My fully automated in wall 220. Visible from two rooms

Brett S · Nov 28, 2020

It’s been quite a while since I updated this thread and I just cleaned the glass, so I figured it would be a good time to get some pics.

Very little has changed with my equipment or automation lately. Everything is still highly automated and still working very well. I can go days or even weeks without having to touch the tank (although the glass definitely needs to be cleaned after that). The one new thing is a 40W Pentair UV sterilizer that I added last night, but it’s too early to see any results from that.

Here are some gratuitous pics of the tank and some of it’s inhabitants:

Brett S · Dec 9, 2020

Big lightning changes are happening. I’ve been using the same gen 3 Radion XR30 Pro’s over the tank since it was set up nearly 5 years ago. I’ve debated upgrading the lighting on and off, but it was a big expense and I wasn’t sure it that I could do much better than the lights that I had. However as part of the WWC cyber Monday live sale I wound up winning a Gen 5 XR30 Blue.

I still wasn’t sure about upgrading my lights, but I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to test a new light in my tank with my own eyes since I had the light whether I wanted it or not. I picked up the new light from WWC and I rented a PAR meter from one a local store on the way home.

The short version is that the Gen 5 lights are a huge upgrade from the Gen 3. They provide more PAR than the Gen 3 light. The light penetrates deeper and it is much more evenly spread. With the Gen 3 light set to the AB+ spectrum and at 100% and the Gen 5 Blue light also at 100% I’m seeing at least 1.25 times the PAR everywhere, and around the edges at the bottom of the tank the PAR is nearly double. This is also with diffusers on both the Gen 3 and Gen 5 lights.

At the mid tank level, with the Gen 3 light the corner of the tank was only getting 1/3 of the PAR that the I was seeing at the same depth under the center of the light. With the Gen 5 light the corner of the tank is getting 3/4 of the PAR that I’m seeing under the center of the light at the same depth.

Overall the spectrum actually looks whiter (less blue) than what I was seeing with my Gen 3 lights set to the AB+ spectrum. It also seems to look slightly greener to me. This might be because I was using the Apex with the WXM module to set the spectrum and they don’t have an AB+ setting there. Instead I was using the custom option to set the individual channels to match what was shown in the Coral Labs document. It’s possible that something was lost in the translation and I didn’t have the AB+ spectrum exactly right.

Interestingly, I actually like the slightly whiter spectrum. I don’t see a huge difference in the way my corals look, but I think that either the whiter spectrum or the more even distribution of light actually makes the colors of my fish pop much more than I was seeing under the Gen 3 lights. I’m seeing colors and details on my fish that I have literally never seen before.

I had experimented with different spectrums with my Gen 3 lights before and one thing I struggled with was that while I liked a whiter spectrum it was kind of a compromise because as I moved toward more of a white spectrum I tended to lose some of the pop from colors of the corals. With the Gen 5 lights I’m definitely getting more of a white spectrum than I had, but my corals aren’t losing any of their pop or coloration.

I wound up buying another two Gen 5 XR30 Blues to replace my Gen 3 lights. Here are the new lights inside the hood. (You can also see a bit of the new Pentair 40W UV sterilizer that I added a week or two ago above the lights)

It’s hard to show how much more evenly the tank is lit in pictures, but here are a couple of shots of the front and back of the tank under the new lights.

Brett S · Dec 16, 2020

I’ve started dosing nitrates to the tank because I realized that my nitrates got down to 0. I have also decided to dose sodium hydroxide (lye) in conjunction with soda ash as my alkalinity supplement in order to combat low pH at certain times. I’ve noticed that when more people are in the house the pH in the tank plummets and I figure that lack of stability can’t be good for the corals. So to that end I purchased a new DOS pump and DDR. One of the new pumps will dose nitrates and the other will dose sodium hydroxide. The apex will be configured so that when the pH is in a good range it will dose soda ash, however, when the pH is low it will dose sodium hydroxide instead.

The DOS pump I have been using for calcium chloride and soda ash had been installed under the tank above the sump.

However, I have come to learn that this is not a good place for it. It’s hard to see in the picture, but the entire thing is covered in a thick layer of salt residue. So I decided that I needed a new place to install the dosing pumps. Here is my new dosing cabinet:

This cabinet is next to my frag tank, which is next to my sump, which is under my display tank, so it’s not too far from the tank. I started by cleaning all the salt residue off of the original DOS and moving it to the new cabinet, along with the new DOS:

Next I added a shelf so I could store supplements on the bottom of the cabinet and my two DDR’s will be above them.

Then I ran all the cables and tubes and added nice labels, since I have four reservoirs and four pumps now I figured labels would help prevent me from accidentally putting the wrong supplement into the wrong reservoir.

The lye and the mixing jug for it don’t arrive until tomorrow, so tomorrow I will be adding the lye and finishing the programming to allow the apex to select the correct supplement to use based on the pH.