Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[asylumdown]

I am happy with the TIR. To be honest I can't say I notice much of a difference in how bright it appears to me, but it seems to blend the colours better. I could really see the different colours of lights on the sand bed as they shimmered, and while that's definitely still there, it's way less severe.

Before I got the lenses, the brightest my lights got was 75% with all channels at 100% and that was only for 4 hours in the middle of the day, the rest of the day it was either ramping up or down. After the TIR lenses I actually increased the intensity slightly, I kept the 4 hour period where all channels were at max, but over that 4 hours it increased from 75% to 80%.

I wasn't all that happy with radions in general to be honest, I wasn't digging the colours in my tank, or how washed out it looked, and was seriously considering ditching them and getting halides or plasma. Then I had computer issues, lost my entire windows partition, and along with it, my radion program. I wasn't sure what that would mean for my group, and last time I had to re-set up a group (one of the units failed and was replaced under warranty) it was 6 hours of hair pulling infuriation. Once they're set up and the group is exactly the way you want it they're easy as pie to use, but getting them to that point, modifying, or adding to a group of radions is an exercise in pure, unadulterated rage. It's their biggest flaw, I think. It took daylight savings throwing my lights off by an hour to convince me to try re-programming them, and, much to my very pleasant surprise, the group seems to be stored locally on the units, not in the config utility software. I had to set up a totally new schedule, and I finally see why these lights are awesome. My last program clearly sucked, because now that I've gone back and done it all again with different pre-sets that ramp in to each other better, the tank is practically sparkling.

I will say they still don't hold a candle to T5s in terms of coral colouration. I was just at another reefers house buying some frags, and his frag tank had an ATI unit over it. I've never seen colours that vibrant on a coral before. I picked up a green montipora frag from him that I realized I already have a piece of, only the one that's been in my tank has turned a pale yellow/green, while the one in his tank looks like it's been painted with dark green neon paint. Some corals actually improve in their overall coloration, developing an almost internal glow, but then others really seem to fade and wash out under the radions. I have one mini colony that started life in my tank as a light pinkish green Walt Smith frag. It's now a dark brown/slightly rust coloured colony with the slightest hint of green iridescence when the lights are all royal blue. While I have two other colonies that started out as rust coloured with the tiniest hint of blue on the tips, and are now glowing cyan on the main branches, and electric blue at the growth tips. The frags I just picked up are all super electric shades of green and red, so we'll see if they hold their colours over time, or if they wash out. I've been playing with placement to try and maximize the colouration of each colony, but things are still growing, and nothing is burning, so I don't want to decrease the intensity.

man, a simple question you ask and I give you a novel.

[Skimmerking]

Hey Adam the tank is looking sweet man , I wish that mine looked like that. anyways that is a another story.

[asylumdown]

Well this morning has been pretty rough. Sometime last night my QT system crashed. I can't figure out what triggered it. Came down to feed them this morning and the water was the colour of milk. Every single fish is dead.

They were only 10 days away from going back in the display. I've never wanted out of this hobby as much as I do right now.

[Delphinus]

Oh wow that is rough. Sorry for your losses.

[gregzz4]

Sorry to hear this Adam

You've built such a great tank ... I hope you decide to get some more fish

[mseepman]

So sorry to hear about this. You have built an amazing setup and it would be a shame to quit now!

[sharkbait]

Wow I couldn't imagine how rough that must have been for you! Keep trucking, you tank is amazing!

[asylumdown]

I've done some investigating. We had a party on Saturday night, and every time I went near the laundry room, the door was closed. I kept opening it, but the last time I checked was about midnight. There's indigo stains all over the inside of the wall and door, right at butt height, so you can imagine why the door kept getting closed...

We have a massive server stack in there that powers the home automation and distributed audio/video system for the house. We know it puts out a lot of heat, which is why for the last 7 months the door to the laundry room has never been closed. While I was doing a complete reset to the QT system today, I closed the door to see how hot it would get. After 2 hours it was 30 degrees in there. I've done every test I can think of on the water they were in, but I don't have a max/min thermometer. My best guess is that the water got too hot and the dissolved O2 fell below levels anything could survive in. The tank had too many fish for it's size already, so I doubt there was a wide margin of error for oxygen. It's either that, or a drunk party guest decided the fish needed a drink. Pretty brutal considering how close they were to going back in to the main tank. Between the failed hypo treatment in the sump and then the QT system, I've had them 'in treatment' since August. That much time and effort blown to pieces less than two weeks away from the finish line.

Does anyone know if a tank crash like this will also damage the bacteria bed in a canister filter? I tried to save it by running it in an empty salt bucket with water from the nuked system, and today I cleaned the tank and all the equipment and re-filled it with 100% new salt water. The canister filter is back attached to the QT tank now, so I dosed it with enough ammonium chloride to hit 1.5ppm this afternoon to both keep the bacteria alive, but also to test whether it's going to go through a cycle again. After 6 hours the level of ammonia doesn't seem to have fallen any. I'm not sure if that means my filter is toast or not.

I'm going to be out of town more than I'm in for the next 4 weeks, so I won't be getting any new fish for a while, but I'm going to try and see this as an opportunity to do this whole thing again properly. I'm going to add fish slowly, and only after a rigorous prophylactic treatment of copper. All new corals are going to be quarantined in the new cadlights all-in-one nano tank I just bought to make sure that not a single drop of outside, potentially contaminated water will make it in to my system. It's not going to be easy, but I am going to try my hardest to make my system pathogen free going forward.

I'm also going to take this time to try and deal with my growing aiptasia problem using berghia. I'm pretty sure the reason I never had success with them in my last tank was that a) I let the problem get so out of hand the nudibranch's couldn't make a dent in their short lifespans and b) I had tried peppermint shrimp first (which didn't work) and I'm pretty sure the shrimp were eating both the nudis and their eggs and c) I had wrasses that I'm pretty sure were also eating the berghia. Since my tank is going to be fishless now for at least 6 more weeks (groan!), I may as well try berghia again as there's nothing in that tank that could eat them, and the problem isn't so bad they couldn't clear it out.

Other than that I'm actually blown away at how well the display is doing. Now that the algae is gone, corals that seemed like they were in stasis are bursting to life. Frags that hadn't grown an inch in months are sending out base plates at a rate I didn't think was possible. I had no idea how inhibiting algae could be to coral growth. I tried taking some top down photos tonight when the lights were on their way to being super blue, and man, I just can't figure out how to make the LEDs jive with my iPhone. The photos look nothing at all like it does in real life, it's like the sensor only sees the blue, and then captures is as horribly as possible. I tried adjusting the white balance in photoshop afterwards, and this was the best I could do:


This coral came to me completely browned out, with only the tiniest hint of blue at the tips. It's probably changed the most out of all my corals. This pic is as close to how it looks in real life as I could get with photoshop.

[asylumdown]

Was out of town for the past couple of days, came home literally shocked at how much the coral had grown. Getting rid of that algae was the best decision I ever made!

Also, did a 50 gallon water change, skimmer clean, full change of phosphate media and hanna phosphate test in... 45 minutes. Bam! The time and money planning this thing is finally paying off.

Now to get some fish...

[gregzz4]

I don't know what to say about your system Adam as it looks like you have it under control ...

All I will add is you may want to add an alarm for your QT temp ...

Sorry I don't have any better advice