120 gallon journal - picture Feb 27

[kwirky]

Originally Posted by Psuedo

If you build yourself a self contained hood and install 2- 4inch fans on them this will dissipate most of the heat generated by the lights.

yeah, I'll try that for the winter coming up and if it's getting too hot in the summer, I'll have cash then to get the chiller.

Originally Posted by Ruth

If you basement is already hot and muggy what you may want to do is to figure out some kind of ventilation or you will probably be dealing with mould at some point in the future.

The basement's not already muggy and hot. I meant when the 120 gallon tank I have was being run with a completely open top, THEN it was muggy in the basement. the basement's actually quite cool and dry normally. I WAS thinking of a way to vent air from the hood straight to the furnace room on the other side of the wall and tapped into the chimney piping. It would be hot air, so it should rise, right? Anyone think this would be a problem?

Originally Posted by Psuedo

You might want to get another breaker installed just for your aquarium if power overload is a problem in the basement

An electrician was by a few months ago to fix some of the "do it yourself" wiring the previous owners did, and installed another breaker. We stopped using the base heaters before then, so I don't know . Maybe I should get out a couple blow dryers, and turn on two irons to test the maximum capacity?

[danny zubot]

I just need to know if the 400 watts would be too hot.

I run a single 400 watt on my 65 gallon tank and it heats up pretty good in the summer, due to ambient room temp. If your basement is cool though, I'd go for it. 2 400 watters should do fine, with fans of course.

I haven't read the whole thread so sorry if this was brought up already. Your nano tank would make a really nice refugium or frag tank, why don't you plumb it in?

[Ruth]

The other thing to consider is that you said you basement was muggy until you covered your tank. The thing with putting the 400W bulbs over your tank is that the covered top is going to contribute further to heat in the tank. I know that I run both my large systems with open tops and as I said still have heat issues in my 190g even with the top open and fans blowing accross both the sump and the tank. I can't even imagine how hot this tank would get if I put the cover on.

[AJ_77]

you'll need some venting in that room, even though it is in the basement - dual 400's can be pretty hot yes, but people have gotten around that problem. I think Brad runs 400 Radiums on m59's, and over a 75 gallon.

you could also suspend the canopy for a bit of help with airflow:



that's 2 - 400W over a 110, with a stand fan on "low" blowing across the tank top. it stayed pretty cool, in the basement.

[danny zubot]

Hey I remember that tank.

[Midknight]

Now it is not saying that you can't run both types of tanks.
Each has their own merits as well as challenges.
I have a 10g nano in the bathroom and a 33 that I am upgrading to a 75 later this year.

[Joe Reefer]

Originally Posted by Midknight

I have a 10g nano in the bathroom

You must have a small bathtub. My tub is at least 30 gallons.

[kwirky]

I finally got around to setting up the moonlight. It's a cold cathode light, and I decided to run it on the side of the tank, since it gives a different look than the usual middle of the tank.

I posted how I made it in the DIY section http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=27340

[kwirky]

No experience like experience. It's just over a month, now, and things are starting to come together

So the hair algae's all gone. I'm not embarrased any more to post a picture of the tank other than when the lights are out.


I'm starting to feel I don't have enough rock... what do you think?

I think I pretty much sorted out my alkalinity problem for the moment. I'm just dosing more often, and I'm trying to work myself into the habit of regularity.

Oh and I got a refractometer. It's a nice tool, and now I'm aware I was running my system at a salinity of 1.028, instead of the 1.025 I thought it was running at.

coraline algae's starting to show up, and the macro algae on the rocks is doing well. Nitrates have stabilized, and are sitting at 0.0 or 0.2ppm each time I test for them.

And I have two cinamon clowns in quarantine ATM. They look healthy, and they're eating well. They're little pigs!

And I added a branching frogspawn. And an elegance coral, which I hope turns out for the best. I purchased it off a fair amount of book research, but the books are out of date to inform one that recently elegance coral's not faring well in the aquarium... It's feeding, though, which I take as a good sign.

the xenia's continuing to grow like a weed. The zoos are forming runners. And my early toadstool frag fell into the rock work. I managed to find the perfect spot for it, it was reacting well, but I didn't have any epoxy or superglue left. I can't find it for the LOVE of me! Tried a rescue mission tonight and carefully disassembled that end of the rockwork, but it's as if it vanished...

As money comes in, I'd like to add more liverock (i'll be curing it properly this time), get an auto top-off together (probably run it on an electronic timer rather than a float switch), and DIY a kalk mixer or a calcium reactor.

Plus on the backburner are plans for a small, 18x18x18 nano tank for up in my bedroom. That's for after christmas probably.

Oh and I tapped into the RO portion of my RO/DI, so now I'm able to make my jasmine tea with RO water. yum

[kwirky]

ok so I bought more stuff! woot!

I added two seio 1100's, totaling my water movement to aproximately 4000gph. that's 33 x of tank turnover haha. Everything seemed to perk up almost instantly when I added the extra 2200gph. I've got the powerheads arranged to prevent the deadspots I had before while not giving my softies/lps a thrashing. The clowns are definately enjoying the extra water movement

I also added another 10 lbs of liverock. Albert was nice enough to sell me some from a display tank, too, since there was slim pickings of rock left today. Total liverock is about 100lbs. Need more still. I stacked the rock I bought in the back lefthand corner, allowing open spaces for water movement.

And I did my own DIY auto-top off system. I bought a cheap 5.5 gallon water tank from ukranian tire, and hooked it up to a low output AC airpump run on a digital timer. It's set to pump water out for 5 minutes when the 10k's turn out at 10pm (ph starts dropping then), and another 5 minutes at about 3am. Total output then is 1.8 gallons per day. I was paying attention to my daily evaporation for a while, and normally have about 2.0-2.1 gallons of evaporation per day. It's a pretty good system, I think. Eventually I'll convert it to a 5 gallon glass jug to deal with the jug expanding/contracting when the air pump turns on and off. And I'd like to get a digital timer with more daily on-off's if I come across one for a good price. Spread out the dosing.

Upgraded some more test kits to salifert and aquatest kits. My aquarium pharmeceuticals kit was reading 330ppm calcium, but my new salifert kit reads 390ppm. Good thing I got the new one, I was about to make corrective action today. Also bought a good pH kit to see if my milwaukee monitor is still reading accurately, and it is. 8.3pH while the lights are full blast.

So here are some pictures. Don't mind the cloudy water, I just finished basting the rocks before the photos.


Campwasser dosing bottle. Hehe, get it? lol I'm lame


Under my tank. Don't mind the mess.


as of Nov 15, 2006