A.J.'s 125 gallon reef

[jaa1456]

THought your pics were in order, didn't know you had them out of order. I saw the Naso in your last pic.

 

[Anthony.Luciano710]

well they are in order exept for the last pic which i was just showing how bad of an algae problem i had in the past.

THought your pics were in order, didn't know you had them out of order. I saw the Naso in your last pic.

 

[BobNY]

I have always waited at least a month between fish additions.
Jaa gave you some good advice on making a stocking plan and sticking to it.
I have a pair of clowns in QT now for my 125 that is almost set up. They will live there until my DT is ready for them. When they move to the 125 I will get my next addition and keep in the QT for 6 weeks....and so on. It will be a long process getting to my final stocking list, but the tank will have plenty of time to mature slowly with every addition.

 

[Anthony.Luciano710]

6 weeks of hypo salinity? cant you just do two weeks of copper or are you doing it on purpose to add the fish slowly?

I have always waited at least a month between fish additions.
Jaa gave you some good advice on making a stocking plan and sticking to it.
I have a pair of clowns in QT now for my 125 that is almost set up. They will live there until my DT is ready for them. When they move to the 125 I will get my next addition and keep in the QT for 6 weeks....and so on. It will be a long process getting to my final stocking list, but the tank will have plenty of time to mature slowly with every addition.

 

[BobNY]

6 weeks of hypo salinity? cant you just do two weeks of copper or are you doing it on purpose to add the fish slowly?

Six weeks because that is plenty of time to observe the fishes health and make him strong. If it has ich then you need at least 4 weeks for hypo, then some time to slowly bring the SG up to the level of your display ank. After that I would still want to keep it there for a while to make sure the disease is gone and that it is fat and happy berore moving it. That would probably more than six weeks.
The benefit to all of this is your display tank has plenty of time to mature as you slowly add to its bioload.
I'm not sure if others do it this way, but it has worked well for me in the past.

 

[IamRobG]

That looks much better than the first picture you had up

 

[Anthony.Luciano710]

just got some stuff in the mail for my led project.
theres a 72x12 piece of aluminum 72 cree xp-e royal blue leds, 72 xp-g cool white 8,500k leds, and all i have so far is 72 65 degree lenses for the whites because 70-80 degree lenses for the blues don't come out until next month so i already paid for them. its just a matter of waiting now. also the fans are really cool. i paid $4 each and they are nicely built and work pretty good for the price. the drivers are 12 of the eln 60-48D drivers and they wont be in until the middle of February so when im done building this all i need to wait for is the drivers. i am going to be dimming the leds with my reefkeeper and an alc plugged into it.

 

[pauliwalnuts]

Very nice Anthony. I love this kind of stuff, make sure to fill us in on all the details.

 

[Anthony.Luciano710]

got a refractometer today. so far i really like the quality and its even easier then using a hydrometer because all you do is put a couple of drops of water with a pipette and with a hydrometer you need to get your hands wet and dump the thing in and then level it and stuff.

 

[Anthony.Luciano710]

ohhhhh im so sad and pissed off at the same time. my favorite fish the powder brown tank died. and it wouldn't of happened if my refractometer would've came in yesterday. ok well heres the story. since i have ich ive been doing 5 gallon water changes every day with ro/di water to bring the salt down. this peice of junk hydrometer said my salt level was still at 1.014 so i did another 5 gallon water change and waited about an hour then tested again and it was showing the salt as 1.012 so i did another one to finally bring it down to the 1.009 that i wanted for my hyposalinity. i saw him breathing fast but i thought it was just because i did a water change and he was nervous but today i go over to the tank to test out my new refractometer and i see him behind a rock upside-down. and i got so sad and i didn't know what it could be because my water was fine. so then i took him out then tried out the new refractometer and the salt level was 1.006. i was so mad i threw the hydrometer at the floor and cracked it because that stupid thing is what killed my favorite fish. then i went to check the 10 gallon that i put all my coral and inverts in since i was doing hypo and it said 1.020 and i had been wondering why my sps were dying and now i found the answer. the salt was to low but i guess theres nothing i can do now except continue taking care of the other fish which im surprised didn't die. probably because they are more hardy.

 

[pauliwalnuts]

Sorry to hear of your loss.

 

[Anthony.Luciano710]

ahhh i had some more disasters but there all nothing compared to the good news. my temp went down in the main tank because of the cold weather and no heat in the tank so i couldn't risk losing the fish so i had to chance it and put the coral tank heater in for a little while and then the temp of the coral tank went down to 63 degrees and i lost a frogspawn, and a toadstool, and a few zoas and some sps coral, i didn't know what it was called. but the good news i guess is that i still havent had time to start building my leds but i plan to start on thursday so today i was bored and i wanted to see what the lights would look like so i took out a blue one and set the power adapter to 4 volts and then made the wires touch the leds and i was amazed... it was so bright it blinded me for a few minutes. i couldn't even see the numbers on the reefkeeper and it was only 1 led that i tested. it was harder to look at then that 216 watt t5 fixture i had. so now im more anxious to make them because i cant wait to see what it will look like. oh and also i ordered a 30 gallon sump/refugium that should be coming in within the next 2 weeks.

 

[pauliwalnuts]

Nice, I'm also a big fan of refugiums.
Wich one did you pickup ?

 

[Anthony.Luciano710]

i got it custom made from ebay for $196 with insured shipping and everything. its 30" long 14 3/4" thick which i did to fit perfectly in my stand and i made the first chamber 9" to fit my skimmer. if you go on ebay and type refugium you will see all the listings with the dimensions and everything so just click the one thats closest to what you need and then send the seller a message of the dimensions you need edited of you can just tell the from scratch but for this one i just needed to edit the first chamber and the overall width. it didn't come in yet so i cant tell you how good it is but the seller has 100% feedback ratings so im sure it will be fine but ill put up some pics anyway when i get it.

Nice, I'm also a big fan of refugiums.
Wich one did you pickup ?

 

[pauliwalnuts]

Wow, that sounds nice. Don't forget the pics when it comes in. I'm really anxious to see what it looks like

 

[Anthony.Luciano710]

so far the fish are doing good in hyposalinity. i had some coral deaths from the temp dropping in their tank but nothing major. the acrylic covers are bending from the humidity but i dont even want them on my parents made me keep them on because we lost about $100 worth of fish from jumping out. but here are just some pics i took of it right now. the new refugium should be in next week and i will start building the leds tomorrow hopefully.

 

[BobNY]

Glad to hear the fish seem to be doing well.

You may want to look into building screen tops for your tank.
Here is a link in case you haven't come across it yet.
http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/diy-do-yourself/77035-tank-cover-building-demonstration.html . Instead of using pond netting you can get clear 1/4" netting from Bulk Reef Supply.

 

[Anthony.Luciano710]

ok i started the leds. there not glued yet but ill do it sometime next week because i need my dad to help me because he said he wants its perfectly measured and every one in line with each other and all i did was place it and use a piece of wood to make it straight so i need to wait for him to help measure it and stuff. then we have to solder the hard wire he got from work. and then i think we are going to build a canopy to place it in. because hanging it from the ceiling would make it look ugly with like 50 wires coming out of it. oh and it will be dimmed usng the mean well drivers connected to the alc module of my reefkeeper.

leds from rapid led
72 CREE XP-E Royal Blue 3W LED on star - $6.75
72 CREE XP-G R5 Cool White 3W LED on Star - $7.00
72 65 Degree CREE XP-G Lens/Optics (white) - $1.25
72 70-80 Degree optics for the blue. no price yet and they didn't come out yet. i paid 80 cents each pre order and the will ship them when the come out but im not sure what the price will be when it hits the store.
72x12" .190" aluminum sheet $92.83 from http://www.metalbytheinch.com
fans i just got from amazon. all 3 for $14 there usb laptop coolers but they work good
the wire my dad got from work. its hard wire so its easy to bend and will stay in place
reefkeeper alc dimmer - about $95
12 meanwell ELN-60-48-D drivers $22.50 each i think they raised the price now http://www.cdiweb.com/ProductDetail/ELN6048D/368096
6 tubes of thermal glue - about $35.00
the soldering gun and stuff i already have so i didn't need to buy that. and i will be building a canopy for it to go inside. we were originally going to hang it from the ceiling but there will be to many wires on top and coming down that it will look ugly.

 

[pauliwalnuts]

That's one long fixture. So far so good.

 

[PIOTR]

That's one long fixture. So far so good.

Pauli so far not so good. All I hear I lost this and I lost that. Where are the parents. REALY he loses livestack all over and now he is talking about geting seahorsees. Please somebody stop him from killing more corals and fish.