jesse
Guest
As requested in response to my intro in the welcome section, I thought I'd start a thread on my little bedroom nano.
History
Eons ago, circa 2000-2005, I had a 150 gallon bent glass island tank, bull-nosed at one end. It sat in a glorious natural cherry cabinet and had a few hundred pounds of aquacultured live rock in it, a massive DSB, an old mandarin goby, a hawkfish, and a snazzy looking lemon peel angel, as well as mushrooms (I love love love mushrooms), xenia, open brain coral, sea mats (love love these too), tube worms, christmas tree worms, hermits, snails, and what-have you. It had 450w of Ushio mh lighting, lots of huge pumps, a Ramora skimmer, and all the nifty stuff I could figure out how to afford. I think total water movement was something on the order of 6000 gph (head and drag not reflected in this number). I did a huge 80 gallon home-brew fuge in the stand on that one, lit with CFs, outfitted with RO auto-topups for water and various compounds (I have lots of spare float switches if anyone needs one), and cobbled together a rather novel computer control and testing system. Clearly, I am as much into the toys that keep these biosystems healthy as I am into the inverts inside.
While all the technology made the tank nearly effortless to maintain - like seriously effortless - when I went off to grad school it wasn't nearly so appreciated by my parents, who inherited it, as it cost a fortune in power alone to maintain. So we broke it down and gifted it away and I ruled out keeping anything near so complex and expensive again.
Fast forward to two weeks ago and, resolve weakened from the stunning beauty of snorkeling along the Belizian Barrier Reef for a few weeks, I purchased a 12 gallon DX nano cube "on sale with free stand!"
This then, will be the story of this micro reef. One hopefully much cheaper, simpler, and even easier to run than the last one.
Yeah right.
Here's a view from this AM. Oceanic saltwater, a Koralia nano in the lower left, standard return in the upper right. I have to figure out how to keep the Deflector (currently removed from the return) from moistening the LED lights.
And here's the LED view. I used a 225x 5mm panel I had laying around - it's not bright enough for coral growth but is more than enough for getting the tank cycled. It's about as bright at the 2x 24w cf setup the tank came with. On the back side of the panel I mounted a 120mm box fan on a 5v Nikon power supply. It lopes around slow and silent-ish, but provides enough positive pressure that there is no condensation on the panel and everything stays cool. The panel is 12" square, and thus it spills into the area I want to fuge-ify. The 36w panel I am working on is 10" and should help me segregate the lighting better.
History
Eons ago, circa 2000-2005, I had a 150 gallon bent glass island tank, bull-nosed at one end. It sat in a glorious natural cherry cabinet and had a few hundred pounds of aquacultured live rock in it, a massive DSB, an old mandarin goby, a hawkfish, and a snazzy looking lemon peel angel, as well as mushrooms (I love love love mushrooms), xenia, open brain coral, sea mats (love love these too), tube worms, christmas tree worms, hermits, snails, and what-have you. It had 450w of Ushio mh lighting, lots of huge pumps, a Ramora skimmer, and all the nifty stuff I could figure out how to afford. I think total water movement was something on the order of 6000 gph (head and drag not reflected in this number). I did a huge 80 gallon home-brew fuge in the stand on that one, lit with CFs, outfitted with RO auto-topups for water and various compounds (I have lots of spare float switches if anyone needs one), and cobbled together a rather novel computer control and testing system. Clearly, I am as much into the toys that keep these biosystems healthy as I am into the inverts inside.
While all the technology made the tank nearly effortless to maintain - like seriously effortless - when I went off to grad school it wasn't nearly so appreciated by my parents, who inherited it, as it cost a fortune in power alone to maintain. So we broke it down and gifted it away and I ruled out keeping anything near so complex and expensive again.
Fast forward to two weeks ago and, resolve weakened from the stunning beauty of snorkeling along the Belizian Barrier Reef for a few weeks, I purchased a 12 gallon DX nano cube "on sale with free stand!"
This then, will be the story of this micro reef. One hopefully much cheaper, simpler, and even easier to run than the last one.
Yeah right.
Here's a view from this AM. Oceanic saltwater, a Koralia nano in the lower left, standard return in the upper right. I have to figure out how to keep the Deflector (currently removed from the return) from moistening the LED lights.
And here's the LED view. I used a 225x 5mm panel I had laying around - it's not bright enough for coral growth but is more than enough for getting the tank cycled. It's about as bright at the 2x 24w cf setup the tank came with. On the back side of the panel I mounted a 120mm box fan on a 5v Nikon power supply. It lopes around slow and silent-ish, but provides enough positive pressure that there is no condensation on the panel and everything stays cool. The panel is 12" square, and thus it spills into the area I want to fuge-ify. The 36w panel I am working on is 10" and should help me segregate the lighting better.
