Ludnix's 120g reef and Coral Room!

[ludnix]

Making a DIY Refugium Light

I wanted to setup that little "frag tank" area of the sump as a refugium. It's an awfully tiny refugium but if I harvest frequently it should still be a big asset. I used to make those DIY LED lights so I dug through my electronics bin to find the parts to make a little grow light.

I started with this small block of aluminum heat sink extrusion:

I wrote down the dimensions to save for later. I will end up 3d printing an enclosure for the heatsink to offer some splash resistance and funnel the light into a narrow path so I don't grow algae in the skimmer or other areas of the sump.

X marks the spot! I laid out the LED pattern and used the calipers to mark the hole placement for the screws that hold the leds down.

Over to the drill press to make some holes in the pre-marked locations

With the holes made I proceeded to tap them for some nylon screws. I'm not machinist but aluminum is very easy to work with if you haven't before. I use nylon screws to make sure the screws don't short the circuit.

The LED stars are soldered together and thermal grease applied underneath, they are then screwed down. It's much easier to solder them when they are not on the heat sink so that is done before screwing them down. I had this quick disconnect I wired to them so I could easily separate the light from the LED driver (ballast).

It works! The LED pattern is 5 Red and 2 Blue. This isn't a special optimized ratio or selection of LEDs, it's just what I had on hand. It should work fine though.

I failed to document this part very well but I just screwed a hanging kit into the heatsink fins and then printed a light shade for it. The shade has some pliable tabs that you push out of the way to slide in the heatsink in. Once in place the tabs keep it from sliding back out.

 

[ludnix]

PAR levels on the frag tank:

Over the frag tank I have 2 Viparspectra reef lights, these are just blackboxes from amazon and don't differ all that much from any other black box from what I can tell. So far they seem plenty bright and the color spectra is definitely acceptable when adjusted but what about the PAR levels?

The first step I took was making a little frag plug mount for my apogee SQ-420 PAR meter sensor. I found this acrylic plug which was perfect as it's much easier to drill a clean hole in than ceramic or concrete. I drilled the small screw hole in the side of the plug and mounted the sensor to it. This way I am hopefully getting the exact PAR levels the corals will be getting.

PAR sensor mounted to the plug:

I adjusted the settings for color prefence and then recorded some readings, I currently keeping a mix of SPS, LPS and a few zoas so there variance in the needs of the corals. I am concerned that 345 might be too much for the LPS corals so I am going to keep them on the right side of the tank where the lighting is less focused and the PAR closer to 150.

What do you guys think of these PAR levels? Too high?

 

[Wrasse-cal]

Looking good!

 

[ludnix]

Small update with happy corals in the display. They are getting weekly 10-20g water changes and daily dosages of calcium and alk in addition to kalkwasser in the auto top off.

 

[crusso1993]

Just power read your thread. Love the coral room! I especially like the older construction w rough sawn 2 x's and the tongue and groove carsiding. Houses simply aren't built like that anymore and, in my opinion, it's a shame. Yeah, I know that many claim that modern day building practices are better. However, if that is truly the case, it confuses me as to why so many things go wrong or need to be updated within the first 10 years of a new build.

Your established 120g is beautiful!

As for the 345 PAR; I don't think any LPS corals are going to appreciate being blasted with that much PAR. The idea of keeping them off to the side is a good one. Being that you posed that question nearly 2 months ago, I am iinterested in how they are doing in the indirect light.

 

[ludnix]

Just power read your thread. Love the coral room! I especially like the older construction w rough sawn 2 x's and the tongue and groove carsiding. Houses simply aren't built like that anymore and, in my opinion, it's a shame. Yeah, I know that many claim that modern day building practices are better. However, if that is truly the case, it confuses me as to why so many things go wrong or need to be updated within the first 10 years of a new build.

Your established 120g is beautiful!

As for the 345 PAR; I don't think any LPS corals are going to appreciate being blasted with that much PAR. The idea of keeping them off to the side is a good one. Being that you posed that question nearly 2 months ago, I am iinterested in how they are doing in the indirect light.

Thanks for taking the time to read it!

I agree the old fashioned building methods are pretty impressive. We bought this building mainly because of its great bones and all redwood construction. It's got some pine in there now unfortunately but our main warehouse is still mostly redwood everywhere.

You are correct the LPS did not like that high of PAR! They are doing better off to the side but will probably turn one of the lights down for now until I can setup the second frag tank.

It has been a struggle to keep nutrients up without any fish. Once I got them up I failed to notice the expected decline in calcium and alkalinity as their health improved so now I'm working on getting the doser setup to keep up with their demand.

Once things are stable and healthily growing in the frag tank I am hoping to take the opportunity to redesign the right side of the display tank to reduce some of the overcrowding.

 

[ludnix]

Time for an update on the lobby reef! It's been doing pretty well and most corals seem to be growing well. The flower petal montipora might need to be relocated to get better color but it has been putting on a lot of growth. Aiptasia is a constant battle in the this tank, but each time I treat them with kalkwasser paste it seems to help greatly.

Any one have any guesses on ID of this purple acropora in the front middle?

The highlighter acropora (left rear) has been pretty unhappy compared the pink table acropora behind it. A wall of purple stylophora grows up the back of the overflow box.

It's hard to resolve in the photo but there's a tiny aiptasia on the botton this digitata. I might just frag it and glue it back down, it's a very fast grower.

This pavona is massive but not much in the way of vertical growth! I think if it was in higher flow I might get some of those delicate potato chips it can grow. I'm not certain but the rock it's on might be structural so I might need to frag some off to experiment.

 

[ludnix]

Here's a full tank shot from late June. Things are getting severely overcrowded so I'm going to take some time to start rearranging and trimming back the corals. The SPS are doing well lately so I'm happy to be able to trim everyone back and watch some new growth come in.

The GSP glued onto the overflow is making some good progress with encrusting. Part of it unglued and made a little flap. The polyps started growing on the newly exposed underside so I will need to trim the flap off next time someone is willing to take a frag.

 

[ludnix]

First up on the rearranging is the Ponape birdnest on the leftmost SPS rock. It's got a bubble algae infection in the middle of it, I haven't seen any bubble algae elsewhere so hopefully be cleaning this up I won't see in the future too!

First step was to setup a frag rack a friend gave me recently. The magnets are not quiet strong enough for the 120 so I had to use some old powerhead magnets to keep it attached.

The birdnest colony came out easily, there was a few fallen branches that encrusted onto the rock but they were not attached to the main colony. I cleaned up the little pieces off the rock with pliers to give it a new clean slate.
You can see the bubble algae was getting pretty bad in the colony! I clipped away all the dead branches underneath and broke it into thirds keeping all the bubble algae on one third I would end up tossing.

I removed all the dead bramble underneath and tried to clip in such a fashion that I would a "flat" bottom for easier gluing.

The good two thirds I was able to keep as larger chunks. I decided to replace the colony with the smaller chunk in the front of this photo, I'll find a new home for the other mini-colony. I collected the good broken branches from the process and glued them to a frag plug.

I also refragged the GARF Bonsai that was behind the Ponape birdnest. The birdnest grows so fast I am going to try giving the bonsai a feature in the front.

Sorry for the fish tail, this was the photo with the least amount of foxface in it of this part of the project.

Here's the trash pile of what all ended up coming out of that birdnest.

Next up will be the green birdnest to the right of it, which is also out of control. Then the sinularia, and eventually reworking the entire right side the tank with some new rocks I'm cooking. This hobby is defnitely a labor of love.

 

[ludnix]

A friend dropped off some beautiful old live rock for me to use. It had been dried out of straight of a tank so it's going to need to cook a while. I loaded it up into the trash can and filled it up with freshwater to let some of the organics break down and be rinsed away. If I was working with live rock that needed to be cooked I would have used saltwater to cure the rock, but in this case that would have been a waste of salt.

Here's how gross that water got after a week. There was all sorts of leaves and sand stuck to the rocks so I'm not surprised. I just left a powerhead in there to run 24/7 but it wasn't being aerated so it made some pretty gross smells. I wore a chemical respirator and left the coral room exhaust running while I drained it.

If a picture could smell....

I refilled the bucket and gave it another few days, it's looking much better and doesn't smell anymore. A few more rinses and I'll start curing it with saltwater and seed it with some pest-free live rock. There are some sweet Tonga branches in there!

Getting better!

 

[ludnix]

It's high time I posted a picture of the coral room. It's still a mess but it's getting a lot more function day by day. There's currently a crop of orchids being rehabilitated under the T5 fixture until I setup the second frag tank.

The panorama makes it seem bigger than it is, two people would have a hard time socially distancing in here at all.

Here's a couple DSLR shots from the frag tank. I lie to myself and say my phone is just as good at photos but then I look at the photos I take on my canon and I'm blown away. Hoping this helps me to use it more often!

Some various Euphylia sp. frags from the display tank.

RG Vulcan Blood zoanthids. These guys are a REAL fast grower, use caution when placing them!

 

[ludnix]

Update!

I ended up pulling the huge purple stylo in the left corner of the tank and brought the sinularia out of the back to replace it. The sinularia had grown across its original rock and attached to a second. I cleaved the similar in half between the two rocks it had been attached to and just used one of them for the new front location.
Its going to take awhile for this specimen to look like a show peice like the stylo but I think the motion afforded by the soft coral will be nice compromise.

This blue flower petals montipora is slowly coloring up. Its still pretty pale compared to some photos I've seen but it is growing quickly. It doesn't come to close to the growth rate of the red montipora but I don't think anything ever dose. I have had monstrous quanities of it in the past but I'm hoping to keep it under control in this tank.

 

[ludnix]

Did some work on the stand for the 120G. I painted the whole thing glossy enamel white. I'm super happy with how it came out, it's old paint was mis-matched and pretty chipped. The glossy hard enamel paint is super easy to clean up salt drips and other spills off of too.

I did some work designing some 3d printed holsters for the tunze controllers. These models are really old so I don't know if anyone else is still rocking these guys on their setup. I'll post the STL file for download in the 3d print archive though incase anyone does need them.

 

[ludnix]

A club member getting out of the hobby sold me their stash of equipment as a lot. Among them was a pair of stainless steel bone cutters from BRS. They had seen better days but I love taking the rust off tools. Granted I spent about 20 minutes working them and they only cost $15 so I probably just about break even on the cost/time analysis but giving them new life is a reward of it's own. I used a wire-wheel on the drill press so I could avoid using any chemicals that might eventually make it into the reef tank.

What do you guys do to keep these from rusting? I was thinking of filling a pitcher of RO and rinsing them in that after use, then drying as well I can and leaving them on top of a hot light or something to drive off any remaining moisture. Apart from using a heated tool drawer like the fancy woodworkers have, I'm not sure what else to do.

 

[ludnix]

Talk about a glow up! Don't give up on the bleached and sickly corals. If there is flesh there is hope.

May 25th 2019

November 5th 2020

The Caulastraeas in the first photo photo were moved to my frag tank where they have grown quite a bit as well. I'm happy to see the progress in these photos as the day to day is very difficult to discern.

 

[ShepherdReefer]

Welcome to my build thread for my current tank, the office 120g.

I had a fairly detailed build thread for my last 50g cube. When I was convinced to buy a local members 120g reef tank I ended up migrating all my livestock over to this new tank. Being at work has added a new set of challenges that I have not had to battle with reef keeping previously, simply being related to limited time with the tank. At home I had so much more free time to keep things perfect and do a little thing here or there between chores. The work tank though has taught me discipline and I am starting to see it's effects so it's time for a proper build thread to keep this momentum going.

Let's start off with some FTS shots of where it's at currently.

This tank is currently heavily overstocked with corals and anemones. There are several duplicate specimens that I am planning to sell off so I clear some more space and scape the rocks more to my liking. The Turquoise Rock flower anemones are extremely prolific to a fault. I am hoping to reduce their numbers soon as well so my corals have a little more of a chance.

Looks great.

 

[ludnix]

Some more November 5th photos:

 

[ludnix]

I took an update video since I figured that would cover more ground a little faster!