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A 320 Gallon Build my dream tank


cbellm

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Thanks for the response Puffdragon. I decided to go with a T5 grow light I found cheep on Amazon. I will post some pictures later.

On other news: Success!! Finally!!

 

So long story short I have had to change some things around, since building this tank I have a had poor growth, high coral loss, and overall I have been frustrated. I got a par meter 6 months ago and found out I had horrible par values thought the tank so over about 2 months time I increased them to having a Par of 300 at the top of the rock work.

Also I realized that may salinity was off. I left for the army for a while (something I would like to attribute to me absence) and before I left I got a salinity probe. I calibrated it 2 times and noticed it was reading low, however I used my refractometer and it would read 35-36. As soon as I got back I purchased 2 calibration solutions.... IT WAS OFF! my tanks has been running at 32ppm the past year at lease. It is now back to 35.

 

Lessons learned:

1) barrow, or buy a par meter!

2) use 2 methods of checking your salinity (2 calibration solutions to reference your meter, or salinity + conductivity)

3) LED's can grow coral (something I was starting to doubt HAHAH)

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Thanks for the response Puffdragon. I decided to go with a T5 grow light I found cheep on Amazon. I will post some pictures later.

On other news: Success!! Finally!!

 

So long story short I have had to change some things around, since building this tank I have a had poor growth, high coral loss, and overall I have been frustrated. I got a par meter 6 months ago and found out I had horrible par values thought the tank so over about 2 months time I increased them to having a Par of 300 at the top of the rock work.

Also I realized that may salinity was off. I left for the army for a while (something I would like to attribute to me absence) and before I left I got a salinity probe. I calibrated it 2 times and noticed it was reading low, however I used my refractometer and it would read 35-36. As soon as I got back I purchased 2 calibration solutions.... IT WAS OFF! my tanks has been running at 32ppm the past year at lease. It is now back to 35.

 

Lessons learned:

1) barrow, or buy a par meter!

2) use 2 methods of checking your salinity (2 calibration solutions to reference your meter, or salinity + conductivity)

3) LED's can grow coral (something I was starting to doubt HAHAH)

 

I think Salinity was the biggest issue you had. Kind of sucks it took this long to find.

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I agree salinity was a big part, however par on the bottom was only 25-29 par when the lights were at 50% once I put them up to 75 the par started to increase drastically.

As always its multiple variables. Nothing is easy! :angry:

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So I updated the lighting on my refugium and all seems to be going well. I have had a few days off this week and took some time to build a light. I used a 4 foot 6500K t5 grow light I got off of amazon for 30 dollars (I got 2 of them). I had some extra L shaped aluminum pieces over from building the dock last summer which I cut and built a frame. The lights seem to put off plenty of light. I guess we will see the only quantifiable results so far is there are have been less swings in my pH over the past 3 days per my APEX and that I have had a slight increase in pH by about 0.5 (not from Alk as it has been at 8.0 consistently I have tested it each day at the same time each day. The part of the new fixture I like is that I can raise it off the water to over 4 foot so the mangroves have some space to grow

 

Here is a pic of the fuge light.

 

_DSC0794.jpg

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  • 5 weeks later...

Been doing a lot of work on the tank lately, Since I have been home I have had some time to play around and have been able to really start getting my tank in order for SPS growth. Thank you to Brandon from premium, Jeremy from Modern, Dustin and Stefan for all the frags my first big stocking of the tank. I got a fewure "starter" frags of Acro to make sure things were going well, now I am starting to look for some higher ends items.

 

I have had in increase my 2 part dosing substantially, so I have had to upgrade the way I am doing things. Since I am gone for prolonged periods of time, I have been searching for a way to make sure I know when to refill my containers, and have bigger containers. Below was my solution. I connected the box below to my apex breakout box, now it sends me a message to refill my containers about 4 days prior to them running out.

 

First I read about using OXO containers as a storage vessel from forums as well as BRS, I used bulkheads from BRS as well as some old float switches I had laying around from my old top off system (I have no idea how old they are but they are older than my Tunze ATO which I bought 7-8 years ago when I first started to move to my first SPS tank so I am estimating these to be about 10+ years old.

 

Containers hold a little over a gallon each

 

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I used some acrylic which I cut into strips to make brackets to hold to switches

 

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I glued the brackets to the OXO containers and attacked to switched to a breakout box using speaker plugs this was connected to the breakout box.

 

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These are now programmed to send me a text as well as email if one of the containers is running low.

 

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