DGee's Box O sticks V2

[revhtree]

A slight change of plans with the lighting upgrade, I made the decision to shelf the 10 bulb upgrade and use the 10 bulb end plates to space the lights out and add two Kessil A350w's to the center of the fixture. I've come up with a new bulb combo that I'm extremely happy with the overall color with the addition of the Kessil's, now it's just the waiting game for the corals to color back up since a lot of them are still really unhappy from the weed killer incident and 4 days without any light.

I quickly cracked out a new FTS (not the greatest photo) I've butchered the tank and moved A LOT of the corals around and so far I'm fairly happy although there's still a few changes to be made. While the tank still looks kinda bare to me it's definitely improved the flow around the corals and over time I think things should grow back in nicely.

One of the best reef tanks. Period!

 

[KritikaL]

HOLY MOTHER ! :D

 

[KritikaL]

PLEASE if you can tell me which combo of bulbs you are using nowadays that tank looks insane!

 

[DGee]

It's really beautiful !! Have you got pictures from the sides ? It's to see how are arranged the pumps with regard to corals. Thanks.

So as of now I'm running each side in anti sync, So one side fires off and then the other in Reef Crest Mode. Excuse the crummy iPhone photos but it'll give you an idea of the pump placement.

Amazing tank!! Colors are so impressive.

What bulb combo are you running now? Did you really feel there was a big difference in running KZ bulbs over ATI?

Thank you, I really think there's a benefit from each of the brands bulbs, they all offer a little something slightly different between them, one of my favorite things about T5's is the ability to mix and match different brands to get them to compliment one another.

As far as the KZ bulbs go, I like the Superblue over the Blue+ since it's just slightly less of a bold blue, many people say the KZ represents more of a 20k look where as the ATI is more of a 22k appearance. I'm still a big fan of the Fauna Marin Ultra Royal Blue, unfortunately they've gotten a little more difficult to get your hands on recently.

Overall I'd say this is as close as I've been able to get to a 400w 20k Radium with actinic supplementation but with a slightly better pop on the reds and pink corals.

Personally I still think 400w Radium's with some T5 supplementation is still the ultimate color for my liking.

Currently front to back the combo is:

Fauna Marin Ultra Royal Blue
ATI Coral+
ATI Actinic
KZ Fiji Purple

KESSIL 350w the blue's are at 100% and the whites are turned down to about 40% The Kessil's really just seem to sharpen up the tank and make the tank feel a little less muted.

KZ Fiji Purple
ATI Actinic
KZ New Gen Coral Bulb
KZ Superblue

One thing I'm not sold on yet is the KZ New Gen, It's a fresh bulb where as the others have already been burnt in so I'll give it a month or so to see how the final color will look. If I'm not happy with it I'll probably be replacing it with an ATI Coral+. The difference between the two is small although the KZ is a little more white to the eye, where as the Coral+ has a touch of a red peak in it to make it appear with a slight purple tinge to it.

PLEASE if you can tell me which combo of bulbs you are using nowadays that tank looks insane!

Please see above :)

 

[Slm222]

im interested in the aquascape. do you have any pictures of assembling it? or what rocks you used for the base?

 

[DGee]

im interested in the aquascape. do you have any pictures of assembling it? or what rocks you used for the base?

I don't have any photos of when I assembled the rocks, I'm lucky enough to have a friend who own's one of the best LFS on the west coast who let me pick over a 600# shipment of live rock and just used my imagination when I was selecting pieces for the aquascape. All of the pieces are just assembled with 5/8" acrylic rods that were drilled with a masonry bit.

If you look at the first of the two photos above you can see two of the rods that keep the scape sitting solid.

 

[Fredm]

Thanks Dgee for your pictures even with the crummy iphone ;);)

 

[Slm222]

I don't have any photos of when I assembled the rocks, I'm lucky enough to have a friend who own's one of the best LFS on the west coast who let me pick over a 600# shipment of live rock and just used my imagination when I was selecting pieces for the aquascape. All of the pieces are just assembled with 5/8" acrylic rods that were drilled with a masonry bit.

If you look at the first of the two photos above you can see two of the rods that keep the scape sitting solid.

Alright. Curious about the shelves mainly. Were they tonga shelves?

 

[LDH]

3 things:

1) wow
2) I am on the west coast also ( the Canadian side) and am beginning to research for my dream tank build... as much as I would love a reef savvy by Felix the shipping from Miami to Vancouver island will probably take my retirement savings fund. Would you recommend Ocean by design in Seattle?
3) You mentioned your friend has one of the best reef stores on the west coast... I'd love to know which one it is so I can check it out !

Thank you very much for sharing your beautiful work.

 

[Khoa nguyen]

April 2015

Things began to color back up, and my buddy Kevin came over the take a few photos for a contest ATI was having here on R2R my tank ended up winning the contest and received a Sirius X2 fixture as my prize.

Can you please tell me all the color of the bulb and how many watts is each bulb. Because I want to
Buy the 8 bulb but they have 3 type of watts. Thank you

 

[Lninwa]

April 2015

Things began to color back up, and my buddy Kevin came over the take a few photos for a contest ATI was having here on R2R my tank ended up winning the contest and received a Sirius X2 fixture as my prize.

This is one beautiful tank. My tank wants to look like yours when it grows up

 

[Lninwa]

August 2015 I built a new housing for my camera.

It works quite well, the 15+ year old Nikon D70 still keeps ticking, the real quality is in the 55mm Micro Nikkor Nikon lens. It's great piece of glass.

How did you build the camera housing? It reminds me of a skimmer cup

 

[Phil Cusimano]

Since a few people have asked about the tank on other forums and a few of the FB groups I've decided to add a build thread over here. This tank was originally setup in December of 2015, I'll take pictures from a previous build thread I started and try to keep things in order as best as possible... The initial livestock came from my previous 30x30x18 cube.

The tank was built by Oceans By Design in Seattle WA, it measures 48x30x18



I built the sump with a few things in mind, mainly something that was easy to clean and could house a small frag area, previously I had a whole separate system setup in the lower part of the house with about 300g of total water volume and maintaining two separate systems was just too time consuming.

The sump measures 48x24x16, it incorporates the drain from the filter sock box directly the the frag area that measures 24x19.



The Aquascape consists to a few separate pieces that are held together 5/8" solid acrylic rods that have been drilled and hammered into the each rock to make three separate structures.

You'll notice the led pucks in the center of the Powermodule, I had initially tried removing two tubes from the center to run the led's but I was never happy with them and they were removed a shortly after setting the tank up.



January 2015 I moved all of the corals out of the QT tank they were being held in, sadly I lost 15-20 pieces and browned out just about every piece of coral I had. There were some underlining circumstances that led to this that were out of my control amongst the delivery of the new tank but I made due with what was left at that point.



More to come...

Awesome aquascape and spectacular looking reef! Great share!

 

[Goby-won]

I gotta say the pic of that tang is AMAZING! The detail....WOW.

 

[DGee]

Alright. Curious about the shelves mainly. Were they tonga shelves?

I honestly have no idea where that batch of rock came from, if memory serves no one has been able to bring in rock from Tonga for quite some time now. I believed they banned all importation of rock from Tonga, or at least I feel like I remember hearing that a while back. Don't quote me on that though because I could totally be wrong.

3 things:

1) wow
2) I am on the west coast also ( the Canadian side) and am beginning to research for my dream tank build... as much as I would love a reef savvy by Felix the shipping from Miami to Vancouver island will probably take my retirement savings fund. Would you recommend Ocean by design in Seattle?
3) You mentioned your friend has one of the best reef stores on the west coast... I'd love to know which one it is so I can check it out !

Thank you very much for sharing your beautiful work.

Well if you ever make your way down to Oregon make sure you stop by Upscales Fish and Reptiles, there's always a good selection of wild and mariculture corals as well as plenty of frags and if you're nice Travis will usually frag pieces by request out of the display tanks as well.

I'll send you a PM for some more information on the tank and OBD.

Can you please tell me all the color of the bulb and how many watts is each bulb. Because I want to
Buy the 8 bulb but they have 3 type of watts. Thank you

So T5 bulbs are pretty simple once you understand how the size of bulb correlates to the wattages. 24w bulbs would be suitable for a 24" fixture, 39w bulbs would be used in a 36" fixture, 54w bulbs would be used in a 48" fixture and 80w bulbs would be used in a 60" fixture.

If you look back up a few posts you can see the current combination of bulbs I'm running.

So depending on the size of the fixture you're using will determine what wattage of bulb you'll need.

My fixture is 48" so I run the 54w bulbs.

How did you build the camera housing? It reminds me of a skimmer cup

You know you're not the first person to say that! I just picked up some acrylic tube from one of the local suppliers and the rest was just scrap I had laying around the shop. Nothing to fancy and fairly easy to build if you know the basics of acrylic fabrication and are handy with a couple tools.

 

[Sharvey103]

love the aquascaping. Please tell us how you are feeding the corals and any supplements you use.

 

[Aleks]

Great looks. Tell your new combo
T5 lamps ..... what Kessel you have installed?

 

[DGee]

love the aquascaping. Please tell us how you are feeding the corals and any supplements you use.

Thank you, I'm excited to see what I can come up with once I have 8' to work with!

Currently I'm feeding the corals RedSea Reef Energy A&B 10ml of each, 7ml of Seachem Fuel & 5ml of Oyster Feast once per week. Periodically I'll Dose RedSea Coral Colors B to maintain the Potassium levels as they're slowly depleted.

Great looks. Tell your new combo
T5 lamps ..... what Kessel you have installed?

The Kessils are the older A350w Tuna Blue's

Bulbs front to back:

KZ New Gen
Fauna Marin Ultra Royal Blue
ATI Actinic
KZ Fiji Purple

Kessil's

KZ Fiji Purple
ATI Actinic
KZ Super Blue
KZ New Gen

 

[DGee]

Don't worry honey I won't make much of a mess...

That's what I told her anyways lol...

Ever since I went to the larger ATB skimmer last year it's been a total PITA to clean the skimmer since when I originally designed the sump it was for the smaller 8" body cone so the larger 10.5" body was nearly impossible to get out and clean and most of the time I just cleaned the cup inside of the sump. So I was finally irritated enough that I decided to router a cutout into the sump to make the for easy removal of the cup and body for cleaning.

Now it's nice and easy to get the skimmer in and out for cleaning. I highly recommend anyone attempting to do a project like this, make sure your wife or significant other isn't home when you do. The router job and setting up the jig took about 10 min, I spent a good 45 min cleaning with the shop vac to not leave a trace for the wife.

 

[SchnitzelReef]

Thank you, I'm excited to see what I can come up with once I have 8' to work with!

Currently I'm feeding the corals RedSea Reef Energy A&B 10ml of each, 7ml of Seachem Fuel & 5ml of Oyster Feast once per week. Periodically I'll Dose RedSea Coral Colors B to maintain the Potassium levels as they're slowly depleted.



The Kessils are the older A350w Tuna Blue's

Bulbs front to back:

KZ New Gen
Fauna Marin Ultra Royal Blue
ATI Actinic
KZ Fiji Purple

Kessil's

KZ Fiji Purple
ATI Actinic
KZ Super Blue
KZ New Gen

8'!??????

Upgrade?