Tharsis' 20 long ~2-11-12~ sps and lps pics!

Sure do!! I just started my 'morning wake-up setting' which is just both pot at the minimum, it has a nice purple low purple hue to the tank. I will slowly increase the light to 50% today and see how the corals react. Do you have any suggestions on how long to acclimate them?

Thanks! Yeah I think I went way to fast over the month of december, started doing way too many changes at once and the tank destabilized. I am going to take it easy now and let things come back. The light was the last thing haha...I swear!

Here is the fixture:


I taped the drivers and pots together to make it a little more manageable. I may build a little box to hold them and make it look a little more appealing.


This was the tank at 100%, you can see alot of light spill over even with my little makeshift screen over the fixture. This tank is in the living room and my wife is not too pleased with the amount of spillover so I am going to build a canopy to block out the light.

Here is the tank at 100% RB:







I am having trouble taking pics of the tank, the white balance in the camera is off because the corals are coming out really pinkish. I will have to play around abit to get it right.

 

The glare from the uncovered fixture was really getting to me so here is my little diy canopy:

I made it out of cardboard for now...mainly as a proof of concept. I think the finished product will be out of painted plexiglass.

Here are the pieces:


assembled (my son helped me decorate):




Before:


After:


When I want to access the tank I can just raise it up and hang it from the chain.


It definitely keeps the light in, there is still some spill over from the holes I cut for wires but majority of the light has been eliminated.

I want the finished product to be light weight, so I think I will make it out of thin plexiglass and paint the outside with krylon fusion black spraypaint.

 

here's a pic that I took earlier...me likey.

 

^ that is one good photo.

Is the inside of the cardboard canopy moisturized in any way? If so, it might affect the wiring of LED.

 

thanks!

do you mean is it humid inside? I haven't measured the humidity but i will bring a humidity probe from work tomorrow to check it out. I don't imagine that it is very humid though, I have the fan blowing on top of the heatsink which then follows the grooves and gets channeled under the canopy. It then gets vented out of the openings I cut for the wires and equipment so it should be fairly close to ambient humidity conditions.

 

Oh thats good. Just got me worried When I was acclimating the rebuilt LED, it was just eyeballing. (Altho the boss messed with the pots during the day, so I cant be really specific..)

Id assume the vodka dosing kicking in? How long has it been since the initial dose?

 

^ I stopped dosing vodka when the tank started going bad, I just posted it in your thread haha.

I am at 50% for both for most of the day and giving a really short 100% burst at noon just to get the corals itching for more. I will slowly increase the base lighting by 10% every week. I feel like the pots are really not very accurate, the light increase does not seem to increase linearly with the amount that i turn the knob. So it really is just eyeballing as well.

 

Edit: you said you stopped the vodka on my thread. No cyano creep, nothing?

 

I did actually, I had a pretty rapid increase in cyano when I stopped, but it seems to be on the mend. i am going to let the tank stabilize for a month or so and then add in the biopellets. My shrooms are finally starting to go back to normal so I am going to let them get happy again and then I will see about the biopellets.

On another note, I am noticing that my acan is puffier than ever. I think that guy has had the biggest response to the LED's so far. It is awesome.

 

Going bad? Talking about flatworm episode?

Thinking BioPellets? They are working great in my tank. Depending on the P and N levels, but if you start slow, you should expect decent result.