Julian's Fourth

jjbunn · Feb 28, 2016

Building my fourth tank in about 20 years ... I lost the last one in powercuts during windstorms in 2010, which was a downer, and put me off since then. Here's a photo of it before 6 days of no power:

I wont show the after photo - too depressing! (This was a 55 gallon.)

The fourth tank I'm just starting is a MarineLand "widescreen" glass unit measuring 36" x 18" x 22", which calculates out to north of 60 gallons, but is referred to as being 53 gallons. My intention is to have mainly corals and very few fish.

Here is the tank with its stand before leak testing. No sump.

The lamp support is a plant holder, and is used to hang the Mars Aqua 165W LED unit - see next photo. (In my previous tank I used a 250Watt MH 20000K lamp, but it generated so much heat it made me nervous, so I've decided to try LEDs this time.)

Here's the tank in situ - cloudy water due to the recent addition of CaribSea Arag-Alive sand.

Summary:
Tank: MarineLand "widescreen" 53 gallon
Salt: Instant Ocean
Substrate: 40 lbs of CaribSea Arag-Alive reef sand
Live Rock: 50 lbs (ordered from Richard at Tampa Bay Saltwater - arriving next week

)
Dead Rock: pieces from my old tank, now bleached in the SoCal sun for 5 years!

Powerheads: two Hydor 450gph
Skimmer: CPR BakPak IIr
Heater: ViaAqua 300 Watt
Lighting: Mars Aqua 165W LED array

Status:
2/19: Tank installed, filled 3/4 with untreated tap water, heater installed, one powerhead
2/21: Salt water mixed in tank with water at T=80F to SG 1.028 (I overshot with the mix)
2/22: LED array installed
2/24: Sand added directly from bag submerged in tank (no washing - as per instructions on bag).
2/25: Second powerhead installed
2/27: Skimmer installed, tank topped up with tap to 7/8 full, SG remains 1.021

aaron23 · Feb 28, 2016

Cool start! Glad to have you back. My tank crashed back then too I just got the bug again early this year

jjbunn · Feb 28, 2016

aaron23 said:
Cool start! Glad to have you back. My tank crashed back then too I just got the bug again early this year

Thanks for the encouragement! Do you have a tank thread?

jjbunn · Feb 28, 2016

2/28: Added salt to bring SG to 1.024 @ 78F. Added a pair of Green Chromis to get some skimmer action.

jjbunn · Mar 4, 2016

3/3: SG 1.024 @ 78F. Some hints of low level Ammonia. Green chromis are often rubbing against one another, and difficult to photograph.

I've started developing an app to measure the lux intensity underneath the Mars Aqua LED lights. The Samsung S4 has a light sensor, used to auto-adjust screen brightness. It's a Capella CM3323 sensor which measures red, green, blue and white intensities. Here's a screenshot of some live measurements, taken while moving the sensor around a few inches beneath the canopy. It's interesting to see the intensities in the three colours change when the sensor is positioned right under each type of LED in the MarsAqua.

To convert the R,G,B and W lux readings to PAR is not trivial. The first step will be to tabulate the readings against those from a lux or (better) PAR meter. Work in progress ...

jjbunn · Mar 4, 2016

3/4: 50 lbs of Live Rock from TampaBaySaltwater should be arriving at Burbank tomorrow - quite excited!

jjbunn · Mar 6, 2016

Live Rock from Richard at TampaBaySaltwater arrived at Burbank SouthWest cargo after its journey from Florida via Las Vegas ... very easy to pick up, nobody else there, so we were in and out in a few minutes. Two boxes, each nominally 25lbs of rock and 25lbs of water:

Included were a couple of "extras": a pair of decorator crabs, and some sort of soft coral. The rocks themselves were all interesting and useful shapes e.g. arches. Here's the contents of one box just opened (sorry for potato quality due to hand trembling excitement):

Initially all pieces were placed in the tank haphazardly, for sorting/arranging later, with crabs scurrying around and lots of unidentified animals falling off. Several sponges of various colours, and lots of coralline algae.

More shots when the water clears up.

Now I can hear the telltale clicking of a mantis shrimp ...

liverock · Mar 6, 2016

jjbunn said:
Live Rock from Richard at TampaBaySaltwater arrived at Burbank SouthWest cargo after its journey from Florida via Las Vegas ... very easy to pick up, nobody else there, so we were in and out in a few minutes. Two boxes, each nominally 25lbs of rock and 25lbs of water:

Included were a couple of "extras": a pair of decorator crabs, and some sort of soft coral. The rocks themselves were all interesting and useful shapes e.g. arches. Here's the contents of one box just opened (sorry for potato quality due to hand trembling excitement):

Initially all pieces were placed in the tank haphazardly, for sorting/arranging later, with crabs scurrying around and lots of unidentified animals falling off. Several sponges of various colours, and lots of coralline algae.

More shots when the water clears up.

Now I can hear the telltale clicking of a mantis shrimp ...

most likely a pistol...if you have not seen it yet.....they are like 1/4 inch long and live symbiotically with sponges...but make the same POP!

jjbunn · Mar 6, 2016

liverock said:
most likely a pistol...if you have not seen it yet.....they are like 1/4 inch long and live symbiotically with sponges...but make the same POP!

Ah, OK - that's quite reassuring, I suppose: means my fingers are safer?

liverock · Mar 6, 2016

LOL....

jjbunn · Mar 6, 2016

A very blue movie:

jjbunn · Mar 7, 2016

jjbunn · Mar 8, 2016

3/8: I think some of the sponges are receding, as expected. The red sponge looks very good still. The decorator crab has gone nuts placing tufts of the orange sponge all over his legs and body. There has been no Ammonia increase yet due to the addition of the live rock - perhaps there wont be. One small crab didn't make it past the first couple of days, dead on the sand bed. There may be others in the cracks and holes everywhere, that I can't see.

Trying to find best positions and light intensity for the Zoanthids (which are apparently called "dragon eye"). There are four clumps of them: a big clump on the sandbed right of centre, another behind the centre rock, and then the others up on the rocks, one in full light, the other in some shade. Mars Aqua lamp is running at 40% Blue and 40% White, and is about 8" from the water surface. Depth to the sandbed is about 20" from the water surface, so 28" from the light to the sandbed.

jjbunn · Mar 11, 2016

3/10: Think I had the lights on a bit too long and too high, as there was a bloom of cyanobacteria yesterday. I upped the flow in the tank by adding a third pump for a while, which blew everything around impressively, and reduced the intensity of the MarsAqua back to 40%/40% (it was at 75%/75% for a day) and the period to about 6 hours. The cyano thus seems to have pretty much abated today.

Bought a TDS meter on Amazon, and was testing the tap water: 280ppm. The filter on the fridge reduces this to 220ppm, which isn't impressive. Tomorrow I will buy a gallon of drinking water from Vons to test. Although I've never used anything but Pasadena tap water in my tanks, I do wonder whether everything would be better if I used purer water with less dissolved solids for topping up the tank.

jjbunn · Mar 12, 2016

3/11: Bought a large container of filtered drinking water from Vons. Tested at 109ppm, so I topped the tank up with it.

Trying to arrange the intake of my skimmer so that it sucks the top layer of the tank water into the venturi, as there is a film on the water surface I want to remove.

The sponges on the rocks look like they are surviving after all. There are also a lot of conical snails that have appeared. There are many porcelain crabs under the rocks and in holes, all frantically filtering the water. The Zoanthids are middling: one small clump looks good, with the polyps all open, whereas the other small clump and the large clump have only half their polyps partly open. They are all sitting on the sand bed for now.