Very nice.. I love the LED set up. How many are on that?

There are 15 Warm White, 20 Cool White, and 25 Blue for a total of 60 20W LED's or 1200W of LED's (basicly the same as 3 400w MH without the heat.)

On a side note my tank electrocuted me for the first time... I got home and was putting some stuff in my tank... my arm was grounded on the aluminum as my hand touched the water... made me jump... I almost fell off the ladder lol. Didn't take me long to find it... I only had two things not plugged into the GFI socket... a couple of heaters (that I installed today) ... and one was cracked... it's in the garbage now :D

Glad you are still alive after the jolt.

That is a lot of watts of lighting. Would love to see the par readings on that and see how well it reaches the bottom of your tank.
Do you have optics on the leds and if so what degree?

Ya just went through the arm... across the chest would have possibly killed...
I need to rent a par meter.
No optics, I believe they are 140 degrees... hence the aluminum foil all around... I wouldn't want optics because I have 3 different colors of LED's and I wanted the light to be spread uniformly throughout the tank.

I may not have any real updates for a week or more as I am working for 12 days strait starting tomorrow... But I'll try to continue to answer questions and comments.

Basically my tank tried to kill me a week or so ago... got electrocuted... luckily it was only my arm and didn't ark across my chest, if it had I would have probably gone to the ER or morgue. Then just this last Saturday my dad comes home (he's been gone for over a month) He's in the basement cleaning up and he plugs back in one of his things... but to do that he unplugs an extension cord. The cord was powering my water pump for the cooling of my LED's... So I get home from work and I reach up to test the temperature of my pipes (to make sure that it is dissipating well and not starting to warm up.) and of course my pump is off, so I burn my hand pretty bad... I unplug my LED's. 50% are burnt out, after they cooled some came back on... but I'm sure my whole set-up of 60 LED's has greatly shortened it's life. So I take the lights down replace the 21 that are not working and put it back up... while I am plugging my LED's back into the power bar I slip and get a valve in the eye. Now it looks like I lost a fight, right around my eye is a little cut up and all black and blue. Also I didn't let my rocks cure long enough in the ocean... (3 weeks wasn't enough) so my PH is a little high... I'll have to continue to work it down till I have stabilized it. I was in such a rush in setting up I forgot to check the rock to see if it was done leaching prior to putting it in my tank. It looks like maybe no fish till... Christmas? I hope I don't have to wait that long but I need to step back and learn some things from this... like; I need a controller for my LED's with a thermometer to tell them to shut off past a certain temp, people were not kidding when they said "The only thing that happens quickly in a reef tank is failure." I will continue to answer questions and such but I'm guessing between 2-6 weeks for my rock to finish leaching... so I won't be able to do anything until then... so I just have to wait it out.:yield:

sorry to hear about your lights, and good luck with the rock..cant wait for it to all start coming together for ya..looks great though

WOW!! Good on you for taking on this tank setup! Next to a complete DIY eh! I was just searching DIY LED and your build came up.

I just read all the posts or more less scanned as fast as my little mind could think. When I saw the post about the tank bottom broke, I almost had something touching cloth thinking it was the display tank! But at least it was your sump... crappy for sure but it could have been your tank.

Then you shocked yourself!! WOW lucky lucky lucky lucky eh!

Then dad unplugs the cooling pump!! WOW

THEN you slip and fall and hit your eye on a valve sorry but WTF!!

Bud usally things happen in 3’s LOL ;)

It kinda like a higher power saying "YO CHILL BUD HAVE A MARLEY let this process take some time :) " LOL I’m sooo impatient I have to ask the wife to go feed the “fish” not the fishes. I want lots all at once but I have killed too many to repeat this cycle over and over; especially after a lighting fire…

This is really awesome! If I ever travel your way it would sure be neat to stop by and check your tank out! Keep going with this setup! Pretty neat!

How is the tank going? Anymore near electrocutions or charred flesh?

Lego, You are welcome to stop by if your in the neighborhood... but if I were you I would wait till after the new year cause I still don't have fish...

Inedaan, nothing new... just waiting. I'll be doing a 200% water change on Thursday and then see where I am at.

Well It's been a while... I had some troubles with PH so I was having to flush the system as often as I had time... I forgot the water was on at one point and it flooded my house... so I left the tank empty for a while. I have been waiting for an apex controller to come on sale, not having any luck there. I have also been really busy with family and work... also my car ended up getting totaled as well. Anyways... I'm working on the tank again. I filled it with fresh water two weeks ago PH got up to 8.2 I emptied it last week and re-filled it. Today I emptied it and it was down to 8.0. I will be doing it again and again every week until I get a stable PH. I will try to post here next week as well and answer any questions.

Yours was an interesting thread I'm glad you're back at it.

The ph issues are caused by your DIY rock? How long did you have them in the lake curing?

They were only in the ocean for 4 weeks... I know that the rocks are the problem but they are getting better so it's just a waiting game ATM.

wishing you the best for 2011!
sending you good vibes for the tank :)

i snooped on your reef central thread and noticed you are doing fresh water fill only with your rock is this correct? you have no salinity with your rock in the tank? if im wrong then discard this and ignore me.

just my thoughts on your difficulties are these no matter what type of tank you start there is a time frame where ph and amonia is all out of wack. but since your diy rock was in the ocean to start it up you have added fresh water only to the tank which may have destroyed all that you tried to accomplish with the rock being in the ocean. it would be like putting live rock ina fresh water dip but longer. removing all the water and refilling is really only going to cost you a huge water bill. the tankneeds to cycle it needs to get all screwed up to level out.and if ph is too high there are ways to lower it with additive.

again im not an expert nor claim to know all the answers.but maybe you shoudl start fresh. re insert your rocks in the ocean if you chose or leave theminand add some live rock toseed your rock. in the mean time fill the tank with salt water at the prefered salinity. let it cycle (you can add again additive to help boost the cycle with bacteria prodivo comes to mind). do weekly water changes and test for the spike in ammonia.. dont worry about ph just yet until the tank cycles. when you see your levels level out check for ph.

i just hate to see you struggle and by no means am i the best at this im sure ppl will dissagree with me or i missed something. and maybe im just selfish and want to see this baby running and pictures of youradditions:)

good luck
jeff

You are right that I am putting fresh water in the tank and not salt water.
I think you misunderstood the reason for putting my rock in the ocean. I didn't put it in the ocean to build bacteria colonies I put it there because cement leaches out lime and other chemicals but the lime leaches the longest... affecting the PH, so I am flushing the system in order to get out most of the lime that is going to leach. When I realized that my rock had not finished leaching I would have put it back into the ocean but a couple of my rocks were too big to take out so I decided to just flush my tank... As for the water bill... I live in a rain forest, we pay only a yearly fee for water service, we have plenty of water here.

ok well that makes more sense thank you for explaining i just feel bad for you struggling with this

will shut up now and be patient ;)

This week the water is down to 8.0 I did a full change and I'll wait two weeks now to see if it stabilizes.

So I got a new pump for my B-day and now I need some help figuring where to put it... I'll upload some photos of my tank and if someone would like to give me some ideas on how to set it up I'm all ears. I see two options for the source. Either I can do a closed loop (that would allow pulsing of the pump... like on 5 sec off 5 sec.)? Or do it the same as my other two and just add a third return pump (that would increase turnover of the tank through the sump)? The next question is where do I put the bulkhead? (in/out for the closed loop or just the return) I was thinking I would like it close to the bottom half of the tank considering that the other two are at the top of the water. Next question is do I put a flow accelerator on like I have already or do I put some kind of rotating/ switching nozzle on? If so what kind/brand do you think works well?

Full tank shot.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...e/IMG_0197.jpg

Left side, looking from front.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...e/IMG_0204.jpg

Right side, looking from front.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...e/IMG_0199.jpg

Left side looking from left to back.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...e/IMG_0201.jpg

Left side, looking to right side, looking across the front of the tank.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...e/IMG_0202.jpg

Right side, looking to left side, looking across the back.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...e/IMG_0200.jpg

The white and black 1/2" pipe that is inside the tank is only there for filling/emptying the tank while I sort out the pH issues, once that is done I will be removing those pipes.
Also the pump is a 950 GPH

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM looks fantastic Green hows is the LED light doing

Well done! Cant wait to see the rest! Good work on the photo shoot along the way.

sore subject... turns out my dad fried about 90% of them... that's the problem when you let your dad live in your house... doesn't always think before he does stuff. oh well.
Thanks... but any ideas on what I should do with my extra pump?

Sorry to hear about your LED's, that's rough. The injuries are not good either, but bodies heal faster than the wallet sometimes :S.

If you want a thermal shutoff for your LED's there's some decent options, I've been looking at making an Arduino controller for my future LED's and putting a few thermometers on the heatsinks to set at 130°F to shut off the LED's. can get an arduino for $15-$20 off ebay and the thermometers are about $3 a pop, pretty cheap and would let you play with the LED's a lot, and have the safety shut off coded in.

Tank looks great, can't wait to see what it looks like with fish/coral in there. The rock is amazing.

I plan on getting an apex and having it do the same thing... Only have the temp set at around 100F... but I'll change the temp if it's shutting it off.

Week one of a two week test... current PH is 7.9 if it stays at 8.0 or less till next week then I will fill with salt water, and test for three weeks... I may have one to two weeks with the tank empty, before the salt... if I decide to drill another hole or two...

Lights?
 

You could always use that extra pump to make a water feature for the front lawn! hahaha. Or hook it up to the tank for water change days and run a hose out to your driveway to get rid of the ice if we ever see cold weather this year! (Kidding)

Whats your plan for lighting then? I Have a good buddy who is a dealer for led lights and I am thinking about making my own heat sink similar to yours for a led fixture. (On a smaller scale as I am only runing a 90gal tank)

I would be interested to better understand how you wired the fixture!

Well I think I'm going to forget about the extra pump for now and save it as a spare/water change pump.
Lighting wise I'm just waiting for Chinese new year to be over so I can order my LED's from china.
I wired each LED to it's own driver (strait on/off no fade) I then have five drivers wired to one plug... each driving same color LED's

Hey, great build! Very unique concepts thrown together here, should be interested.

Regarding that extra pump and the question about circulation, I definitely think you need to add some water flow in the bottom half of your tank. The way I see it now, you have very little circulation in the bottom half of the tank, and around the rocks. You want more flow for nutrient export. Especially in all those caves you've created, the fish will probably be pooping in all those caves as if they were outhouses :P Normally with such intricate rock structures, people would build the rocks on top of PVC piping which they have drilled a million holes into, and plumb those pipes as returns from bulkheads at the bottom of the tank, so that there's water flow from within the rockwork.

That's my 2 cents on the subject.

Very exciting! ;)

So after 1.5 weeks my pH was still at 7.9 so I decided to drain it fill it with salt water and start a cycle going... as of February 6th at 8:30pm (PST) I added 60 ml of 14% ammonia solution to my tank putting my ammonia off the scale... I believe it is 6.5-7 PPM. At 9:30pm I added a 375ml/12.7 fl oz of Hagen/Nutrafin "Cycle" (bacteria), I will test in the morning and as often as I have time/deem appropriate and post results on or before Wednesday (probably on Tuesday night). After my cycle has completed (1-4 weeks) I will test my pH again... if the pH is off the chart again then I will dump the water and let it do a few more FW washes before I try the SW again.

So I'll do a full run down of the cycle when it's closer to completion, so all of the info is in one post. For now I'll just say my Ammonia is around 4-5, Nitrite is around 3, and my Nitrate is around 20-30. I'll post a complete run down of my cycle once it is, well... complete.

I added a few things because my cycle stalled and within 4.5 hours my ammonia was halved.
Ammonia 2.5
Nitrite 5+ (off the scale)
Nitrate 40-50

P.S. Thanks Chaloupa I love the store... but thanks to you I have to set-up a third tank... Do those guys get along well? What was the name of them again? I might setup my 100g tank and put a couple of them in there... if they are safe together... BTW your Ten Foot Tank looks awesome.

Ammonia 0.75
Nitrites 5+ (off the scale still)
Nitrates 20

Ammonia 0.23
Nitrite 10-20 I believe very close to 16 (did 100ml tank water with 900ml tap water read around 1.6)
Nitrate 20

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 10 (± 5 as it is hard to read some of these tests... and I'm doing a 10/90 dilution ratio)
Nitrate 20

Its hard watching these numbers fall so slow, I wanna see what you have up your sleeve once the water stabilizes out. Everything happens slow and in moderation i guess..

:neutral:

Ya... I'll add a small CUC with a couple small cheep fish.... (still paranoid about the rock.)

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 4
Nitrate 0-5 (just a trace if any)

For a complete run down of my cycle "CLICK HERE"

Any update?

I ordered my controller and am waiting for it to arrive... not sure if they have shipped it yet or not... they said a couple items were on back order.