75g w/ 33g frag tank system

I started doing some setup on my AC3 today. I got email notifications working after quite a bit of research and reading and experimenting. Here are a few things I learned.

Get your AC3 setup on your network first so you can access it's config webpages, it's a thousand times easier entering all the information on the webpage than it is through the AC3 menus/buttons themselves.

You can't use Gmail or Hotmail, or any email system that requires SSL/secure connections to their SMTP servers. At least with the AC3. I opened a new free email account at www.gmx.com for this, their SMTP servers don't require a secure connection.

How to troubleshoot the email connection.
Telnet into the AC3 by running "telnet <AC3's IP on your network>" from a command prompt (start menu > run > "cmd"), then login using your admin username/password.

When you get to the "Aquacontroller>" prompt run the command "cons", nothing will happen but that's OK, run "1 maild" and nothing will happen again, then run "mail". After the "mail" command it will return a bunch of info about its communication with the SMTP server, it will tell you if your login worked, any errors/success messages etc.

Ken's Reef - Homepage
This is a great resource, Ken Argo posts on RC a lot in the Neptune forum. He's something of a Neptune guru. He has some cool apps and some good info on programming aquacontrollers/apexes and a bunch of other stuff. Read through the Q&A section for some basics about setting up the AC3 on your network as well as setting up email configs.

So that's it, it's working like a charm now, it's really pretty simple once you know what to do. Maybe it'll be useful to someone else (or more likely myself in 6 months when I've forgotten all the details).

 

OK so the system has been up and running for a little over 3 weeks now. I've never tested positive for ammonia, that I can tell anyway, I hate matching color scales.
I still will be waiting at least another week and doing a more thorough test on the water before putting the first fish in but I still haven't decided on my stocking list and order so I'm going to throw some ideas around here.
Also I will be using my current 30 gallon tank as a QT for all fish (possibly excepting the first fish, I haven't 100% decided if I want to risk it yet).

I like the look of a "busy" tank so I'm trying to stay on the smaller side of the scale.

Neon/sharknose goby - I really like these fish but I'm not sure I like their lifespan for how much they cost. If I could reliably get a pair I might consider them more because I'd really like to get a few pairs/harems of fish as opposed to single fish because I think the behavior is much more interesting.

Watchman goby pair - potentially a Yasha pair (I see one on LA but I don't know if I'm ready to pull the trigger yet!)

Mccoskers flasher wrasse male with 1-2 females - This is probably the only fish that I want for certain. Anyone have good/bad experiences with pairs/harems of these fish?

Melanurus/Radiant wrasse or maybe Cirrhilabrus pair - I'm not sure about the halichoeres wrasses because I'm not sure I like the idea that they may eat lots of smaller inverts that I like having around for biodiversity. On the other hand it may help if I somehow end up with some sort of flatworm etc, I haven't decided yet. I might try and find a fairy wrasse pair instead.

Kole or Tomini tang - I think if I can find a nice looking Tomini relatively easily I would probably go with that but a Kole would be a good substitute. I really want to have an herbivorous fish, if only for diversity, and the fact that hopefully this will help quell the big fish people visitors.

I'm not sure if I'll go much over that level, I think that is a pretty reasonable bioload, possibly even slightly on the lower end of things (does that sound right?).

If anyone else has recommendations especially for pairs of smaller fish that might get along and hopefully spawn in this system some day I'd love to hear other ideas!

 

Also, I'm thinking about powerhead options for my frag tank. I was originally thinking of just using some Koralias or something cheap like that for flow but I really like the way controllable powerheads work. So I thought I would check out what the Tunze solution would be on my tank, even just to be able to try out the new controller they have and to have both Vortechs and Tunzes on the system for comparison, but I was quite surprised. I would have thought it would have been more competitive with the Ecotech solution but I'm not sure it is.

The MP10 is ~$200 and puts out up to ~1500gph and has a built in controller.
The Tunze 6055 is ~$230 and puts out up to ~1500gph and requires at least a single controller which is another ~$70 although I would be tempted to get the 7096 or the aquasurf so I could expand to more powerheads in the future but that really makes it more expensive.

I really don't think there is any way I can reasonably choose the controllable Tunze option for a tank this small, 33g. Am I missing something?

 

Go with the vortech you won't be disappointed.

 

I do like vortechs, in fact I have 2 MP40W's right now, I was just thinking a little variety might be fun, but I can't justify the Tunze option for the cost.

Plus it means I have to make a modification to my canopy so the cable can go up over the edge of the tank but not get pinched by the canopy that is sitting on it and I might be tempted to take the lazy option if it was cost-effective.

 

One more hurdle is over with tonight. I finished up the lighting for the display tank (the frag tank is still to be done because it requires taking the canopy off entirely, ugh).

This was quite a project for me since I've never done anything like this and it wasn't as simple as it might be for single tank setups. I decided I wanted to put the ballasts in the frag tank stand, away from all the water and the majority of the humidity. Also my display tank stand/canopy are pretty tight for space with everything in there right now so it would have been a different set of challenges to fit 4 ballasts and wires into the display stand or canopy.

The biggest part of the project was extending the wiring harness that comes with the ReefGeek retro kits so that the wires would reach the ballast in the frag tank stand. That's 18 wires (3 per bulb because 2 bulbs run on a ballast so one wire jumps between the two) of 18 guage solid core wire to extend, which wouldn't have been as big of a deal I don't think but I'm not very experienced with electrical stuff so I'm pretty sure I overdid it.

The bulbs I'm testing out now are (front to back):
ATI Blue+
UVL Actinic White (12k)
ATI Blue+
UVL AquaSun
ATI AquaBlue
ATI Blue+

I think I might need more blue in there for my taste, at first glance, but we'll see when coral get in there.

Bulbs with endcaps and no reflectors mounted on the light rack. I don't think there is an issue with the wires being above the bulbs, there is some clearance so they aren't touching the reflectors or anything, if anyone thinks that's a problem please speak up!


With reflectors


Light! The picture is the front of the tank on the bottom.


Just another angle of the lights, they were so bright sitting on the floor pointing up I could hardly see where I was walking in the room unless I was looking 180 degress away at a wall.


Bulb labels, copying another pic I saw on RC or something that I thought was cool


In the canopy


The whole thing (minus background on the tank), the colors were auto-adjusted so it's not 100% accurate, I think this is quite a bit more blue than it looks like IRL


Right side of the tank


Left side of the tank


View from the left end of the tank (looks a bit cloudy from this perspective, maye still be a little sand getting kicked up from the vortech.

 

Very nice!

 

if it were me, i wouldnt get a background! look how pretty the effect is from your light bulbs! - the pvc, it looks really cool. i would keep it.

Awesome tank, it looks so darn.... clean and nice. great job

 

One of the sicker build threads i've seen. K+ to you. What kind of sand is that? It looks awesome.

 

Thanks guys. I think the lights look great there too but I don't think I can stand the plumbing back there, plus having a black background really makes everything in the tank stand out so nicely (as long as I keep the back clean which I really doubt I will long term but it's an option anyway!).

The sand is the Caribsea Fiji pink aragonite.