So I was ready to start talking a little about the reef-controller I've been working on for the last 9 months or so, and I sought some clarification from RC admins about whether I ought to post about it online.

Turns out that since there's a (small) possibility I might want to make this commercially available, the answer was "Don't do it", unless I'm certain I'm going to release it for free. Yeah, I know, there's a million-and-one reef controllers out there, where's the...

Things may appear to have been quiet on the Western front, or chez nous, anyway... Not really [grin].

The major work at the moment is going into the software driving the controller, and since I only want to announce that when it's finished, y'all are gonna have to wait... I'd say I'm getting closer now - it's maybe 60-70% done. Another couple of months would do it, if we weren't about to greet our first child! So probably now another 6 months out...

There's some more...

So, it may seem that there's been no activity on any front for quite a while now, but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. I'm hard at work, hacking away on two main things:

[U][I]1) Lighting:[/I][/U]

The design is finished, and I've cut the aluminium to size for one test 'pod' to cover about 2' square, drilled the holes for each LED, tapped out the screw threads, and it's ready to assemble/wire. What's put this a bit on the back-burner was a teensy mistake...

So, off to the airport again for the live-sand, shipped straight from the seabed, since they didn't have any in stock last week. Monday gathering and shipment for a Tuesday delivery. Not bad.

Of course, adding the sand to a running tank was ... a mess, and the inevitable sandstorm makes a mockery of the crystal-clear water we could see before, so now it looks like:

[CENTER][IMG]http://www.0x0000ff.com/imgs/fishtank/blurry-mess.jpg[/IMG] ... [IMG]http://www.0x0000ff.com/imgs/fishtank/signs-of-life.jpg[/IMG][/CENTER]...

We're finally starting to get there... Yesterday afternoon I ordered 25 lbs of cherry primo picked live rock from [URL="http://www.liverocknreef.com/liverock/index.php?l=product_detail&p=7921"]liverocknreef.com[/URL] as a seed for the BRS rock already in the tank. This morning it arrived at the airport, so off to pick it up and here's what it looks like:

[CENTER][URL="http://www.0x0000ff.com/imgs/fishtank/lr_ll.jpg"][IMG]http://www.0x0000ff.com/imgs/fishtank/lr_sl.jpg[/IMG][/URL]...