Integral9

I had no idea there were mods for asm skimmers before reading this. Did a little research and found a few more mods that weren't mentioned yet. There is a gate valve mod that looks promising and easy to do. There is also a recirculation mod, but it looks pretty serious and requires a source of water. here's a pic of both in this forum: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthre...threadid=608439

Home depot has acrylic, but I don't know if it's "optical" but it's clear. I have a piece 1/8" hanging over my 30g. Work's great except it bows after a day or so, so I flip it over every day to keep from falling in the water. Better to get the 1/4" imo.

The tape will probably hold better than the putty once it gets hot and the LED melts into it. But it will get soft again once it heats up. The putty will hold eventually but it'll have to get old and dry out before it gets really sticky. Before that happens I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Gravity just pulled the LEDs down. And even if it doesn't you'll probably get an air gap. Air in the tape or putty will basically ruin your heatsinks ability to draw heat away, so I think you are going to need a clamp or some way to secure the LEDS. Some clear scotch tape should do fine,just cut a hole for the LED to poke through. Newer ATX PS have two 12V rails and from what I can tell, they can put out 16.0A or more per rail. That should be enough for you. The computer PS will also condition the power a bit. No battery back up, but there are caps to counteract quick browns and surges just make it laugh until the fuse pops. http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=27430

We're gonna need more beer.

Looks good. Pics remind me of my ECE days back in college. I miss my breadboard sometimes. btw. What are you using to mount the LEDs to the heatsinks? I used to be into over clocking and I've got a ton of old computer parts lying around my basement. I think I even have a 430W ATX PS you can have if you are interested. I know I have a 300W ATX PS or two lying around. I also got fans and heatsinks (Slot 1 and newer), and maybe and old 30W peltier if I can find it. Let me know if you are interested in any of it.

About the PAR readings: I'm not sure if they are even an accurate measure anymore. I did a bit of research on PAR meters and I can't find a single one that is meant for aquariums. I see that some are aquarium safe and water proof and what not, but they all seem to measure the amount of light in the spectrum best for photosynthesis in plant life, not coral. Now, here is my problem. Photosynthesis in plant life is highly specialized to the red end of the spectrum. This is why plants thrive in infrared light and die in UV light. Coral or more correctly, zooxanthellae algea, is specialized to the UV side of the spectrum. I forget where I found this, but I read that 520nm is the best wavelength to promote photosynthesis in coral. LEDs are highly specialized lights and unlike all the other lights available (except for the white LEDs) LEDs only emit light in a very small range of wavelengths. If you get 470nm LEDs (like I did) roughly 95% of the light is going to be very near the 470nm wavelength. So I think it's entirely possible that all 24 of my 470nm LEDs are emitting light undetectable by the PAR meter. Also, with my narrow beam angle on the LEDs, I was not getting a reading from all 48 LEDs. Just the ones nearby; I'm estimating about 6 max. I'm not saying that I'm unwilling to accept this experiment as a failure, but I do not think it's a failure yet. If my coral bleaches and browns, then I will say, yes the lights were too dim. But that hasn't happened. In fact, I'm seeing the opposite in the leptastria.

tank update: So the LEDs have been on for over a week now and I have the following corals in the tank. Purple spotted mushrooms. btw. Blue Leptastria Green zoos. Also, I accidentally fragged my red monti cap (got sloppy w/ my magfloat), so I tossed it's frag in there as well. While a new addition to the tank, it seems to be doing fairly well considering I can't seem to keep it on the rock. Someone keeps knocking it off. darned Mantis. I think it would do ok if I could keep it in one place long enough to encrust a little. All the corals are doing great. The leptastria is really starting to get it's color now. This is going to be one really nice piece once it comes in. Some crappy pics of the 9 gallon w/ my cell phone can be seen here: http://picasaweb.google.com/forrestd991/9GallonLEDLight Also, you can see older pics of my 55 and 30g tanks here: http://picasaweb.google.com/forrestd991

Update: My camera has apparently fallen victim to the infamous Canon CCD SNAFU of 2006. I guess I don't use it as much as most people do or the problem would have manifested itself sooner. Anyway, Canon is going to ship my camera to one of the factories, repair the camera and then ship it back to me; all for *FREE*!. That's what I call customer service. However, based on the forums I read, they were extremely reluctant to add my model to the list of affected cameras. Thankfully they did and I don't have to go drop $400 on a new DSLR. I measured the light output of the tank with the PAR meter through the loaner program here. While I don't have my notes from the lab session with me (left it at home) I can say that I was disappointed with the results. I also went ahead and measured my 30g and 55g tanks for comparison. The 55 is a 4' long tank, so I took the measurements at the midpoint between the brace and the side of the tank. Here are the results (will edit when I can get to my notes) --9 gallon (48 1W LEDs. LEDS are about 1" from the surface) top dead center: 50 bottom dead center: 25 --30 gallon (1 150W Helios 14K, 4 2' T5 HO Current. stock ballasts from Current Outer Orbit. Light hangs about 15" from the surface) top dead center: 350 bottom dead center: 150 --55 gallon (4 4' T5 HO with Sunlight Supply Ballast and Tek II reflectors. Bulbs hang about 10" from the surface) top dead center: 175 bottom dead center: 75

MONDAY!!!! What the -bleepity bleep bleep- is taking them so bleeeping long? I realize you're in DC and stuff is really jacked up there ( I know, I used to do home pool maintenance there) but 5 days?!?!! That's ridiculous. Seriously, was it that bad after Isabel?

I really like the Bemini Pink from Carib Sea. It's B.E.A.-Utiful.

When I was younger and living at home, my father had a Sabre 28 (sailboat fo ye lan lubbers ) Over time and I'm not sure if this has to do with the friction of the water against the boat's hull or not. But once the paint erodes away, the fiberglass will eventually develop "blisters". Effectively, these are areas where the water has penetrated the fiberglass. Eventually the blisters will pop and leave the boat owner with a serious problem. However to fix them, the boat is hauled out of the water, the blisters are sanded off and the fiberglass is repaired (usually by painting another layer on where the blistering occurred). Then the boat is repainted with the copper based paint and put back in the water. The paint prevents barnacles from attaching as well as protects the fiberglass from blistering. We used to have the boat hauled out every couple of years for bottom repair. Btw. We don't own the boat anymore. But you can see her at the MD Maritime Museum on the Eastern Shore. Her name is Risteau. We never did find out what it means.

If we could only have our own Mr. Fusions in our homes this whole thing could have been adverted. http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-e...ear-12.17b.html

Glad to. I'm sorry this is sucking so much. I can't understand what happened to my camera. It worked fine the last time I took it out of the bag. And it's been in the bag ever since... I think the problem might be the shutter not closing quick enough. As the viewer (which displays what the lense sees) works fine, until I take a pic. Also, I seem to be able to make short movies. Maybe I can frame capture a few shorts of the tank to get some pics... Won't be as high a resolution, but at least you'll be able to make out minutia, like color... you know, minor things...

I wouldn't direct a power head at a coral unless it was an SPS and the power head was at least a foot away. Even then, it's better to have a pulse of high flow rather than a constant. Polyps shrink away if there is too much current directed at it. You shouldn't be getting sand blowing around either. If it is, redirect the power heads. Tunzes are nice power heads as they use a propeller instead of an impeller. The propeller produces an expanding wave of flow while the impeller produces more of a bee-line of flow. Everyone's tank is different and everyone has different ideas on what to do with your power heads. Some poeple put them down low and have them blow upwards, others do the opposite. I put my power heads up high and direct them towards the front glass (probably the most common). My 55g has a Mag5 return from sump (380gph), 2 Maxi-jet 600 (160gph each) and an Aquaclear 50 (270gph). I do have the Aquaclear ratched down a bit, but the max total flow in my tank is: 970. That being said, my 30g is probably a little under flowed with only 2 maxi-jet 600s and the HOB PS / Fuge providing about 100gph. Total max flow is about 420. However, there are hydor rotators on the maxi-jets reducing the flow but they are making a nice random wave effect.

Sorry folks, but for some reason, I'm out of space to post more pics.... What? I tried to post in the tank forum as well. Same story.... grrrrr...

I took some pics w/ my phone, but they came out as total crap. Here are some of the highlights. I tried to correct the color and photoshop them up a bit, but nothing worked. The color is all wrong in the pics. It doesn't look that bad all, you'll just have to trust me. Maybe I can get a friend to let me borrow their camera for a day. Here are the lights. I took the acrylic splash gaurd and reflector panel off the canopy on the tank. Then I removed all the wiring, balasts, and end caps for the PC lighting. I left the switch on the top of the tank for the PC lights so there wouldn't be a hole, but it's not functional. The LED switch for the night LEDs is still functional but the lights are on a timer now. The balasts for the LEDs wouldn't fit up under the hood so I ran the wires out the hole the power cord for the PCs. The balasts are sitting next to the tank. I'll mount them to the back of the tank eventually. I decided to leave the acrylic splash gaurd off the canopy as the fans that Nanotuners installed will now blow down on the water and cool the tank. Not that the LEDs produce much heat, but if need be I can turn on the fans and cool the tank down.

Sounds like the ich is just entering the next phase of it's cycle. Be careful. I lost my hippo that way. Sick one week, healthy for a few days, sick again... etc. About 3 weeks went by before it bit it. Then passed on the parasites to the rest of my tank. Long story short, everybody died. Ich is always present in your tank. healthy fish just fight it off before the population gets large enough to wipe them out. The parasite lays it's eggs in the sand band, so a UV will never kill all the ich unless you run all your water through it and don't have a sand bed. And even then I would have doubts. The best way (also the most time consuming) is to do a hypo salinity. I have tried it and it does work with even a very sick fish and is low stress if done right. Put the little guy in a hospital tank w/ just a sprinkle of sand from your sand bed (like a tablespoon's worth) and a couple small bits of rubble. Also a PVC pipe will provide a place for it get comfortable. Drop the salinity slowly (like over several hours to days) down to 10. Keep it there for about 3 weeks. Then raise it back up to 24, again, slowly. You have to wait another 3 weeks to be sure the ich just didn't go dormant and reappear. After that it should be good to go back into your tank. Btw. Durring the entire 6-8 week process you'll have to watch for ammonia and nitrate spikes and do water changes fairly regularly to keep them in check. If the infection is weak, then you can use fortified foods as mentioned above in this thread to treat it. My Scopas survived it's ich episode that way and I didn't have to pull it out of my tank and I didn't have to set up another tank and go through all the hassle of making sure it didn't cycle since it was a new tank. Hypo salinity works like a charm, but it's time consuming. My experience with Kick-Ich is that it's a waste of money as it didn't do what it was supposed to. I think it just stressed out the rest of the fish in my tank and may have contributed to their downfall as they then got infected and died. UVs are nice, and they are a good preventative measure, but I don't think they'll provide a solution to a preexisting condition. It's probably cheaper to setup a hospital tank and do a hyposalinity. Best of Luck

I assuming all the water in your sump flows through your fuge and your 500gph pump returns the water to your tank. If that is the case, I'd open your ball valve up all the way. If you have a Mag5 and your sump sits in your tank stand, you're probably looking at about 380gph of flow due to head pressure. With a 75 gallon tank, you need to achieve about 1125gph of total flow. You are only getting about 380 with the Mag5, so you need to add about 750 gph of flow with your closed loop. That's might be a bit much for a single return. Might want to go with 2 returns from the closed loop and 1 return from the sump. I'd get enough pumps to have 20x flow and then ratchet it down in case you ever need to increase the flow.

You can get weld-on or the same thing in a different brand name from HobbyTownUSA. It's behind the counter with the rest of their super glues. I used it on my BIY fuge I got off ebay. FYI: They also have cyanoacryllate (gel super glue), works great for fragging.

Update: Sorry for the delay, been busy with work and stuff. First the good news. I finished building the light and installed it this weekend. It looks good. Albeit, not as bright as I thought it would be but the appearance of the tank is *awesome*; it almost looks like a MH. I put 3 corals in the tank as a test to be sure the tank was ready to accept life: a blue spotted purple mushroom colony, a blue leptastrea colony and a green zoas colony. The mushrooms and zoas are more or less excess from my other tanks and the leptastrea was a gift from a friend. Over the last couple of days, all the corals have responded well to the tank's environment. The mushrooms, while upset about their departure from a 150MH, have resumed normal appearances. The zoas came out of my 55g with T5 lighting and seem to me to be doing very well. The leptastrea, while it wasn't the healthiest duck on the pond when I got it, it has really made a turn around. It came out of a tank w/ PC lighting and was very brown in addition the polyps had receded far pretty far back into the skeleton. I am happy to say that the polyps have returned and the color seems to be coming back. It has a yellow center, with a blue ring around it, then further out there is the brown. I also caught the mantis shrimp in my 55g. Now the bad news. My awesome Canon S1 IS camera has decided to become a total POS. For some reason, it has decided that all pictures will be over exposed with horizontal lines. It's very hard to see anything in the pics it takes, much less make out minutia like color and brightness. I'll have to use my phone to take some pics to post... Wish I had thought of that last night... ugh. The mantis I caught in my 55g needed a home until I can find him a new one, so I put him in this 9g. He's made a home under the leptastrea. I have one person who has expressed interest in him, but I am waiting to hear back. If this person does not want it, I'll post a new thread to find him a good home. I put some mysis in there to keep him fed so he won't eat the coral. hopefully...

In general the total flow through your tank should be between 10 and 30 changes per hour. I try to get about 15 changes per hour in total in my tank and things are pretty good. I'd say that your closed loop's flow would depend on your sump / fuge. Personally, I would make sure you have enough flow in your sump / fuge setup first, then use the closed loop to add additional flow as needed.

Are you sure the ballast is bad? Icecaps are very nice electronic ballasts and should include auto shutoffs. It may take unplugging it for a minute to reset the breakers. Also, you could have blown a fuse which is easy to replace, but you have to open the ballast up. Maybe it was just wired incorrectly, did you check and double check the wiring? I'm only asking because I'll take that 660 off your hands if you still got it. That and I found it a bit difficult to follow the diagram on my ballasts when I built my T5 light. I also ran into your "gray wire" problem. I was like What? then I realized I had a wire that was like 6ft longer than I needed. Snippety-snip. Problem solved.

The LEDs should show up today. According to the data I got from the website, the total Lumens from aall 48 of these should be about 507 with a luminous intensity about 11500. Not bad for only .5A. I'll take pictures and post them up when I test fire the LEDs. btw. I don't expect this to be able to replace a MH, but I hope it will bridge the gap in lighting from flourescents to MHs. And possibly might be good for shallow frag tanks or additional lighting over frags. I forgot to mention about the Nano Wave 9. The first one I ordered from nanotuners was a leaker, so i contacted them and they drop shipped me a replacement for free direct from the manufacturer. So I basically have two of everything. The only difference being the reflector on the leaker is sheet metal while factor model looks like polished aluminum. I don't think it will make much of a difference to the LEDs since the reflectors are built into the LEDs. I'll be modding the sheet metal one as it has already been modded by nanotuners. paenian: I wondered if they used the 3W Luxeons or not. I tried to find out what kind of LEDs they were using to see if I could copy them. Then I saw the price of the Luxeon LEDs; Eff that. $25 for a single LED, HA! And I've ocean front property in OK. One thing I learned while reading up LEDs. Lumens and Luminous Intensity are completely different. Lumens measures total output of the light source and with 140 deg angle, I think you are loosing a lot of the lumens as they are reflected and absorbed by the surrounding material. Luminous intensity measures the intensity of the light regardless of the beam angle. I think that it's the intensity of the light that moves photosynthesis along, not so much the total amount of light. Anyone know for sure? Also, if I remember correctly, 520nm is the light wave size for peak photosynthesis in zoaxanthalea <sp> algea. I saw the thread about the PAR meter. I would definitely like to borrow it once I get the lamp ready. But I'd hate to borrow it, then have something come up and end up monopolizing it for several weeks. So I'll ask for it when I'm ready for it.

1) I'd paint the back of your tank with marine paint. (on the outside of the glass). Most people use black, but I think the marine blue is a better choice. 2) Try to buy rocks that are 'interesting'. ie. lots of holes, nookes and crannys. Rocks that are just boulders are really only good for two things; base rocks and breaking them apart to mount frags on. 3) When you're aquascaping think about where you usually look at your tank from and try *not* to block the view from there. Also, caves = places for your critters to hide / live in. The the more the better. I have one rock the is a home for: 2 spiny head blennys (in the rock), 1 yellow assesor (under the rock),a long spine mini-urchin (under and in the rock), an indian ocean blue pistol shrimp (under the rock) and not to mention all the corals growing on it. 4) Put the little rocks under the big rocks. It's counter intuitive, but it will help build extra caves. 5) Mo caves = mo betta. Fish seem to like to swim in and around the rocks, so the more paths the mo betta.

That's just it eating or pooping. It uses the same hole for both. I watched mine eat a bit of silver side once and that's exactly what it did. Totally like something out of aliens. Mine never caused any problems, but grew accustomed to my feeding shedule and stopped cleaning up around the tank eventually. Instead he would just extend his arm out and filter feed the food I put in the tank for the fish. He ate a free floating mushroom once (it had dropped off the 'seed' rock). After that I pulled him out and took him back to the fish store. He was probably 15" from tip to tip then.