120 gallon journal - picture Feb 27

[danny zubot]

Hey I remember that tank.

[Midknight]

Now it is not saying that you can't run both types of tanks.
Each has their own merits as well as challenges.
I have a 10g nano in the bathroom and a 33 that I am upgrading to a 75 later this year.

[Joe Reefer]

Originally Posted by Midknight

I have a 10g nano in the bathroom

You must have a small bathtub. My tub is at least 30 gallons.

[danny zubot]

[Quagmire]

Originally Posted by Joe Reefer

You must have a small bathtub. My tub is at least 30 gallons.

[psuedo]

wow...who needs to read newspapers in the bathrooms when you can stare into one of your tanks

[kwirky]

i did it... i started my conversion.

went to gold's and bought a Sun System Tek light 8 bulb T5 system. It's so damned bright you can't even look at it! It's 430 watts or so, and Albert was swearing up and down that it would be better than 250W metal halides.

I decided to opt out of the 400 watt systems because of their trouble, and the fact I won't be stocking much for SPS. AND the power consumption. And when looking at Sanjay's charts, the 400 watters don't scale in a linear fashion compared to 250's, so you're doing 75% more power for 45% more light. And the T5 bulbs can go forever without having to be changed, I guess. And basically I'm a sucker for new technology. I'm allways the early adopter.

We'll see. It broke the bank a little, but half the cost was in bulbs, and it's all done. no heat, no canopies to build, no airflow to worry about.

Now I have to worry about how I'm going to hang it. The one end of the ceiling where I have to hang the light from, the drywall's cracking. I don't think there's a stud running along where the two sheets of drywall meet.



I'm still going to test these ballasts. They're TAR ballasts, so they won't be as noisy as outdoor ballasts, and if they work, I'm sure I'll be able to trade them with somone.

Originally Posted by Midknight

Now it is not saying that you can't run both types of tanks.
Each has their own merits as well as challenges.
I have a 10g nano in the bathroom and a 33 that I am upgrading to a 75 later this year.

I'll probably run a little 5 gallon nano in my bedroom until summer hits. They do have their advantages, if you want to have a little fish tank in every room, or if you have limited space. My girlfriend's been hinting for a tank for her bday in november, and I might get her a small 24g, and salvage the HQI system I've purchased. She has about 2 feet of space she's clearing in her bedroom, and she's been hinting REAL strong she wants one

[albert_dao]

Errr, well, you should be changing the bulbs once a year man haha. You can drag out the replacements to 14 months from what I've read and stagger the blues a bit though.

[kwirky]

I finally got around to setting up the moonlight. It's a cold cathode light, and I decided to run it on the side of the tank, since it gives a different look than the usual middle of the tank.

I posted how I made it in the DIY section http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=27340

[kwirky]

No experience like experience. It's just over a month, now, and things are starting to come together

So the hair algae's all gone. I'm not embarrased any more to post a picture of the tank other than when the lights are out.


I'm starting to feel I don't have enough rock... what do you think?

I think I pretty much sorted out my alkalinity problem for the moment. I'm just dosing more often, and I'm trying to work myself into the habit of regularity.

Oh and I got a refractometer. It's a nice tool, and now I'm aware I was running my system at a salinity of 1.028, instead of the 1.025 I thought it was running at.

coraline algae's starting to show up, and the macro algae on the rocks is doing well. Nitrates have stabilized, and are sitting at 0.0 or 0.2ppm each time I test for them.

And I have two cinamon clowns in quarantine ATM. They look healthy, and they're eating well. They're little pigs!

And I added a branching frogspawn. And an elegance coral, which I hope turns out for the best. I purchased it off a fair amount of book research, but the books are out of date to inform one that recently elegance coral's not faring well in the aquarium... It's feeding, though, which I take as a good sign.

the xenia's continuing to grow like a weed. The zoos are forming runners. And my early toadstool frag fell into the rock work. I managed to find the perfect spot for it, it was reacting well, but I didn't have any epoxy or superglue left. I can't find it for the LOVE of me! Tried a rescue mission tonight and carefully disassembled that end of the rockwork, but it's as if it vanished...

As money comes in, I'd like to add more liverock (i'll be curing it properly this time), get an auto top-off together (probably run it on an electronic timer rather than a float switch), and DIY a kalk mixer or a calcium reactor.

Plus on the backburner are plans for a small, 18x18x18 nano tank for up in my bedroom. That's for after christmas probably.

Oh and I tapped into the RO portion of my RO/DI, so now I'm able to make my jasmine tea with RO water. yum