.


Next, I decided that since I'm a EE and a good % of what I do is lighting design, I might as well put all that to work and DIY my own fixture. So ninja777 hooked me up with theFishGuy65 on RC doing the LED group buy, and sometime in the next 2 weeks, I'll be dropping some $$ for that project.


Then, I get to sit there and look at it...and suffer while I study...


So this is my project outline:


1) Overflow & Return


The tank will be drilled for external beananimal style 3-pipe tuned full siphon system. It will have an internal black acrylic coast-to-coast overflow box, an external clear acrylic box for the 3-pipe system, and 4 bulkheads joining the 2 sections together, based on a design I saw on RC (and got a bunch of detailed pics from the builder of that one). This may be done on one side of the tank, as my original evil scheme was to knock a hole in the wall (actually, this was jokingly suggested by my wife, but I took it QUITE seriously). After thinking about it, I would like to have the tank against the wall for space reasons and frame around the sides of the tank. The returns would come up the other side, and a series of pipes and jets would distribute from there. Perhaps 4 jets.


2) Sump


Likely a 40 Breeder, maybe a 75. Don't know on this one.


3) Filtration


ATS. Possibly LED, but likely T5HO.


4) Other circulation


I have been considering installing a closed-loop system. However, I am also toying around with wanting a wavemaker system also, so I'm leaving this one on the fence. I'm leaning toward power heads because it allows more flexibility.


5) Lighting system


Ahh, yes. I will be making my own fixture.


5a) Lights: The base design as of right now consists of 96 Cree LEDs. 60 XP-E Royal Blue and 36 XP-G Cool White


5b) Driver Board: 3 DIY Driver Boards. Each board is capable of driving 48 LEDs (8 strings of 6). The reason for 3 boards is because you can't mix RBs and CWs on a board. The boards are essentially dual-boards - each side of the board is powered by an independent power supply connection point, so you can run the whole board on 1 PS or 2 PSs. I'm going to have one board for only CWs, 18 on each side running on 1 PS, then the 2 other boards will have the RBs, which will require 2 PSs total, however I end up configuring it. I will have expansion capability to a total of 144 LEDs.


5c) Lighting Control: The DIY boards have PWM dimming inputs, and I will be purchasing an Arduino board to perform lighting control. Each board is configured so that there is quite a bit of flexibility. Each side (4 strings of 6) can be configured for 2 dimming channels of 2 strings each, or split into 1 and 3 strings, or 1/1/2. So with 3 boards, I could have up to 18 dimming channels. Bwahahaha! My vision is to run my tank lights to music like that guy that did his Christmas lights on his house to "Wizards of Winter" or whatever that was.


5d) Heat Sink: I will also likely attempt to make my own heat sink out of angle or C channel aluminum. But we'll see about that.


6) Stand & Canopy


I will be building my own stand out of 4x4 corner posts and 2x6 framing. I would, if at all possible, like to make a skin to cover it all up that would match the wainscoting in my office/study. As for the canopy, it will likely go to the ceiling and match up with the crown molding. My goal is to have everything blended together so it looks like it was original to the house, without cutting things all apart. At least for now. Insert evil laugh here.


7) Controller


My latest obsession (as of Thursday) is the Arduino based controller. This little thing totally intrigues me. I will be getting my hands on a Reef Angel Controller eventually, and rigging this in to the system to control the ATS Lighting cycle, heating, cooling fans, pH and temp monitoring, dosers, etc. There is also a wireless module so I can rig up one of those cool footers that says what's going on in your tank. I will have to figure out if you can wire 2 Arduino controllers to talk to each other, since the RA only has something like 4 or 6 PWM dimming channels. Or I might just scale back my evil 18 channel dimming project. Or NOT.


8) Ramp-up


Once I get all of this together, I plan to follow Randy Holmes-Farley's advice. I will probably try to buy up about 250 pounds of LR and probably some substrate also. Then I will set everything up and play with it for a couple of months, decide on the best arrangement, let the tank cycle up and settle in, and let the ATS screen get established. Then once a couple of months have passed, I'll get a clean-up crew and let them get a foothold.


9) Corals


This one will probably not be up to me, at least not completely. I think I'm going to let HER pick the corals. I remember one comment she made after going to last spring's Frag Fest was "can we have a tank with just corals?". Of course, she'll want fish too once she sees how much cooler they are than FW fish. I'm thinking I'll want LPS and SPS, with a few softies, but this is by no means set in stone. I'll be getting a few books on the subject and do some dreamscaping before settling in on anything. However, I would like to do some really exotic corals. And there must be at least one Giant Clam. Those are soooooo cool.


10) Fish


No idea yet. But I've got plenty of time to plan that out, so there's no rush. Plus, I really do plan on not introducing any fish into the tank for at least the first 6 months. I really need to also figure out what I'm going to do for a Quarantine tank, since I don't think it would be wise to add any fish to this system until they've been isolated for a good long time.


It would be REALLY nice if I was ready for corals by the time MACNA comes around. So follow along if you want to...this one could take some time to actually happen. I have a feeling that, in addition to passing my PE exam, completion of several other home projects will be a prerequisite in order for this one to begin.

 

Thanks to terahz on RC I've decided on the heat sink system. I will be using these individual heat sinks for each LED:
Wakefield 658-35AB
and manufacturing a rail system for mounting them out of aluminum angle, C channel, or square channel from the hardware store.  The rail system will be such that I can modify the arrangement of the LEDs to tweak performance & distrubution, or to add/delete individual lamps.  I think this is something largely missed when one adheres everything to one big heat sink - you are locked into your design, so you had better like it!
A couple nice things about these heat sinks:
1) They're under $0.80 each.  I've seen them as low as $0.68/each for 100 or more.
2) They require no active cooling (but I will probably have some anyways)
...the tank is supposed to come in today...let the suffering of waiting begin!

 

In case anyone is interested, this is the lighting design I will be basing mine off of
Georgi's 40B rimless - Reef Central


And here is my first attempt at a layout of the LEDs  Any comments are welcome.  The Cool Whites are in Green (easier to see than black) and the Royal Blues are in Blue.

 

I may be switching my heat sink ideas now based on some good data

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1751598

 

OH YEAH!!!



THE BEST PART



IT'S NEW HOME (eventually)
]


...no, it's not going on that stand next to the 10 gallon...


OH NO!! It has to stay here...for 4 months...



$@#!%&@$(#%&($#@%$#@


ToRtUrE!!

 

PS Thank you SEASCAPES!!!!!!.
My Wife was not prepared. Her response was "Holy #@$% Bud, that's a huge f@%$#@in tank!!!"
I just smiled./DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/smile.gif

 

Since I had to go through a crash course on tank stand building, I thought I might as well add it to this thread.


I followed the RC tank stand template and here's how it looks (almost done)



And here is it in the room, and the likely location



I wanted to center it on the wall, but then I'd have to move the 37 and right now I'm just not feeling it...plus the floor is a mess, I'm going to have to shim this thing like crazy. The floor is in full contact with the stand for about the left 1/3, but not the rest of the stand...






and the front left corner is up too




So a shimming I will go...


Plus the front 2x6 has a 1/16" crown in the middle, so I'll have to shave that off a bit and put the tank on before shimming. Should be fun!

 

Moved the 37 and put the tank in the middle at the wife's request.



Which revealed the true nature of the beast with the floor



This is the left side with me standing on the right



That's 3/4"!!


Bought a pack of cedar underlayment shingles at Menards and levelled the short sides, put the tank on and....



Now that weight is on it holding the side shims in, I just have to fill the gaps and it's fill test time!!

 

Fully shimmed



Full, and only 1/16" out of level, barely perceptable.



Now to drain...transfer pending

 

Transfer was done between 2pm and 9pm yesterday. Big, Big thanks to Gary / gcsoupman who helped the whole time, and to Matt / ninjazx777 for stopping and helping for a couple hours, and also giving spot-on advice about re-using the sand. I could NOT have done this without help!!



I will post better pic later today or tomorrow







All fish accounted for. All corals seem OK so far. Need to set up algae scrubber filter. Water was a little cloudy last night, but perfectly clear this morning. Need to test water, hook up dosers, get a back and neck massage..

 

Oh by the way, I have one of those "good" problems. Way too much rock. I will be selling entire pieces of rock covered with Xenia and Anthelia. Let me know if you're interested. I ran out of places to put the nicer corals.

 

An update, I found a problem with the left front seam last week (insert thread link) and traced it to the stand, so on Wednesday I took the day off and Gary (gcsoupman) came over for the morning and helped me tear it all down again, fix the stand, and set it all back up again. Now I have bubbles in all the seams (between the panes, not the inside bead) but they're not getting any bigger. For monitoring, I left the tank 15g short for a week. Here's pics from last Thursday:








So far, a few corals have taken a hit. The War Coral turned white on top but I think it was just ticked off, because it is turning back to normal. The big ORA Green Birdsnest died off quite a bit on the tips, but the rest is doing awesome. The Kryptonite Candy Cane started to show some signs of death on a few heads, but that seems to have stopped.


Interestingly, the 2 Frogspawns and the Branching Hammer are doing much better, in the other tank I think the clowns were trying to host on them and ticking them off.


Everything else is clicking along without skipping a beat. But, the true test is yet to come. I'm sure there is a cycle of some kind happening as a result of moving everything and changing flow patterns, light coverage, etc.


Here's the scrubber setup








This is the one from the old setup (40 breeder sump) so like I said, totally ghetto and loud because of the way I made the drains. So I have to re-build it or figure out a way to silence it. I'm going to raise the 90s tonight so that they terminate at the surface rather than below it and see how that helps, should eliminate the short-siphon effect that is probably generating the most noise.

 

Video of tank and scrubber
120 Reef & Algae Scrubber, 6/6/2011

 

Pictures from today. Got rid of 2 big rocks covered in Xenia and Anthelia, which opened up the tank a lot!

























And the top-of-tank algae scrubber (kind ghetto still)




Intake basket





Drain on the other side, notice the high-tech 1L pop bottle splash guard



Also notice the sleek and hardly noticeable 2L bottle in-tank super-ghetto bubble diffuser




Second high-drain



There was one like this on the other side, but I took it off so it drains right out the bottom and that's why I added the double-pop bottle ultra ghetto combo bubble diffuser/splash guard


And here's some difficult to see Algae-Scrubber-In-Action pics.




This is the 'low' drain

 

So it's been about a month, and just today I pulled out as much of the Xenia and Anthelia that I could, gave some away, mounted some on rubble rock, and whatever rocks I fragged them off of, I scrubbed with a brush. Then I made happy spaces for all the LPS/SPS that they need, and prep for some more from Dave tomorrow. So here is how it looks now!





Frag rack of Xenia for a few people













More pics will come tomorrow after Dave stops by! Getting Purple Plate, Orange Digi, Orange Cap, and another Hammer.

 

Dave is awesome. Got an extra frag of Pink Pocillopora that he didn't say he was bringing!


Purple Plate



Hammer



Orange Cap (as it turns out, I have a bunch of this - thought mine was more red, oh well!)



Orange Digi



And the free frag of Pink Pocillopora

 

Tank video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrNvqtk7t18

Algae scrubber growth video, this is one of the best growth weeks ever - huge!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex8q7cmyAAE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stg81RRbnpI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsq9emsFSy4

 

You can have a piece when you pick up those bio-balls this weekend if you want