AlanM June 12, 2014 June 12, 2014 Thought I'd start a tank thread for the one at the NIST Child Care center. There's another WAMAS dad with a son at the child care center and one other WAMAS member working on site. The tank was donated via RobG (zygote2k) through the WAMAS school tanks program. Specs are 92 gallon 48" wide bowfront with very nice canopy made a WAMAS member who I don't remember the name of. CS1 skimmer Mag something return pump MJ1200 powerhead, hehe four 5-way Evilc66 PAR38 LED's with 3 royal blue and 2 cool white Crees inside Stocked with 2 large clarkii clowns, 2 matted filefish, 1 one-spot foxface, 1 pencil urchin, 1 skunk cleaner various nassarius and astrea snails lots of mushrooms and ricordia and 1 big aiptasia or majano right in the middle that the two filefish are ignoring. I took a video today with the new lights of all the equipment but youtube has been parked on it for the past half hour "processing" it. Hmm.
YHSublime June 12, 2014 June 12, 2014 Very cool, Alan! Awesome of Rob to do so as well! YouTube parks for at least 24 hours for me, every time I make even the slightest change. Look forward to seeing pics and a video!
Minaimee June 13, 2014 June 13, 2014 Very nice! Need to get a lock like that for my cabinets. I got one year old twins that love to play with the tank at my house. Will be tagging along. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
ArtFully Acrylic (Adam B) June 13, 2014 June 13, 2014 Hey Kid, come here....you wanna know where the key for the mystery bottom door is? mwahahahahahaha Quick work Alan! Lookin' good =)
YHSublime June 17, 2014 June 17, 2014 Is that dj strip screwed I to anything? It worries me being half over the sump, and being over the sump in general... Can I donate a cork board to put all the tanks inhabitants pictures and information in the side of the tank vs taped onto the hood/stand?
AlanM June 17, 2014 Author June 17, 2014 That's a nice idea. Where would you put the cork board? Maybe we could mount it on the wall next to the tank and could have a rotating list of facts about the guys in the tank that the parents and teachers could tell to the kids. It might be nice to have it down at kid level, but the problem with cork boards at kid level is that it has thumb-tacks holding things on, which are not kid-safe. Tape works better. The DJ strip isn't screwed to anything yet. I plan to put some blocks of wood screwed in to the top of the stand under the tank and attach the mounting flanges to that. Just haven't done it yet. I also plan to get rid of the 30g sump in favor of a 20g sump with room on one end for a 5 or 10g tank to hold top-off water. So I have some under-stand work to do anyway and will mount up stuff when I get the chance. Maybe I can even stick a skinny skimmate locker in there on the end. Also, one of the 4 PAR38's just lost a driver over this weekend and was blinking on and off. So I'm down to 3 of them now. It wasn't really enough light with 4 of them to begin with since they had tight optics and only 5 emitters in each, so I don't like how it looks. Very dim. I think I'm just going to DIY something out of parts from Steves and LEDGroupBuy. Should be like $225 since I already have a storm-X controller and some boards to mount Meanwell LDD's.
AlanM June 18, 2014 Author June 18, 2014 Ok. Let me pass that by the director to see what she says. I bet she has a cork board or two she could use, actually. I ordered the parts for a diy led build last night. Triple-led stars, LDD drivers, and power supply from ledgroupbuy and tubular heatsink and fan from stevesleds. Since i have a storm x that i have never hooked up i will have 4 channels of dimming, a nice spread of light, and full spectrum Cree emitters for about 250 dollars that wont trip the wall gfci. I looked around at commercial options, but didnt find anything around that price. Maybe I will even see of the shops guys can bend the tubular aluminum heatsink a bit to fit the bowfront, heh.
YHSublime June 18, 2014 June 18, 2014 Ok. Let me pass that by the director to see what she says. I bet she has a cork board or two she could use, actually. Sure thing, let me know if ya' need anything, can bring to the meeting!
AlanM July 2, 2014 Author July 2, 2014 Got new lights built and installed them today. They look nice. I may need to put some lenses on them to catch a little more on such a deep tank. I will post pics tomorrow. In other news, the two clarkii clowns have laid a big batch of eggs. This batch won't make it, but anyone want to try raising some clarkii clowns? I would put a tile in there somehow to try to get them to lay on something removable.
AlanM August 5, 2014 Author August 5, 2014 Quick update. Tank is doing well. Added two scissortail dartfish, three dot-dash flasher wrasses, one royal gramma. Video from today is below.
Coral Hind August 5, 2014 August 5, 2014 Nice job Alan! I was at NIST today and turned in a proposal for a five year, $50M contract. So I might be working around the site soon.
AlanM August 5, 2014 Author August 5, 2014 Sweet! you should have come to see the tank! It would be nice to have someone else on campus who can dump in topoff water, heh.
AlanM October 21, 2014 Author October 21, 2014 Another video update: Got a small blue hippo tang in there from the last ERC live sale. "Baby dory" is the unofficial name. Amazing how big the clarkii clowns are compared to the tang. Sorry about the ambient light from the hallway reflecting. It makes it hard to see much. The tank is going well. I change about 15 gallons per week. I need to buy some more biopellets for the reactor that feeds the skimmer, but other than that it is humming along. I can't seem to keep gsp, zoas, or xenia in it. I think the filefish eats them, but it ignores the one huge aiptasia in the middle of the rockwork.
ctenophore October 22, 2014 October 22, 2014 Those wrasses look great! I will get some big colonies of neon sinularia for you. That will add some movement and color.
AlanM October 22, 2014 Author October 22, 2014 Sounds great! My tank at home is a xenia/zoa producing monster, so it's frustrating that it disappears in that tank. The CCC tank grows good mushrooms, though. The dot-dash wrasses are doing great, yeah. I keep being tempted to put some PJ cardinals in there too since they're so distinctive looking, but the tank feels kind of full to me. They're eating Apex pellets in that video, but I feed LRS or Jehmco frozen copepods or mysis each morning.
DuffyGeos October 22, 2014 October 22, 2014 Alan you forgot the plug on their website: Stop by the middle of the "big kids" hallway and check out the new salt water aquarium, with two "Nemos!". The aquarium is on long term loan to the CCC from the Washington, DC Area Marine Aquarists Society. It's relocation to the CCC and subsequent upkeep are courtesy of Alan Munter, so please give him a big thanks when you see him. He plans to build the tank up with an colorful arrangement of fish and other marine life, so keep checking in on it as new arrivals are expected regularly. ......Mr Board of Director's congrats
DuffyGeos October 22, 2014 October 22, 2014 Haha. Right. We have a WAMAS sign up on the top too. I think it is a great plug for WAMAS, you are doing an awesome job! I read the article and am sincerely congratulating you on the nomination....not messing around. I think the tank is a great way to get kids interested in the marine environment.
AlanM December 2, 2014 Author December 2, 2014 I updated the inhabitants list and thought I'd post it up here. This is posted on the hood of the tank, and attached here as PDF. CCC aquarium.pdf
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