Nick's 75 Gallon Mixed Reef Journal

[nkd5024]

Steph, I finally have your pictures. It took A WHILE, haha but I got them

I did stop dosing the vitamin C as a "test" to see if my nitrates/phosphates would jump up, but I didn't see any difference.
I did notice that the coloration of my corals, mainly the SPS darkened when I stopped the Vit. C.
I then started again for a few weeks to see if they would lighten up again, and they did so I stopped completely.

Seffie, I WAS dosing the Vitamin C with the Red Sea Reef Energy. They don't do the same thing, why would you not be able to dose them together?

My tank is doing wonderful, everything is growing well, colored up nicely.
I am currently dosing B-ionic Ca/Alk/Mg supplement around 10ml every other day, Red Sea's Reef Energy A & B 5ml every other day, and 4 drops of Oyster Feast twice a day.
I also hand feed each LPS coral, and any of the larger zoanthids that will eat around 4 or 5 times a week.
I pretty much do the same procedure you would for a sun coral for all of my corals that will eat, haha.

the only issue I am having, is that my 250watt halides are a little bright, as a lot of the corals I get from work are under Purely Blue LED's to show off their color, so even the acropora will bleach out anywhere above the sand bed.
So it takes a few weeks or months to get them where I want them in the tank.

I am uploading all the pictures at the moment, I have one of each of my corals and fish, plus a FTS so this will be a good update tonight!

Nick D.

 

[ALW]

Nice to know your tank is doing great. Cant wait for the picture nick!

 

[lljdma06]

Can't wait to see pictures! Yes, I've got a MH too. Mine's suspended about 14" from the tank, though, so it creates enough light without bleaching.

L

 

[-Nemo-]

Where are my pictures Nick!!!!! Been waiting 8 months for them!!

 

[nkd5024]

So I somehow got side tracked for a full year? I found this thread via a google search and figured now would be a great time for an update!

Since my last post my tank has completely crashed due to unknown reasons. One of my metal halide pendants quit working and it took me around month to replace my lighting as I figured it was the right time to switch over to leds.

So after I switched my tank over to two DIY 150 watt led fixtures the corals had already been quite upset since they were all sharing a single 250w mh bulb for the past month. I am not exactly sure what happened to my water quality, although I am assuming it was a slow build up of waste from a few corals dying at a time due to lighting issues. Then to top off the perfect tank crash I had to move the tank 40 miles away a month after I switched the lighting. After the move only around 12 of my frags were left alive.

I also seem to have lost the photos I took before this all happened but I do have a couple of them left, so here is what the tank looked like before the crash.

Meteor Shower Cyphastrea:

Armor of God Paly:

Red PPE Paly:

Trumpet Coral (Caulastrea furcata):

Perlberry Acropora:

Dragon Face Pipefish:

And a FTS:

 

[nkd5024]

Also found a nice show of my duncan,

Here a few photos from the LED build.

Supplies:

Finished:

I have since removed the lens to increase the spread of the leds. There is a dimmable channel of blue and white leds on each fixture as well as a green/red/cyan channel that runs through both fixtures. I have also started building an arduino based controller with an lcd/touch screen to run a sunrise/set and cloud/storm modes and ended up making my own reef controller. I am still working on building the controller and am currently working on adding the moonlight control for lunar phases.

Here are a few pictures of the user interface of the controller.

Led value screen:

Set max brightness:

Temperature sensor screen:

pH graph:

Settings screen:

 

[Xraymark]

Wow. Blast from the past. It's nice to see an update.

Your tank looked fab. A real shame it crashed. Your self build looks the part to. Well done.

 

[Steve H.]

Nice Work!

I'm in the process of a similar led/arduino build.

Would you mind sharing more on that?
Like where you are doing research to get the code, bit maps, ect

 

[nkd5024]

Steve,

The entire project is designed by myself; code, bitmaps, hardware (other than the arduino mega and a few libraries to talk to the lcd screen). I am not sure if I am allowed to post links to other forums or not but I have a thread on reefcentral in the DIY section for the controller. I just got my first batch of PCBs from the board house and will hopefully have a working prototype in a month or two. The bitmaps were created in photoshop and converted to a raw file for use with the lcd screen.