SLP's Reef

coryg wrote:also if your looking to sell the 40s I am kinda in the market for one

I probably will sell them.

I spent the good part of the morning cleaning my sump and all the related equipment, I tell you the skimmer hasn't been this clean since the day I got it, and look at the collection cup, I haven't seen that happen in a long time. I am convinced that if you want to have your skimmer perform well, you have to keep the body clean as well as the cup. Wow I'm just amazed!!

thats good to know, I also need to clean the body of my skimmer. How is the chaeto doing?

I haven't noticed a difference in size yet, I cut back on the vodka by 5ml, so hopefully I can find a happy medium.

Wow, skimmer looks like its jammin! From what I understand, if there is gunk in the walls of the skimmer it head, the, then it prevents the bubbles from stacking. I'd venture to say you will see an overall different.

I try to clean skimmer often because it makes a big difference in the performance.

I always thought that it was a load if crap, but now im a believer.

Here's a recent video of the tank:

looks good, talk about a monster frag rack!

yeah, I need to take that out of there

nice, theres alot of room for the corals to grow!

cut 4 holes in my hood.

Those look to be the exact size of.... RADIONS!!!!

looks good! Can't wait to see how they light up you tank How are you keeping them from falling through the hole? Are you using a rail?

Why do you need 4 radions? I read that 1 unit covers a 2x2 area. I want to get 3 units for my tank.

I don't want a spot light effect, if 3 is the minimum, 4 would be good for full coverage.

Although they cover 2x2, the outer ring would be less than the center. By doing 4, the light will be more consistent throughout.

got them on and programmed. i will upload some cool pics shortly.

Here are a few pics of the final resting place for the XR30's

This is a pic of it in the morning with just the blues and a bit of the white on.

Beautiful! Can't wait to see the reaction from your coral.

you and me both. im going to post up pics of the full days schedule tonight, once the lights go out.

looks good can't wait to see the tank shots!

looks so awesome, I need to get into the LED game

I don't have pictures of anything in the tank yet. I have to wait for my wife to break out the DSLR, to snap some good pics.

The more I play with these lights the more I really like them. I was playing with the program and figured out I can do a sunrise/sunset effect. It's great they are each on a 20 minute delay, so the far right Radion turns on and then 20 minutes later the inner right turns on, then the inner left and outer left. There is so much versatility with these lights it's unbelievable. I can have e3ach light on it's own lighting schedule so that throughout the day the color shifts to what ever it is programmed to do, or I ca have it to where they all do the same thing. I can set how much of each color I want at any given point of the day. If I want all red led's for 1 minute at 12 noon the will fade to red then back to what ever I program it to be next. Great stuff... So here it is.

that looks awesome!

Looks awesome! Are your units connected to a battery backup or synched to your MP60s? I can't wait to get 3 for my tank.

HAHA! That's an awesome time lapse. I see my polyps move daily, so I wonder if you will see them following the "sun?"

no battery back up, there is a slot for it, I just have no room under/next to my tank for a another bulky item. They also have the ecosmart wireless capabilities but the only 2 things they do is send a signal to activate feed mode and night mode.
I didn't want my pumps to go into night mode so right now I disabled that as well. there is talk that they will incorporate the pumps in conjunction with the thunderstorm settings, but that's another novelty that I don't care to use. it scares the fish.

I agree on the storm setting. I can do thunderstorms with the AI's, but I would never use it. I just imagine what I would think if I saw the sun flashing like that-- I would FREAK!

Do you have any close up pics? would love to see the colors in your corals

My wife took a bunch this evening once she uploads them to the computer I will share them.

Sweet!

Last night, I moved the tank forward about 3/4 of an inch so that I could fit some mp10's on the back wall to help control some detritus in the back corners.

Paul had turned me onto the nutrient export settings and I have been using them for the last couple days and it really pulls a lot of detritus up from under the rocks, I set the 10's to the nutrient export as well, so hopefully they will keep all that fish waste and uneaten food from the corner's of the tank.

Are you going to put one in the center? looks good though!

Nutrient export settings is a great example of the benefit of controllable pumps. I bet you will see a difference overall because of the better water movement, and the exportation of settling debris.

What do you have them tuned too (percentage)?

How did you move the tank forward?

The oak cover of the stand can be unlatched and removed. Then I just lifted one end of the frame (under the tank) and inched it forward little by little. It took me about 30 minutes to do it, and my quads are paying for it they're sore today!!

Since I have been putting a lot of money into my tank I realized that I need to have a back up plan just in case of a power outage. The first thing I had to do was determine what size I needed for the tank, I made a list of all my components and researched the total wattage of each and then added them all up. I had roughly 1700 watts that needed to be generated. Reading up on generators I quickly realized that the wattage that is advertised isn't necessarily the sustainable wattage that the generator can provide consistently, the amount is usually about half. So if you purchase a 2000 watt generator you'll be lucky to power 1000 watts with it. After lots of research I finally decided on a 4000 watter:



I added oil to it and started it up, it has a pull string and it started up on the first pull. Once I tested the circuit to verify ~120V, I transferred the tank over to the generator to see how it can handle it. Right away I noticed that the my return pump and skimmer pump wasn't pumping water correctly. They were struggling to push any water, knowing that these rely solely on the 60 cycles per second to operate correctly, I suspected that the problem had to be with the Hz. Which was an easy fix, I just had to adjust the rpm of the engine. I set my meter to the power outlets and the Hz was at 62, I guess that's enough to make the pumps not work properly. I dialed back the idle screw on the carburetor until I got 60.03 Hz.

I went back and transferred the power back to generator and sure enough everything works just like it should. I ran it for an hour keeping an eye on the voltage and the Hz, everything is good to go. So now I am ready for a power outage (that will probably never come).

awesome! do you have to unplug everything and transfer it over, or will it be hard wired in?

After those adjustments what is your gas consumption rate?

dwolson2 wrote:awesome! do you have to unplug everything and transfer it over, or will it be hard wired in?

I don't think that I will hard wire this thing to the tank. I will have to manually transfer the 3 plugs over to the generator.

coryg wrote:After those adjustments what is your gas consumption rate?

No, It says that I should get 10 hours of use at 1600 watts from a full tank of gas which holds 4 gallons. Maybe one day I will try it and see how long it lasts.

Thats pretty good My honda EU3000 lasts like 4 or 5 hours with my tank, TV, Computer, and Fridge plugged in. I have no Idea what all of that combined draws but I am sure quite a bit.

On monday I started a 72 hour lights out in the tank to see if it would get rid of the last of my hair algae,

well today, I turned the lights on for 5 minutes to feed the fish and noticed that there were thousands of copepods crawling on the glass, I was amazed to see that many, I always replenished them about every 3 months but I haven't done it since my mandarin dragonet died about 6 months ago, I guess without him in the tank the copepods have really taken off again, this may be an omen to get another mandarin.

what happened to your last one?
Are you still putting copepods in your tank?

Sounds like a good reason to get another one. Or pack some of thos epods up and give them to me. I need to restock my tank some.

Crusty Old Shellback wrote:Sounds like a good reason to get another one. Or pack some of thos epods up and give them to me. I need to restock my tank some.

Sounds like a reason to get a bigger refugium to feed the tank

I dont know about you, but since I moved to nutrient export mode on my vortechs, the polyp extension has been through the roof.

dwolson2 wrote:what happened to your last one?
Are you still putting copepods in your tank?

about 6 months ago I found him dead in the filter sock.

And since he died I haven't put any new pods into the tank.

dfladermaus wrote:
I dont know about you, but since I moved to nutrient export mode on my vortechs, the polyp extension has been through the roof.

I wish that I could keep my pumps running on nutrient export but the pulsing on and off becomes annoying when you're watching tv.

I need a way to have it run nutrient export at night and reef crest during the day

I was going through some old photos of my corals and wanted to share the growth of my green montipora

March 2011


April 2011


July 2011


September 2011


December 2011


May 2012


July 2012

Green and orange digitada's

March 2011


September 2011


December 2011


May 2012


May 2012