n2585722

It will be six months since I added water to the tank on the 22nd of this month. The latest thing to happen was an outbreak on cyano. It appears to be declining. I added some cheato to the refugium section about 3 weeks back. I think that may be the major reason for the decline. I have a light that I purchased from BML that is for lighting the refugium. They have got out of the aquarium lighting business since my purchase. This is a shame since the light appears to be of good quality. It is running at about 70%. This is a photo of the tank taken this morning.

As you can see from the photo the rock work has been changed. I am still not finished with it. I still plan on doing a little more on the left side. I am doing it slowly. The Nyos cement I am using can cloud up the water. I figured if I stretch it out over a few weeks it will be less stress on the system. Below is a photo from yesterday . In it you can still see some of the cyano on the left side of the tank. A few days back it covered the rocks to the left. I have added a few more snails of various kinds since tha last update. I have not added any more fish at this point. I did find a zoanthid polyp of some kind loose in the sand. I guess it was in the sand I got from a local fish store. I had a plug so I glued the polyp to it. It is my first try at this. The polyp is opening up so hopefully it will make it. I guess it must be a tough one if it lasted this long.

At this point I have the lighting set at 50% blue and 45% white. While on the subject of light I got out the meter and checked the lighting at various levels. Since I am closer to 50% the listing for that is first below. The top is just above water level. The ledge is at the rock ledge in the center of the tank. The bottom is on top of sand in center of tank. the corner was at the far left corner at the bottom. These were taken with an Apogee meter.

50% ..... Blue ..... White ..... Both
Top ..... 544 ...... 297 ........ 820
Ledge ... 227 ...... 118 ........ 335
Bottom .. 137 ....... 78 ........ 220
Corner .. 55 ........ 49 ........ 100

100% .... Blue ..... White ..... Both
Top ..... 895 ...... 493 ....... 1427
Ledge ... 383 ...... 200 ........ 597
Bottom .. 222 ...... 127 ........ 344
Corner .. 102 ....... 83 ........ 180

The fixture has 6 neutral white LED's running at a max of 1.5 amps, 6 royal blue LED's running at a max of 1.5 amps, 6 royal blue LED's running at a max of 1 amp, 4 UV LED's running at a max of 700ma. There are 2 RGBW LED's that are running at 700ma each. The red string has a deep red LED added and the Green string has a lime green LED added. At this point I only have two control outputs The blues and UV's are on one control output and the reset are on the other output which is labeled white. I do plan on adding more control outputs when they become available. Both outputs are PWM outputs which is what the drivers I am using are controlled with. The drivers are in sockets on the circuit boards so they can be changed out if needed. There is a circuit board with a 12 volt input for strings with less than 3 LED's and a board with a 24 volt input for strings of 4 to 6 LED's. Most of the LED's are Cree LED's. It is a DIY fixture which was made to be able to change out or add LED's if needed. This was the original reason for this tank. It was for experimenting with LED lighting, but since I started the build there has been lots of improvements in this kind of lighting. So if I were starting the build today then I would just pick one of the fixtures that is already available. That is about it for now. Since the tank is still fairly new I am not in any hurry to add any corals.