Broadfield's Red Sea Reefer 450 Build - OCD Inspired... Going Back To a Reef

CWR24 · Jan 29, 2018

Broadfield said:
IMG_1660 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

PRISTINE!!

drawman · Feb 3, 2018

Toby I'm curious are you still using the oxydator? How do you like it, what size did you get, and what concentration of H202 are you using? I'm actually kind of surprised you haven't talked more about it. I'm strongly considering buying one if you can't tell

SuncrestReef · Feb 9, 2018

Broadfield said:
Thank you! I purchased the pipe from @Bulk Reef Supply and the fittings from Aquarium Speciality. The gate valves and other schedule 80 fittings I snagged from PVCfittingsonline.com

I know the post above is from over a year ago, but I'm just looking for clarification on your PVC fittings. When I look at Aquarium Specialty's site it appears they only list Schedule 40 parts or "Furniture Grade" parts, but in your post above you mentioned Schedule 80. Can you clarify what you used?

Broadfield · Feb 9, 2018

SuncrestReef said:
I know the post above is from over a year ago, but I'm just looking for clarification on your PVC fittings. When I look at Aquarium Specialty's site it appears they only list Schedule 40 parts or "Furniture Grade" parts, but in your post above you mentioned Schedule 80. Can you clarify what you used?

Correct, it's a mix of orange sch 40 and grey schedule 80... they are interchangeable. Colored stuff is only made in pipe, elbows, tees and various 4-way, 5-way etc.... everything else needs to be either standard sch 40 or 80.

Broadfield · Feb 9, 2018

drawman said:
Toby I'm curious are you still using the oxydator? How do you like it, what size did you get, and what concentration of H202 are you using? I'm actually kind of surprised you haven't talked more about it. I'm strongly considering buying one if you can't tell

I am not. I actually didn't run it for very long. There was always something in the tank, coral wise, that wasn't happy when I ran it. I intended to experiment with different percentages of hydrogen peroxide, but just haven't gotten around to it. Typically ORP goes up when running one, but mine always went down and stayed down when running the Oxydator.

Raptor72 · Feb 9, 2018

broadfield I had a question on one of your other threads that didn’t get answered.

How do you get that graph to show up on your display? I tried on my Amazon Fire tablet but couldn’t get the same one. I remember you saying something about clicking on the heartbeat or something like that.

Broadfield · Feb 9, 2018

Raptor72 said:
broadfield I had a question on one of your other threads that didn’t get answered.

How do you get that graph to show up on your display? I tried on my Amazon Fire tablet but couldn’t get the same one. I remember you saying something about clicking on the heartbeat or something like that.

Make sure you are using the Apex app, not the Fusion app. I only use the Apex app for the graphing... otherwise I use the Fusion app for everything else. But yes, you will click on the little heartbeat looking icon in the upper right corner.

Note: I just checked in the App Store and the Apex app is no longer available... or at least I couldn't find anything. So you may be out of luck. But this is on IOS, so it may still be available on Android.

JoeIII · Feb 10, 2018

that version of the apex app is ios only, so it won't work on your fire. you can get a similar effect by building a special dashboard with just the few main graphs and loading it on your fire, but it won't look nearly as nice.

The Android Apex app was an afterthought at best, unfortunately.

re76 · Feb 12, 2018

@Broadfield

I see you have moved your WAV's to the ends of the tank, what settings are you running now?

I have moved mine to the sides recently to try to get an alternating gyre pattern and I am really liking it so far. I have seen some have two WAV's on one end, which is also interesting.

Broadfield · Feb 13, 2018

re76 said:
@Broadfield

I see you have moved your WAV's to the ends of the tank, what settings are you running now?

I have moved mine to the sides recently to try to get an alternating gyre pattern and I am really liking it so far. I have seen some have two WAV's on one end, which is also interesting.

Yeah, they work really well there to give me good flow across the tank, but keep flow lower at the ends... which is convenient for my coral that prefer lower flow and lower light. I simply run Mavericks at 50% on both, not synced, for 100% of the day.

During feed mode they drop down to 20%

re76 · Feb 13, 2018

Broadfield said:
Yeah, they work really well there to give me good flow across the tank, but keep flow lower at the ends... which is convenient for my coral that prefer lower flow and lower light. I simply run Mavericks at 50% on both, not synced, for 100% of the day.

During feed mode they drop down to 20%

It's hard to tell in the photo: do you have them pointed essentially at each other? I currently have a very similar set-up in but they are in mirror/inverse mode using "Pipeline" with a 50 seconds period. So one runs for 50 seconds, then the other. This creates a strong flow across the top, and you get a lower flow coming back across the bottom, sort of gyre style. This works out well as I keep mostly SPS up top and lower flow stuff down low.

I have tried taking them out of mirror mode, but when I do that they seem to collide in the middle of the tank and generate a lot of heavy flow in the middle-bottom of my tank where I, unfortunately, keep a lot of my lower flow LPS.

Broadfield · Feb 13, 2018

re76 said:
It's hard to tell in the photo: do you have them pointed essentially at each other? I currently have a very similar set-up in but they are in mirror/inverse mode using "Pipeline" with a 50 seconds period. So one runs for 50 seconds, then the other. This creates a strong flow across the top, and you get a lower flow coming back across the bottom, sort of gyre style. This works out well as I keep mostly SPS up top and lower flow stuff down low.

I have tried taking them out of mirror mode, but when I do that they seem to collide in the middle of the tank and generate a lot of heavy flow in the middle-bottom of my tank where I, unfortunately, keep a lot of my lower flow LPS.

They are angled towards the front glass as much as they will go. Then they are angled upwards, towards the water surface, about 30 degrees. NOTE: they are not really angled upwards at all in my signature image.

re76 · Feb 13, 2018

Broadfield said:
They are angled towards the front glass as much as they will go. Then they are angled upwards, towards the water surface, about 30 degrees. NOTE: they are not really angled upwards at all in my signature image.

Sorry for all the questions, but where (relatively) do you have them placed on the glass? Do you have them more towards the back of the tank, or are they centered on the side glass?

Broadfield · Feb 13, 2018

re76 said:
Sorry for all the questions, but where (relatively) do you have them placed on the glass? Do you have them more towards the back of the tank, or are they centered on the side glass?

I will get some exact measurements when I get home. This arrangement also gives me insane surface agitation.

Broadfield · Feb 13, 2018

re76 said:
Sorry for all the questions, but where (relatively) do you have them placed on the glass? Do you have them more towards the back of the tank, or are they centered on the side glass?

@re76 The dead center of the magnet sits 8" off the back glass and 5" down from the top edge of the tank.

SuncrestReef · Feb 13, 2018

Broadfield said:
This is what I suggest for the camera:

Shoot in RAW mode.

Shoot in Aperture Priority mode... which is Av on a Canon.

ISO around 400 - 800

For white balance, shoot in Kelvin mode... crank it all the way up to 10,000

Then adjust WB correction/shift to suite your lighting. For mine, I use a WB shift of around B3, G3

This is what I suggest in Photoshop for blanket, basic adjustments:

First open in the RAW editor and adjust your white balance if needed. You may need to shift it a little to make it look like what you are seeing with your eyes.

You can also adjust contrast, vibrance, saturation etc in the RAW editor. I usually bump those up a few spots... maybe a tad more. Depends on the shot, but I adjust to what it looks like with my eyes.

You may need to tick the clarity up a tad too, but nothing drastic at all.

Now you can open the photo within Photoshop.

Go to the Spot Healing Brush Tool and remove any of the little particles that you see. These will be very pronounced on a black background. They are simply particles in the water column that are difficult to see with the eye and the fact that they are moving around in the water column. But when you take the shot, they will stand out because the camera catches it in still form and can even blur the particles depending on the length of the shutter.

Once you get rid of all of the little specs and whatnot, then go ahead and crop the image if necessary.

At this point, make sure to click on Layer > Merge Visible

Lastly, go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Usually a setting around 100 - 200 will do the trick. You can click on the preview button and see the before and after. Don't go too high as it just won't look natural.

So those are just easy, basic adjustments to get your image looking like what you see with your eyes. I do other stuff sometimes, but not too much... I don't get crazy with it. However, I make take 200 photos and only get a handful that are acceptable. NOTE: I just dabble in photography, so I don't really know that much lol.

Have you ever tried shooting photos with an orange filter on your camera lens, or do you just adjust your photos in editing software to compensate for the blue lighting? Just wondering if it would be easier to invest $50 in an orange filter for my Nikon macro lens???

Broadfield · Feb 14, 2018

SuncrestReef said:
Have you ever tried shooting photos with an orange filter on your camera lens, or do you just adjust your photos in editing software to compensate for the blue lighting? Just wondering if it would be easier to invest $50 in an orange filter for my Nikon macro lens???

I do not use any sort of filters. I either use the custom WB setting or the Kelvin setting... gets me spot on in the camera. So it is very rare that I need to adjust WB in the software. Just took a couple of quick ones moments ago...

IMG_1713 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

IMG_1756 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

SuncrestReef · Feb 14, 2018

Broadfield said:
I do not use any sort of filters. I either use the custom WB setting or the Kelvin setting... gets me spot on in the camera. So it is very rare that I need to adjust WB in the software. Just took a couple of quick ones moments ago...

IMG_1713 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

IMG_1756 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Cool! I'm ordering an orange filter for my iPhone, but I won't bother to get one for my Nikon DSLR macro lens and will just adjust my camera settings instead.

Thanks. Beautiful shots by the way!