cyano

As many of you know I had decided to do a restart on my tank and correct earlier mistakes/lack of knowledge from when I started my tank 2 years ago. Several of my corals were dead or dying and I had placed corals into my tank that I later realized was a mistake (Xenia, blue clove polyps, ect...) I looped my pump return from my sump back into my sump again, kept the skimmer running, maintained a constant temperature, maintained choeto in the refugium, and kept the biopellet reactor operational to maintain what helpful bacteria I had in the sump to assist in a quick cycle. The sump I have is 35 gallons and the main display is 75 gallons.

I spent all day Friday draining the tank and cleaning the back glass of all the corralline algae


after the back glass was clean I took the time to spray paint the back glass, this was actually only half of one can of paint, I had bought 4 but decided just to use the rest of the first can instead, it came out perfect.


after rinsing the tropic eden reef flake aragonite sand (a step I skipped the first time I set this tank up) I added it to the tank as well as the rinsed MarcoRock and aquascaped. after the temperature and PH had settled into normalcy I was ready to add fish by Sunday (they were very happy) though I have yet to add my entire clean up crew and cleaner shrimp in case of an ammonia spike. I also learned that I needed to get a buch more for my CuC as I found only 4 living reef crabs! Here is the picture I took after adding everything back to the tank still operating under T5's.


I spent Thanksgiving of course with family but I decided taking along my DIY dimmable kit from RapidLed.com would help keep me busy before eating and keep me awake afterward. after I got my LEDs mounted to the heat sink I took a picture and drew up this schematic for how I would run my wiring from LED to LED.


I did not work on the LEDs again until after the tank was finished needing all 3 days off of work to complete the tank and finishing at 9:30 pm Sunday night. Earlier this week I glued the 80 degree lenses to all 48 LEDs the top setup is with the lenses and the bottom is without.


I finally took Thursday before work to wire up the potentiometer for the dimming functions here is the view from the back side after the wiring was complete.


Here is the view from the front. As you can see it has two knobs one for the white and one for the blue.


Today I went to Home Depot and bought the remaining items required for hanging the lights as well as soldering the power wires and getting the rest taken care of. The kit I purchased came with a set of Y hanging kits all I had to do was purchase a wooden dowel rod and a couple eye bolts and they were hung.


Here is a picture finally of the tank with the LEDs in place and running. This is at about 30-40% brightness and my fish are afraid of the shimmer currently so they will have to get used to that.


I hope to be ready within the next few weeks to add corals back into the tank and I will be avoiding all sft corals this time except for potentially some nice Zoanthids.

Thanks guys!