My 75 Gallon Reef build

[b4tn]

In addition to the above update I have made some new additions. I finally was able to find a one spot Fox face locally. My yellow tank beat on him pretty good the first couple days but they seem to have worked things out now and he is getting adjusted.

I am sure I will get yelled at but I don’t quarantine. One day if I move tanks I may treat the fish. I also added an emerald crab that has been going nuts after all the dead bubble algae.

On that note I have officially stopped treating with vibrant. I did a water change this weekend and treated with some chemi pure to get rid of all the cyano caused by the vibrant. But no trace of bubbles . I’m going to do an experiment and run without the skimmer or algae scrubber for awhile and monitor my nutrients. As they start to climb I will get the scrubber back online. I’m debating if I’m going go skimmerless or possible run the skimmer for gas exchange and just let it constantly over flow.

 

[b4tn]

First with the bad. I stopped treating with vibrant and I’m not sure if I did it to quick or if it’s the from the chemi clean treatment but I have some of my corals turning brown. I tested nitrate which is normally 0 and it read 20ppm. I’m hoping some water changes and my scrubber will bring it down soon and they recover.

On to the good part. Had a local frag fest today and picked up 5 new frags for $40. Not sure what they are but one looks to be a blue colored milli. The other 4 frags I’m not sure. On the table they where brownish with deep pink tips. Under my OR lights they are just green. Hopefully they will color out the way I was expecting.

 

[b4tn]

I got Nitrates under control! Water changes where not cutting it so I got my turbo aquatics scrubber running up to full speed again along with my skimmer. My Lime green acro is slowly returning from an ugly brown back to green again. All new SPS additions are currently thriving save for the spathulata I recently got at the frag meet. Turns out it is one of the most difficult to keep corals and I dont think I have the right kind of lighting for it. Who knows it may bounce back but its not looking promising. In addition, I got a PAR meter from my local club. I did some measuring and got some readings. I think I am pretty happy with the numbers and it explains a lot in regards to growth patterns.

 

[ngoodermuth]

Spathulata like clean water, lots of flow, and lots of light. They also need steady- eddy alk... don’t do well with big swings.

Tank is looking good, your par numbers aren’t too bad. Could always add a little more rock to that right side if you wanted a few more “high” spots?

 

[b4tn]

Spathulata like clean water, lots of flow, and lots of light. They also need steady- eddy alk... don’t do well with big swings.

Tank is looking good, your par numbers aren’t too bad. Could always add a little more rock to that right side if you wanted a few more “high” spots?

Thank you!

The spathulata is the little frag at the top. Its in the brightest point of the tank and also the place with the most flow. At the time my PO4 and NO3 are all 0. I dose in small increments throughout the day so my alkalinity stays at 8.4 dkh pretty much at any given point in the day. I started it low and worked it up to the top over a few weeks but looks like I am getting TN on the bottom, I am crossing my fingers but not counting on it.

 

[b4tn]

And I am back!! Its been a crazy Spring/Summer. We decided to buy a house which meant the reef had to be moved. I decided to do a complete reboot. All my rock was bleach cured and I am now bare bottom. My initial cycle is complete and now the wonderful wait for maturity

 

[b4tn]

Gotta love the new tank uglies! An all snail cleanup crew is on its way

I am super stoked!! This water mixing station has been sitting unfinished for almost 3 years. When we moved I almost threw it out. The glued pipes where all messed up and crooked and it had several leaks. Something made me lug it along and I finaly took the time to have another look at it. I was able to salvage most of the plumbing and only had to buy a few extra unions. The only issue is I did not want to spend a chunk of change on a new pump. I had a spare Jecod DCT-7000 pump I was not using but did not have and could not source the connections required to run it external so I re designed things for it to run internally. Kind of sucks becuase I will not be able to pump out the bottom of the can and will have to clean the pump more often but it will still be easier than mixing individual 5 gallon buckets all the time.

Clear hoses on the sides tell me the water level.

Valve 1 provides gravity fed RO water from the 40 gallon Brute for top off jugs.

Valve 2 stays closed until I need to fill the 30 gallon Brute to mix salt water.

Valve 3 turns out is not needed. The idea was to close it when I need to open valve 4 to fill mixed salt buckets but Valve 4 pumps out when 3 is open and closed.

The Valve 3 and 4 circuit continuously circulates mixing the water inside the can.

 

[jk_s124]

Just read the whole thread. Thanks for sharing! You have some clever ideas and great set up. Hope the new house and reboot work out for you.

 

[b4tn]

Just read the whole thread. Thanks for sharing! You have some clever ideas and great set up. Hope the new house and reboot work out for you.

Thanks! I love DIY projects.

 

[b4tn]

No more buckets back and forth from the laundry room! My RODI water mixing station is done. Getting the RODI installed on the adjacent wall proved to be challenging. Especially with the right space of a column style sink. But I managed to get it plumbed in with no leaks so far and hidden.

 

[b4tn]

Over the years my black boxes put out great PAR, corals including SPS grew great, and best of all they were reasonably priced but something was missing…. Everything felt washed out looking and did not give a very vibrant look. I started messing with nutrients feeding different foods, dosing amino acids, etc nothing seemed to give coral the vibrant look I was trying to achieve. I can’t for the life of me remember where but about a year ago I found a fair comparison of black box's to premium LED's. I have always been one to jump on the blackbox bandwagon, I mean who wouldn't with the proven growth and cheap price! Another good video comparing the two can be found on the BRS Channel

In a nut shell Black box LEDs will grow coral, they will give you the florescent look we all love, they will put out heavy PAR, and you have usually two channels to adjust the visual appearance. What they don’t do is they don’t blend the colors well, the PAR is not evenly distributed, they are missing parts of the spectrum important to coloring things up, and the LED's used are low quality. I was always under the impression that an LED is an LED but I never took into account quality control. When you get luxeon or CREE LED's you are paying for precise instruments so to speak that are within a specific spectral range and lower quality LED's just do not have the same tolerances. I like to make the comparison of harbor freight tools. You can buy a very cheap tools there that will do the job and work until you really put them to the test. But if you pay a premium for say snap on tools you are getting a solid tool that will take a beating and still work for years to come. That being said the reason I was not getting the pop I wanted was mainly the fact that I was missing parts of the spectrum.

I went to the closest thing I could consider a LFS and they were running Kessil and Ecotech lighting. It was then and there I decided I needed to come up with a better lighting solution! So I came up with the following solutions.

• Buy a pair of Ecotech Radion G4 Pros with light diffusers
  • At $908 each plus a $100 controller… ouch!
• Go to ebay and buy replacement LED’s to swap into my current Ocean Revive units attempting a better spectrum.
  • This would give a better look but PAR and blending would still be an issue.
• Keep my existing Ocean Revive but add T5 supplemental lighting to the front and back
  • While this was the cheapest tried and true method I have never seen it in person, I really don’t want to have to regularly replace T5 bulbs, and I really despise aquarium hoods which would be a requirement.
• Make my own DIY LED to my exact specifications
  • Again I would have to make a hood. By the time you buy the name brand LED’s, meanwell drivers, controller, and enclosures you are still sporting a hefty price tag and have a rat’s nest of wiring.
• Buy some “premium” branded blackboxes.
  • There are a lot of good options out there. But you still run into the LED quality control issues, lack of support, and in many cases by the time you buy enough for proper coverage you are getting close to $1000 for blackboxes that may or may not still benefit from adding T5’s
• Last option buy a “boutique” LED. I say boutique because its usually designed by reefers, somewhat DIY, uses quality bined LED's, but has everything a reefer could want in a light.
  • Still expensive but not Radion expensive. But you also dont get the tried and true light that's trusted across the industry.

After hours of research and watching videos I decided on a Boutique LED. I bought my wife a diamond ring and picked up a pair of ReeFi Extreme LED’s. Still expensive compared to blackboxes but with the current #ReeFiLove sale they came to $1300.00 for a pair. For comparison the XR30 Pro pair with diffusers and controller in my BRS cart came to just over $2000.00. Since I had given myself a $2000 budget I used the saved money to buy a full spectrum PAR meter and had $300 extra to go towards a bigger diamond for my wife, Win Win lol. I am beyond excited to try these lights out. Now the wait for brown santa.

ReeFi LED Duo Extreme – ReeFi Lab

www.reefi-lab.com

 

[b4tn]

So far so good! I am extremely happy with the new lights. I still need to work on a better mounting option but I was able to use my existing brackets that I made for the Ocean Revive lights. I drilled new holes in the brackets and removed the hanger bolts from the reefi lights replacing them with long screws from Ace hardware. I think in the future I am going to buy the 2040 wall mount arms from reefi https://www.reefi-lab.com/product/2040-wall-mounts/

At the original mounting height of 12" above the water I was getting a ton of light spill in front of the tank so I lowered the lights until I was not getting any more spill which ended up being about 9.5" off the surface of the water.

The Reefi lights are infinitely configurable so I am just using one of the default schedules tweaked. Since I have a mixed reef I wanted to shoot for SPS PAR levels on top with some shady spots and lower light spots on the bottom. All measurements are using an Sq-520 full spectrum USB par sensor on my tablet.

Prior to installing the lights I took several readings under the ocean revive lights. These lights where running 20% on the white channel and 90% on the blue channel. In my mind that's pretty close to maxed out for intensity vs visual appeal. the reading at the highest point in my reef with the OR lights was 191 PAR. Once the reefi lights where installed and height adjusted I started with the default SPS setting and took my initial readings at the lights scheduled peak which is 162 watts. I took a reading at the highest spot of my reef and was getting 450 PAR! Thats more than double the PAR and the lights where not even turned up all the way.

At this point I did not have any SPS on top the rocks and was only working with the low light SPS, LPS, and Zoas I transplanted from my old reef. So had to come up with a lighting plan. The plan I came up with was to lower the power of the lights to match the Ocean revive lights and get a baseline of what my existing corals where used to. Raise the power and adjust them to where I ultimately want them to be 300-350 on top and 150-200 on the bottom. And finally put the lights in acclimation mode so that they would start off approximately where the old lights left off and ramp up over 30 days. This picture is taken under the Ocean Revive lights. The par numbers in red are OR numbers and PAR numbers in Green are Reefi numbers at 122 watts.

I don't have a picture with numbers but to get 350 par at the middle highest point with reefi lights my peak wattage was 152 watts. I used the default SPS setting and dialed each channel at all points back in equal proportions till I got the reading I wanted. The only thing I changed was I tweaked the color a little adding a touch more cool white and lime to get a look I liked. I put the lights in acclimation mode to start at 70% ramping up to 100% in 30 days. With the lights in acclimation mode I was getting around 170 PAR at my highest middle point. Its been 20 days and so far all my LPS are happy. My war corals exhibit PE during the day now and my Duncan is loving life! Here are some pics from last night. un corrected in the SPS photo mode.

They are hard to spot in the pic but I have added some tiny frags. I have never had this happen before but all the SPS frags had polyps out within 30 minutes of being dipped and added to the tank. In the past Acros would grow but I never saw PE unless it was at night or I was feeding. I have added the following frags:

Rainbow delight Acro
Jason Fox Grape Juice Acro
Battle Corals Ponape Rainbow Acro
Rainbow Nasuta Acro
Green BirdsNest
Mystic Sunset Monipora
Bubblegum Monster Chalice

Some other technical notes. I have upgrade my reef-pi to version 3.0 which has some pretty nifty new features. This was a pretty big step for me. I have been running version 2.4 now for sometime and it worked! I was reluctant to update my production pi but the upgrade was smooth and opens me up for future projects like PH monitoring and more power outlets.

Lastly on the husbandry side. The reef is 4 months old so still lots of maturing to go but I am starting to get blood red coraline and tiny spots of purple. I am doing 5 gallon water changes weekly and looks like my alkalinity consumption is pretty steady at .35 dkh a day for the time. I am using reef-pi for dosing and have been going very slow only dosing 10ml of BRS soda ash a day and 5 ml of calcium chloride. I read the article by @Earl Karl https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/corre...and-nutrients-n-and-p-from-my-experience.738/ and have decided to keep this reef at 9.2 dkh. Due to the fact that I have a running algae scrubber, skimmer, filter sock and a couple hundred pounds of live rock I have always had issues keeping my nutrients up. For this reason I always ran alk on the lower side at 8-8.2 dkh.

I never really had a feeding regime. I always fed a pinch here and a pinch there when I remembered. I have tried dosing nitrate with no luck so decided to measure out my feeding and feed consistently. My algae scrubber is online and growing GHA but its on its lowest light setting (25% intensity) for 10 hours reverse cycle. I took N and P readings yesterday and I am getting 4-5ppm N and .08 P. My feeding schedule looks like this.

Daily
1/4 tsp Newlife spectrum pellets
One large pinch of Newlife spectrum flakes
1/4 tsp coral frenzy

Weekly
One cube frozen
1/4 sheet of nori

With this feeding schedule I am getting more algea on my glass than I like and having to scrap daily sometimes twice daily so I ramped up my scrubber to about 40% and will see how things look after a week or so. My goal is to keep my nutrient levels close to 5-10ppm N and .02-.1 P

And to conclude this update Here is a shot of my Duncan. Picture was taken with a Canon EOS Rebel T6. The white balance has been corrected with the included software and @danlu_gt filter from reefi

 

[Earl Karl]

So far so good! I am extremely happy with the new lights. I still need to work on a better mounting option but I was able to use my existing brackets that I made for the Ocean Revive lights. I drilled new holes in the brackets and removed the hanger bolts from the reefi lights replacing them with long screws from Ace hardware. I think in the future I am going to buy the 2040 wall mount arms from reefi https://www.reefi-lab.com/product/2040-wall-mounts/

At the original mounting height of 12" above the water I was getting a ton of light spill in front of the tank so I lowered the lights until I was not getting any more spill which ended up being about 9.5" off the surface of the water.

The Reefi lights are infinitely configurable so I am just using one of the default schedules tweaked. Since I have a mixed reef I wanted to shoot for SPS PAR levels on top with some shady spots and lower light spots on the bottom. All measurements are using an Sq-520 full spectrum USB par sensor on my tablet.

Prior to installing the lights I took several readings under the ocean revive lights. These lights where running 20% on the white channel and 90% on the blue channel. In my mind that's pretty close to maxed out for intensity vs visual appeal. the reading at the highest point in my reef with the OR lights was 191 PAR. Once the reefi lights where installed and height adjusted I started with the default SPS setting and took my initial readings at the lights scheduled peak which is 162 watts. I took a reading at the highest spot of my reef and was getting 450 PAR! Thats more than double the PAR and the lights where not even turned up all the way.

At this point I did not have any SPS on top the rocks and was only working with the low light SPS, LPS, and Zoas I transplanted from my old reef. So had to come up with a lighting plan. The plan I came up with was to lower the power of the lights to match the Ocean revive lights and get a baseline of what my existing corals where used to. Raise the power and adjust them to where I ultimately want them to be 300-350 on top and 150-200 on the bottom. And finally put the lights in acclimation mode so that they would start off approximately where the old lights left off and ramp up over 30 days. This picture is taken under the Ocean Revive lights. The par numbers in red are OR numbers and PAR numbers in Green are Reefi numbers at 122 watts.

I don't have a picture with numbers but to get 350 par at the middle highest point with reefi lights my peak wattage was 152 watts. I used the default SPS setting and dialed each channel at all points back in equal proportions till I got the reading I wanted. The only thing I changed was I tweaked the color a little adding a touch more cool white and lime to get a look I liked. I put the lights in acclimation mode to start at 70% ramping up to 100% in 30 days. With the lights in acclimation mode I was getting around 170 PAR at my highest middle point. Its been 20 days and so far all my LPS are happy. My war corals exhibit PE during the day now and my Duncan is loving life! Here are some pics from last night. un corrected in the SPS photo mode.

They are hard to spot in the pic but I have added some tiny frags. I have never had this happen before but all the SPS frags had polyps out within 30 minutes of being dipped and added to the tank. In the past Acros would grow but I never saw PE unless it was at night or I was feeding. I have added the following frags:

Rainbow delight Acro
Jason Fox Grape Juice Acro
Battle Corals Ponape Rainbow Acro
Rainbow Nasuta Acro
Green BirdsNest
Mystic Sunset Monipora
Bubblegum Monster Chalice

Some other technical notes. I have upgrade my reef-pi to version 3.0 which has some pretty nifty new features. This was a pretty big step for me. I have been running version 2.4 now for sometime and it worked! I was reluctant to update my production pi but the upgrade was smooth and opens me up for future projects like PH monitoring and more power outlets.

Lastly on the husbandry side. The reef is 4 months old so still lots of maturing to go but I am starting to get blood red coraline and tiny spots of purple. I am doing 5 gallon water changes weekly and looks like my alkalinity consumption is pretty steady at .35 dkh a day for the time. I am using reef-pi for dosing and have been going very slow only dosing 10ml of BRS soda ash a day and 5 ml of calcium chloride. I read the article by @Earl Karl https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/corre...and-nutrients-n-and-p-from-my-experience.738/ and have decided to keep this reef at 9.2 dkh. Due to the fact that I have a running algae scrubber, skimmer, filter sock and a couple hundred pounds of live rock I have always had issues keeping my nutrients up. For this reason I always ran alk on the lower side at 8-8.2 dkh.

I never really had a feeding regime. I always fed a pinch here and a pinch there when I remembered. I have tried dosing nitrate with no luck so decided to measure out my feeding and feed consistently. My algae scrubber is online and growing GHA but its on its lowest light setting (25% intensity) for 10 hours reverse cycle. I took N and P readings yesterday and I am getting 4-5ppm N and .08 P. My feeding schedule looks like this.

Daily
1/4 tsp Newlife spectrum pellets
One large pinch of Newlife spectrum flakes
1/4 tsp coral frenzy

Weekly
One cube frozen
1/4 sheet of nori

With this feeding schedule I am getting more algea on my glass than I like and having to scrap daily sometimes twice daily so I ramped up my scrubber to about 40% and will see how things look after a week or so. My goal is to keep my nutrient levels close to 5-10ppm N and .02-.1 P

And to conclude this update Here is a shot of my Duncan. Picture was taken with a Canon EOS Rebel T6. The white balance has been corrected with the included software and @danlu_gt filter from reefi

I sort of didn't mention this in my article, but be wary of pH. I didn't really mention pH since the pH of the experiment I have done was constantly around 8.2-8.4 (or even higher), so I didn't pay too much attention to it until I realized that many people struggle to keep pH up.

Alk. correlates with pH obviously, which means corals can't utilize the carbonate (CO3) to create their skeleton (CaCO3) as well if pH is too low than if pH was optimal. There are ways, but few, to raise pH.

Ca and Alk. also are in balance. So when you dose Soda Ash (NaCO3) and CaCl2, aka 2 part, you want to dose both at equal parts. Otherwise, you will run into imbalance issue with Ca and Alk. So, if you're going to dose 10 ml of soda ash, you should dose 10 ml of CaCl2, since corals take in 1 part Ca and 1 part CO3 to build their skeleton. I would also try to dose this throughout the day (if not doing so already), acros need stability.

NO3 should be lower IMO. PO4 is perfect. NO3 should be 10.5x higher than PO4. Ex. if PO4 is 0.1 ppm, NO3 should be 1 ppm as this creates 16:1 N to P ratio (also have to take other N sources like NH3 in consideration).

In the end, don't go chasing numbers as it creates complications and isn't super duper necessary in order to achieve success. But if you can handle it, you should try to aim for the best. Good luck with your tank.

 

[b4tn]

I sort of didn't mention this in my article, but be wary of pH. I didn't really mention pH since the pH of the experiment I have done was constantly around 8.2-8.4 (or even higher), so I didn't pay too much attention to it until I realized that many people struggle to keep pH up.

Alk. correlates with pH obviously, which means corals can't utilize the carbonate (CO3) to create their skeleton (CaCO3) as well if pH is too low than if pH was optimal. There are ways, but few, to raise pH.

Ca and Alk. also are in balance. So when you dose Soda Ash (NaCO3) and CaCl2, aka 2 part, you want to dose both at equal parts. Otherwise, you will run into imbalance issue with Ca and Alk. So, if you're going to dose 10 ml of soda ash, you should dose 10 ml of CaCl2, since corals take in 1 part Ca and 1 part CO3 to build their skeleton. I would also try to dose this throughout the day (if not doing so already), acros need stability.

NO3 should be lower IMO. PO4 is perfect. NO3 should be 10.5x higher than PO4. Ex. if PO4 is 0.1 ppm, NO3 should be 1 ppm as this creates 16:1 N to P ratio (also have to take other N sources like NH3 in consideration).

In the end, don't go chasing numbers as it creates complications and isn't super duper necessary in order to achieve success. But if you can handle it, you should try to aim for the best. Good luck with your tank.

@Earl Karl thanks for pointing that out. I can honestly say that I have not tested PH in a very long time. At my old house I had issues dosing kalk due to an already high PH in my supply water. We only moved a couple miles down the road so I don’t expect it to be much different but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

 

[b4tn]

One thing that has always bugged me was the center brace. It casts a huge shadow and really limits the upper portion of the tank for high light corals. Some day I will spring for a nice reef ready rimless tank with euro bracing... but for now here is my solution. I won’t lie this made me nervous as all get out. But you can see the shadowing the center brace causes.

I used the thickest plexiglass I could find at Home Depot and some nylon screws. I cut the piece first then did a test fit.

Next was to drill the holes. The center brace was much thicker than I thought. After drilling holes I did another test fit

the scary part was cutting the center brace out. I braved it with a clamp and used my jig saw to cut it out.

last I put a dab of superglue on each end and bolted them down. It was. very floppy feeling but I specifically drilled the holes with no play so it would be a perfect fit.

I was happy to see when I removed the clamp there was no additional outward flex! The floppy feeling was gone and it for sure has tension on it. Now I need to figure out a better way to make my screen tops.

 

[b4tn]

I made my screen top from 1/4" mesh ordered from amazon. I think it was $11 for a sheet big enough to make 3 tops. I went he same route as my old tops just bigger.

The only change was I used 1/4" thick weather seal and set it on top of the main frame. This way I had a 1/4" gap in the back for cords. The screen top I had before had cut outs and they never did very well at sitting flat.

The only minor issue I am having is due to the length the aluminum rails tend to flex making it difficult to get the screen top taunt. Someday I may dissemble it and put a little bit of a pre-load bend in the rails to see if that helps but its not a huge deal. I used the PAR meter to test before and after the screen and am getting about 5 PAR loss which is not terrible.

I think I am going to look into either making or buying an acrylic rimmed screen top like the ones sold by clearview lids.

 

[thaistalyn]

The tank is looking great. That mesh top looks very professional. How are the corals adjusting to the new lighting?

Also another question based on reading some of your notes from your #reefpi build. For the Hiletgo relay board you wired up it needs both DC+ and DC-. How did you get the DC- (GND) over to the outlet box? It looks like you just used a 9-pin DB9 which only has enough wires for inputs 1-8 and the VCC (DC+).

 

[b4tn]

The tank is looking great. That mesh top looks very professional. How are the corals adjusting to the new lighting?

Also another question based on reading some of your notes from your #reefpi build. For the Hiletgo relay board you wired up it needs both DC+ and DC-. How did you get the DC- (GND) over to the outlet box? It looks like you just used a 9-pin DB9 which only has enough wires for inputs 1-8 and the VCC (DC+).

Thanks! I actually used a DB15 connector. It looks just like a DB9 but has more pins.

Amazon product

Here are some resent shots under the new lights.

 

[Ranjib]

Are you dimming these lights with reef-pi?

 

[b4tn]

Are you dimming these lights with reef-pi?

No, I’m not even sure it has outside control ability. The lights have a pretty extensive web based app that works really well as is.