Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[asylumdown]

I couldn't wait any longer! It took the entire freaking weekend, and most of today, but...

Voila!



If it didn't take 2 days, a seriously bruised palm, frayed fingers dealing with all that awful aircraft cable, and nearly falling off a ladder and in to my aquarium about 7 dozen times, I would be more ashamed of my awful, awful DIY hanging job. The only saving grace was that it had no requirement to be pretty, just functional. I struggled with how to support all 8 lights, and was going to make a frame out of PVC, when my uber handy friend suggested using wire shelving cut to length that I would hang the lights off of with a caribeaner (sp?)

I had two sections made, each to hold 4 lights. They're suspended with the wires that came with the premium hanging kit, and eventually I will add a pulley system so that I can raise and lower each panel of lights independently. But for now I'm thoroughly over working in there.







One major issue is that these lights trip the GFCI circuit on the outlets under my cabinet really easily. If a light is unplugged, then plugged back in, it shuts the whole thing down. I'm trouble shooting with the electricians on a work-around, but so long as I don't have to cut power to any of the units I'm good. Unfortunately, to program the lights you do need to unplug one, so long term there needs to be a better solution, but I've spent about an hour and a half playing with the programming and I think I've got it close to what I want for the next little but once corals are in we'll see what happens. I've got it at 100% power for 6 hours every day, which will probably be too much at first for most corals.

My ammonia readings come back undetectable now, but nitrite is still off the freaking chart. The colour hasn't lightened even a bit in days, so I don't know how much longer I'll need to wait to put something in this tank.