Ben and Rosies 300g 4x4x2.5

[bdinnerv]

Originally Posted by LX20000

Why are the rocks up in the air?

The main reason - why not?

The other reason - the tank is 2.5' deep so to make it easier to reach everything we spaced the rock work up about 6inch

[DivingTheWorld]

Very interesting build! I was thinking with the floating island you could really blast the flow under and around the island to prevent detritus build up. But with sand you can't really do that. Looks cool though and will definitely make it easier to reach in.

[bdinnerv]

Wiring and all things electrical are progressing. Last weekend I got started on the main wiring, getting the PDU, a few of the power bricks, the main cable runs and 2 of the lights in.





I managed to find some black wiring conduit (which is surprisingly hard to find here for some reason) which just happens to be the same height as the gap above the euro bracing on each side so I ran a strip between each of the lights and also down the side of the tank to hide the light cables and also the power head cables.





The PDU really is making life easy as far as connecting everything and also controlling it.

And until tonight, all the cabling was nice and tidy but I added to heaters, a Raspberry PI, an Arduino and a Wi-Fi access point into the mix and need to go and tidy that up now.





On the software front, I could not get the heaters in until I had got the Arduino and Raspberry talking to each other with a Atlas Scientific RTD temp probe and circuit. I have spent the last few nights stuffing around with processing serial messages and then interfacing with the PDU over SNMP and finally got all that working tonight which was a relief. Basically, the RTD board is hooked up to an Arduino board which takes a sample every 30 seconds then pushes it out over Serial. The Raspberry connects to the Arduino board via USB / Serial and then there is a java app that consumes the data and figures out if the temp is to high, too low or just right and then communicates with the PDU over the network via SNMP to turn the appropriate ports for the heaters on and off.

I have also got logging of temp and a few other things working and am also working on the dosing pump control interface which should be done later this week.





The tank is cycling at the moment - we went with Dr Tims but it seems to be taking a few days to kick in, hopefully any day now it will be cycled - fingers crossed.

[bdinnerv]

There has not been a whole lot of progress to update on of late. We started a Dr Tim's fishless cycle 14 days ago and since then we have not seen Ammonia drop.

On day 1 we put in a 16oz bottle along with an extra 4oz bottle and added 300 drops of their ammonia chloride and then left the tank for a couple of days. On day 3 as per the instructions we added another 300 drops and then left it to simmer again.
The next day I started taking tests with a API Ammonia test kit and got a reading of 2ppm so didnt add any more Ammonia, expecting it to drop off by the next day.

Next day came around and we are still reading 2ppm - oh well, must be a slow starter, wait another day.

Every day since then, we have been getting a reading of around 2ppm on the API kit - I thought there must be something wrong with the test kit so took a water sample to the LFS and they got a reading of approx 0.25 on a Salifert test kit - YEY!!!!! Ammonia is down!

At this point, I was in 2 minds about putting some fish in there to keep the cycle going or doing the last phase of the Dr Tims and adding another 300 drops and then waiting until Ammonia is down to 0 - I decided on the latter and as it seemed my test kit was a dud, went out and and picked up a new RedSea Ammonia test kit. Get home, test the water again with the RedSea kit and it is reading about 1.2-1.5ish - ***????? I grab the API kit and test my other tank and it gives a reading of 0 (which it should!) so the API kit seems fine. Run a test again with both kits and still get a reading of approx 2 on the API and 1.2ish on the RedSea so it would seem the Salifert kit at the LFS was a dud - lucky I tested again instead of putting fish in.

We are now 13 days into a Dr Tim's cycle and am still getting 1.2ish on the RedSea kit - here is the test from this morning:


2 days ago I also added another 2 4oz bottle of Dr Tims One and Only.

The tank currently has 3 x large Marine Pure Bio blocks, 16 x small (2inchx2inch) MarinePure bio blocks and approx 85kg (190lb) or Marco rock along with approx 30kg / 65lb pf CaribSea Arag-Alive Hawaiian black sand. We filled the tank up with RO with a 0 TDS reading all the way through along with 40kg of AquaForest Reef Salt.

Speaking with Dr Tim and the local importer, they are saying they think the CaribSea sand is causing ammonia and also pointing the finger at the AquaForest salt saying it will be leaching ammonia. I kind of get it about the CaribSea (it is a live sand and anything that is live can become dead and hence decay and cause ammonia) but also think that if it were the cause, why are we not seeing spikes, why are we seeing the exact same reading day in day out - ammonia does not go up or down so I am thinking there is something else wrong.

Now I understand that the first 2 rules of marine tanks are "Be Patient" but I spent a lot of money on a few bottles of "Dr Tim's Dont be Patient" so am starting to get a bit frustrated with this process. Hopefully any day now we start seeing ammonia drop.

[bdinnerv]

Yey! we finally have a cycle going. Took a reading last night and ammonia is down to sub 0.5 and nitrites are up over 5ppm so just need to wait now for the nitrites to drop and then look at a water change to clean up the resulting nitrates and then we can get some fish in - any day now.

[bdinnerv]

There has been a lot of progress over the last few days.

Ammonia hit zero about a week ago but Nitrite was still up pretty high so we decided to wait it out. I gave up on the testing for a few days and then Thursday did a test and whalla - Nitrite is down to zero. Next test was Nitrate which was down to 6ppm - Yey, not only can we get fish in there, but we can also start moving some of the coral in.

Easier said than done! We have been trying to catch the fish out of our old tank for a few days now. So far, we have managed to catch the Tomato Clown, Leopard Wrasse and Lawnmower Blennie, with the 2 tangs still to come.




I started moving some of the rics over, initially placing some on the sand - man I do love the contrast the black sand gives to the colour of the rics, but then decided to move them up on to the rock work.









I also moved a couple of rhod's over and some duncans.




I am really going to enjoy this rock when time comes to start moving and putting in SPS - all the holes and texture make it so easy to place coral!

On the tank setup from, things are still a bit of a mess underneath as it progresses. I picked up a Tunze 3155 Ozmolator and 60L acrylic tank for ATO the other day and that quickly went in - I had planned on making my own ATO but got a good deal on this pair so thought what the heck.

I have also moved the heaters over to a solid state relay instead of being driven off the APC Switched PDU - the PDU has mechanical relays in it and after logging the on off events, I realised that there was a switching event on the heater circuits every 6 or so minutes and that the mechanical relays would soon wear out. So I knocked up a SSR circuit and added a second Arduino to the mix and made some software changes and now have the heaters being driven on a SSR - the added benefit is it also allows me to move the heaters off the UPS - the heaters are the single largest power consumer in the whole tank so moving the heaters off to mains power will massively extend the run time in the event of a power outage (it does not get that cold where I am and I would prefer to have a cooler tank that is circulating for a long time than a warm tank that is circulating for a very short time) .

The control side of the system has had a few updates both software and hardware wise. There is still the Raspberry PI main controller but there are now 3 arduino boards interfacing to it over USB / Serial. The main board is running all the Atlas Scientific probes on a Whiteboxes Tentacle Shield / Board. The board is running Temp, Salinity / Conductivity, ORP, Dissolved Oxygen and PH. I did a full calibration on all the sensors but I think the conductivity is reading a bit out so will have to do it again.

The sensors are all located in a little quad bracket that I 3d printed the other day.



The second arduino board is for the heater controller and any other general purpose IO I may need down the track. I have a couple of float switches I need to wire in which will be done on this board as well as a few solenoids etc for water changes still tho come.

The 3rd arduino board if dedicated to the dosing system. There are currently 4 channels running on it but I have enough IO on the arduino to wire in many more if needed.



I spent most of the day testing and fine tuning the dosing system, making sure all the math was right as well as getting the UI done.



The UI allows you to set how much you want to dose per day on a per pump basis, calibrate each pump, say how many times a day you would like to dose (taking the daily dose amount and dividing it by the number of times a day) and also prime the pumps. After a lot of testing, I sent it live today with AquaForest Component 123+ , the 4th channel is free at the moment.

In addition to dosing, the tank is now live with AquaForest Zeo, Carbon and Phos (had to go FaunaMarin on phos as the AF stuff is ludicrous expensive when you can only get the 5lt bucket) so will keep a close eye on it and see how things go.

Next step will be to clean up all the new wiring that is underneath as well as make up some cases for the various control boards.

[bdinnerv]

cont...

Last but not least, a few cleanup crew went in - we picked up a couple of sand sifting stars, Nas snails, throchus snails and a coupe of hermit crab - we will add to all of these over the coming weeks as e increase the load on the tank.





For the moment, we are just going to focus on getting the last fish out of the old tank and moving the coral over and then we have a bunch of fish in quarantine that will be going in in about 2 weeks.

[bdinnerv]

It has been a busy few days once again, moving fish and coral over as well as getting some new coral for the tank.

We got the Tomato Clown, Leopard Wrasse, Lawnmower Blenny and Sailfin Tang moved over pretty quickly but the Nigricans Tang proved to be very difficult to trap. We tried a couple of different traps but he was too smart to go all the way in to any of them. Last night, we finally moved the last of the coral from the old tank tot he new tank which meant we could break up the rock work - I moved it all into one corner of the tank and 2 minutes later after a bit of chasing we managed to net the Nigricans and get him into the new tank.

Next step on the fish front will be to move the guys who are in quarantine over. There is a Sohal Tang, pair of Kuiters Leopard Wrasse and a Colini Angel who will be ready to move over at the end of this week - am really looking forward to seeing the Colini in the new tank especially with the rock shelf setup we have which should create a great environment for him.

Last but not least was the addition of some new coral. We are going to try and take it slow on this front, with an approach of getting smaller pieces and letting them grow into the tank which I feel gives a better look and feel down the track but means your tank looks a bit barren for a while.

Here are a couple of the new pieces we picked up -







The last piece I saw on Saturday in the store and decided against getting, but couldnt stop thinking about it all night so went back out Sunday and grabbed - it is the coolest lavender / purple colour and for a monti has the greatest patterning on it I have ever seen I just had to have it!

I also broke out my DSLR with the macro lens on it and got some close ups in the new tank -

[bdinnerv]

This 10 image limit is a pain . . . .











We changed over to AquaForest Probiotic salt last weekend also and have had a bit of a bacterial bloom since the change (did a 10% change) and just waiting for that to clear up and will then get some whole of tank shots

I feel now that we finally a tank up and running - there is always plenty of work to do but it is a little less stressful now, especially that we have got the fish over!

[Rene Obergfell]

is that black sand?

how do you like it?

[bdinnerv]

Originally Posted by Rene Obergfell

is that black sand?

how do you like it?

Yes we decided to go with black sand - we had seen a LFS try it in a nano tank and really liked the contrast it provided - it seems to make all the colours look much more vivid.

We went with CaribSea Hawaiian Black Arag-Alive sand - for no particular reason than it was all we could get in black - it caused some issues with cycling which eventually sorted them self out.

Now that it is in, we love it, we do not have much coral down in the sand yet but between the fish and the coral that is there to black really does provide that background you want for a colourful tank.

[Rene Obergfell]

I'm really thinking on it. I've used white for 15 years....
I want a change.
Is it hard to keep clean?

Your system looks incredible!
Incredible piece of furniture

[bdinnerv]

Originally Posted by Rene Obergfell

I'm really thinking on it. I've used white for 15 years....
I want a change.
Is it hard to keep clean?

Your system looks incredible!
Incredible piece of furniture

So far I dont think it is any harder to keep clean - the process of cleaning is the same and to be honest you see less on the black sand so it doesn't look as dirty - you just need to make sure you clean as you normally would.

With that in mind though, and due to the way the rock work is, we have a couple of small power heads down low in the tank to keep water circulating over the sand and through the rock work overhang, have added some sand sifting star fish (2 so far, more to come) and will be adding a number of gobies to the tank to keep the sand turning over and clean. As there is no rock work resting on the sand, the gobies can go to town and do what they want with the sand without upsetting the rock work.

Thanks for the praise!

[bdinnerv]

Here are a couple more close ups of some coral we added the other day. It is slowly starting to come together.

[bdinnerv]

Also have a couple of front shots - the great thing about a 4x4 is that there really is no front, there are 3 in our scenario





And also got this one which was very happy with -



I had done a test with a RedSea kit and couldn't believe the result, then our Hanna Checkers turned up and gave the same result, now just need to make sure we keep it there! Someone has mentioned that I should look at getting a Phosphorous test kit which you can then apply some math to to get more accurate / low range results with so will need to look into that.

[bked120]

Great looking tank! I love the dimensions and the floating island. The black sand really gives the tank some depth. Great job!

[wowkingjames]

I love your set up!

[bdinnerv]

I finally pulled my finger out over the weekend and got down to the hardware store and picked up the materials for doors for the cabinet / stand.

I have kept it pretty clean and simple in line with our old AquaReef 395 with the simple clip on / magnetic panels - went with 16mm MDF and will epoxy paint them.

I got them cut to size over the weekend and in place, just need to sand and paint now.



I will hopefully get that finished this week and then the stand is finished, leaving some cabling work still to go underneath.

We also received a delivery of 18 aqua cultured SPS frags from Sustainable Reefs the other day -



I dont have shots of them in the tank yet as am still deciding on where all the final resting places will be which should also be done later this week but man, are there some great colours here! Here are the samples from the supplier -







We are pretty much fully stocked on the coral front now (a couple of more deliveries coming later this week) - we have taken the approach of mainly getting smaller pieces and frags and then letting them grow into the tank rather than getting large colonies so now it is just a waiting and maintenance game.

Will get more pics of the tank once all the coral is in its spot and also when the doors are painted.

[sfsuphysics]

So how do you like the Ethereal LEDs? I saw them at MACNA, but finding it very hard to find anyone who's using them on tanks. Plenty of reviews from aquarium blogs but those you have to take with a grain of salt anyways

[saf1]

Thought I read somewhere about various probes and temp sensors being too close to skew readings (interference maybe)? I know my 2000 model Neptune back with the X10's stated this. May not be an issue now.

Nice tank btw.

[bdinnerv]

Originally Posted by sfsuphysics

So how do you like the Ethereal LEDs? I saw them at MACNA, but finding it very hard to find anyone who's using them on tanks. Plenty of reviews from aquarium blogs but those you have to take with a grain of salt anyways

They have been really good to date Mike - we had 2 of them on our old 4x2 and we loved the look of them - the mounting system is nice and clean and works with euro braced tanks well. As far as lighting for coral goes, they were really good too - we had great growth and coloration on all coral including SPS - I cant compare them to any other lights as I have not tried too many others but we were happy enough to go and double down and put 4 of them on the new tank.

The control app is pretty good and lets you control setup some nice light profiles and also comes with some good base maps to start with. Hard to fault really.

Lets see how they go in this tank though - it is a bit deeper than the old one and a bit more SPS dominated. Time will tell .

[bdinnerv]

Originally Posted by saf1

Thought I read somewhere about various probes and temp sensors being too close to skew readings (interference maybe)? I know my 2000 model Neptune back with the X10's stated this. May not be an issue now.

Nice tank btw.

I used the atlas scientific probes with the Whiteboxes arduino board which includes electrical isolation on each individual circuit which is meant to remove this issue - I did however calibrate and test each sensor in isolation and then in the complete setup and there does not seem to have been any skew of readings so the isolation seems to be doing its job.

And thank you

[NEPTHEA]

love the cube

[bdinnerv]

Here is a quick video update on the tank after a couple of months. We havr been battling various algea and cyano issues and also had a alk ossue which led to some drama with sps but we feel we are getting on top of things now.

[maddmaxx]

link doesnt work