Nice :-) :pop2:

Looks Great

Thx guys. Ill try my dslr to more accurately show how the lights effect really looks. Those strange shadowy bands the camera sees are def not visible to me.

I did pickup another leopard wrasse today but the oranges are too big to reside in my nano.

You sir... Have obviously done this before. Looking good Brett!

Wow a mitra, guess the kids don't get any snacks for the next couple months :lol:

Ok so here are pics with the camera and not the iPhone. Gone are the strange shadows. Now depending on monitor settings a bunch of other things your mileage may vary but to my eyes these very accurately show how the tank looks in person. I will probably reduce the cool white to bring the overall look a bit more into the blue.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/mitras5.jpg

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/mitras6.jpg

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/mitras7.jpg

Here you can spot some of the yellow highlights on my rocks. The banding is almost entirely in the yellow spectrum and hardly noticeable. There is no seperation on my sand other than in the shadows behind the tower. None on the tower or rocks on the sandbed but a bit on parts of the rock background.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/mitras8.jpg

Ok what dark magic is this. My channels i manually set before to 100% are at 60 now lol. It must have some default dimming program on it lol.

Just spent an hour with the light composer app. Totally blown away at the control this thing gives you.

I have all the channels set to ramp up over two hours starting at 2pm. Full intensity lasts from 4 till 10 when they slowly ramp down over two more hours. Then the moonlights are on until ramp up again.

You can even program the backlit screen lol. It's at 30% when my moonlights are on and 80% the rest of the time.

You can also set the overall output % and while its currently at 100% just for staring at it looks like with a few clicks I can acclimate my corals by increasing it from a much lower starting point over a month etc.

Totally impressed! I really wish the software ran on a Mac tho. It pained me to pull out my wife's ancient netbook.

You're right, I think I can see the Orange-spot in there somewhere :mrgreen:

Have fun with your lights :wink:

Having so much fun LOL. Watching these things ramp up and down is pretty freaking cool. I'm sure the tank's inhabitants will behave differently when they sense things getting dimmer. Moonlights look rad too... royal blues are puuuurdy.

Here's my super fancy fish room! It fits almost entirely where my old salt mixing bucket used to go lol. How embarrassing.

A standard 90 is going on the bottom shelf to hold my ro/di. Small tank is my weekly 10g water change. Ro/di will go behind the 10g tank exactly where it used to be.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/sump1.jpg

Really like the rock work and the sump room looks great. Keep the pictures coming on the sump room.

My plumbing is nearly done! All that's left to do now is wait for the paint to cure on my return manifold and glue it to the flex pipe behind the tank.

Behind the tank.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing5.jpg

Here's the manifold. It's got 3/4" threaded outlets which will each connect to a pair of locline flares to direct flow towards the overflow etc. The trim on my tank is nice and tall and will hide it really well.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing1.jpg

Here's a shot of the two lines for my herbie and the return line heading into the sump.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing2.jpg

And two sump shots. There's a speedwave 2640 in the back and a vertex omega 150 and vertex rx-u 1.5L. I'm hoping I can tune the thing to run both carbon and gfo otherwise I'll add one more. The skimmer is built as well as my old sm250 I'm super impressed. I am waiting on a part that was missing from the box however so I can't comment on it's operation yet.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing3.jpg

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing4.jpg

Have fun adjusting that gate valve :lol:

Did you use purple PVC primer on the return manifold first?

I've run herbies before how will this be more difficult?

No the primer I had is clear. I don't keep anything in my tanks that will scrape the paint off. Only the bottom 1/4 - 1/2" of the horizontal runs will actually touch the water.

Valve is downstairs tank is upstairs... certainly won't be as easy as typical setups and the large pressure on the valve means the slightest turn will make a big difference. I did it that way as well before, thinking it would be better but you can install the valve under the tank, works pretty much the same.

I was looking at your manifold wrong, thought it ran down the back of the tank and not the perimeter.

How will you know how much to adjust that gate valve?

Yeah you are right it's going to have tons of pull. I plan to FaceTime with the wife so I can see what's going on upstairs :)

murphey's law... the one time your network hiccups....:lol:

Looks like a lot of work to tear all that down in a few months. :lol:


Looks really good though. Typical Brett Style! :mrgreen:

You still need a gate valve if you have a Mitras??? Tsk tsk. Colour me slightly less impressed with that light then. :p

ouch! Brett, maybe you should have just thrown up a pic of your cats :-)

Return manifold is ON! I did not measure too carefully ahead of time I only knew I wanted the pipes to be as close to touching glass on both sides of the tank. It took me a while to maneuver the thing under the trim lips on both sides but lucked out. pics taken with moonlights on... royal blues really mess with camera sensors lol.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing6.jpg

You can see here why I really liked this trim and why I went with 3/4" instead of 1" for this part. The trim totally hides the pipes.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing7.jpg

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing8.jpg



http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing9.jpg

Looks sick!! You can barely notice its there. blends in very well with the tank trim. Have to say... awesome job as usual!

Wow love this, rock wall is phenomenal. plumbing looks amazing.

Thanks guys =)

The tank is officially running!

The speedwave needed to be on speed 3 of 6 to overcome the head losses. I've got it on speed 4 currently. Definitely not a silent pump and the sump in a cavity in the wall is amplifying it but the tank upstairs is literally dead silent and I can't hear the pump in my office on the other side of the basement so it's all win.

Adjusting the herbie was actually easy and I never even needed to look at the tank upstairs. Just watch the bubbles from the primary pipe it tells you all you need to know. What I wasn't ready for tho were the massive burps when that pipe first started hitting its siphon stride! sent water over the edge of the sump 3 times before i got it dialed close enough to stop it. i'll have to simulate a power failure and restart to see if it does that with a properly tuned gate valve :lol:

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing10.jpg

My temporary locline.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing11.jpg

My temporary filter socks aka pvc shavings colllectors.

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/93/plumbing12.jpg

I think its time to add a hyperlink to the 93 in your siggy!

Or does that doom it for a cross out as well:razz:?

I'm a one-tank kinda guy Levi. Soon lol =)

Ok that never crossed my mind. Maybe there shouldn't even be a thread.

Very nice. I would put a backup/redundant zip tie to secure the return lines just in case one zip tie goes or the trim breaks on that zip tie and sends the return line dropping into the tank. Certainly not a catastrophic failure but could send frags or corals flying if it ever happened. I'm not sure how strong that particular trim is but previous trim that I've had on tanks degraded severely overtime and became quite weak. Just something to think about (not hating btw!).

This trim is very thick actually. I probably should drill two more mounting holes but i'll opt for an i-told-you-so if that ever happens lol. that's not an excuse to push on'em when you come over lol.

What are you using to feed the Vertex Reactor? Just tee'd off from the return?

Everything looks good.

Yeah just a tee off the return.

I had a very similar return manifold on my old cube and it was just secured in place by the plumbing (held in place by a union). There was maybe 1/2" of play at the end of the run but you really had to wiggle it for it to be noticeable.

Thing is, there are times when you may *want* a little wiggle room up there (reaching in with a razor blade to get at a spot of HA or coraline or something, for example). So honestly I'd just sort of leave it as-is.

Everything looking good. That sump is tight, haha!

(And not hating... Not sure why you'd think I was hating, geez.)

i think the graphic of the kid doing a wheelie gives away the joking tone of my message no? :biggrin:

Is it wrong that I want to take the toy car out for a spin myself? I'm, um, asking for a friend. Not me. A friend.

get in line!!

.. also, for a friend btw.

we should all go test drive some power wheels at walmart together. really stir poop up!

teehee..

It is about your size, isn't it? I mean your friend...