Donya's 55-Gallon

[Donya]

Today's off to a good start! My light fixture for this tank is near death I think. First the fan, then suspicious bulb deaths, and now obvious whole fixture issues. I noticed lots of flickering yesterday morning (but it went away) and then again in a much more extreme way when it went on this morning. After opening it up, I established that the fixture was only able to support 1 of 2 bulbs in the actinic slots without flickering, so it's not supplying power correctly. I guess that's why I burned through a couple actinic bulbs recently! I thought 3 out of 4 isn't too bad, since it could run for some time that way...and then pop! The remaining actinic went when I turned the fixture back on after putting it back on the tank. So now I have two bulbs again and don't trust their life expectancy as far as I can throw them. So it's been two fixtures of the same brand that lasted just past their warranty period before experiencing problems and were in their death throws shortly after that...not to be repeated. I was sure the first dead fixture was my fault somehow (all rusted inside when I opened it up) but perhaps not. Maybe I just need to go LED and give up the customization aspect of T5. I have never had a single bit of trouble with any of the other LED fixtures I've got, although they're lower intensity than what I would need on this tank. It would be a great opportunity for a DIY fixture, but unfortunately there is no place where I can set up to do soldering and such for something like (not without getting in trouble with the property management anyway), so I'm stuck with off-the-shelf fixtures.

 

[gregswimm]

Ever consider getting a pile of par38 bulbs? I have seen them on ebay for roughly $30 with 1w and 3w chips (I just got an 18x3w; its quite nuts). Many of the sellers do bulk deals too. Just a thought.

What are you planning on doing when your nems go on a war march?

 

[Donya]

Eeerrrgggg....typed out a response 'n then closed the browser with a stray click before it posted. Pro skills! Take two...
 
 

Ever consider getting a pile of par38 bulbs? I have seen them on ebay for roughly $30 with 1w and 3w chips (I just got an 18x3w; its quite nuts). Many of the sellers do bulk deals too. Just a thought.

 
I was seriously looking at those. The marine bulbs I was seeing were more expensive though; and I'd need a bunch on a tank this size to get even lighting. However, that's not so much the main issue for me as that I'm pretty sure I'd need to hang the fixture, and I have no way to do that at present. I need to build something that will sit on top of the tank to do that otherwise I would probably bring the stupid ceiling down. I would have to do that anyway for a pre-built fixture though too.
 
For the moment though I had my hand forced a bit by the fact that I had to retire the T5 fixture completely late last night. Despite my kludge fix for its dysfunctional fan (which actually gave it better circulation and lower temps to the touch than it had with just the internal fan when it worked) it seemed to be headed for a thermal meltdown - which is a scary thing I do not want to have happen if I step out of the house. So, I scavenged an under-sized Marineland doublebright from another tank, but that will only buy me days at most rather than a few weeks that I would've been able to do with 2xT5HO since it doesn't even light the whole tank. So...it was a bit of a cop-out, but super late last night I ended up going for a plug 'n play with legs LED fixture with a 3 year warranty on it (price happened to be marked down a lot too; lucky time to spot it). Obviously it wasn't the most money-efficient option, but TBH if it can pull itself through its warranty period then I would have no complaints about it and it would make a nice eventual upgrade for my other systems. It will also buy me plenty of time to investigate better options at a more relaxed pace so I'm not running a race between researching/building stuff and getting light to my critters. The T5 fixture picked the worst possible time to do this on me; right in the middle of a two-week period that I knew ages ago would be a frantic mess. Murphy's law I guess.
 

What are you planning on doing when your nems go on a war march?

 
Hopefully to catch and move them! That's what I did with the one that went for a walk already. It's in another tank right now that has no other Coelenerates except for a few Aips. If any of the other three clones in this tank go exploring, I will be trying to catch them to go in that other tank as well since it would actually be a lot easier to propagate them in there and it seems a good strain for that. Most of the other corals in this tank are also possible to move, and it actually proved pretty easy to just shift things out of the way to accommodate that one wandering nem from last week. Of course, if one of them puffed up into a floating ball of angry tentacles and went rolling around the tank in the style of a little Heteractis aurora I've got in another tank, then there's no defense for that sort of thing. However, this strain of BTAs seems to be a slow mover though that likes to stay firmly attached to something at all times, so I imagine one of them would have to get quite stressed/sick/etc. before it would move at more than the slow crawl I've seen so far.

 

[Donya]

This is turning into the biggest kludge ever while I'm waiting on a new fixture.
 

 
Three lights. One 36" double-bright that is off-center, one T8 hood on a backwards versa top to protect it, and an IKEA bendy clamp light leaning in on the left. The mushrooms on the right are pretty angry, but I know they can deal with a bit of dimness for a few days and the stuff on the left needs the light more.

 

[gregswimm]

I would feed the tank more planktons (zoo + phyto) till the light comes.

Now that is a big urchin.

 

[Donya]

I'm keeping an eagle eye on the params; no problems so far. As soon as I realized the big fixture was having trouble I cut back on feeding and won't be doing anything besides a tiny pinch of flakes once per day for the same reason (no frozen). I'll still have to feed the nems on their regular schedule since they'll need it more now that it's dim, but everybody else can go on a small diet. I also unloaded everything in the in-tank refugium (was casting a big shadow with the kludge lights) and put it in a HOTB thing for now that will get the clip-on light rotated to it at night. 
 
One weird positive thing out of all this: the lower light made a few huge Aips finally moved such that I could paste them. They managed to evade the peps the entire time by living in holes that were too deep.
 
 

Now that is a big urchin. 

 
 
But still a big chicken!

 

[gregswimm]

I would fear everything would starve to death without the light. Live planktons shouldn't wreck the water quality live frozen would (I only feed live plankton). Don't you run cryptic filtration anyway?

 

[Donya]

The light situation isn't as dire as it was when my first fixture blew up. The first time, the tank was just dark and yes, everything would have gone downhill really fast if I hadn't fixed it in 48h. When I've had multi-day power outages I've opened the blinds to give it sunlight for the same reason. I considered doing that this time actually, but it wouldn't get more light really than it's got right now because of where the window is. However, the Marineland double-bright that's on it right now isn't just so that I can see in. I was actually going to use it to upgrade a smaller double-bright that's on my frag tank. The problem is that it's just too short (36" instead of 48") and the tank is also about 2x the depth at which I've had super results with those fixtures. I figure out in the wild there are big storm fronts and stuff pass through that decrease the light intensity, so the tank is getting a small taste of that. It's slightly worse in the corners, but the other fixtures are helping out with that. The double-bright's spectrum, although it looks weird to the human eye on a marine tank and isn't "meant" for marine, has been super for all of the softies and LPS that have passed through my frag tank - so the spectrum is oddly ok, there's just not enough of it for a long-term solution. 
 
 
 

Live planktons shouldn't wreck the water quality live frozen would (I only feed live plankton). 

 
That's the rub for me. I go through too much of it to do it that way and my live cultures kept bombing, so I use cultured concentrate stuff. I've never seen an adverse effect on water quality using that stuff, but don't really want to chance it over the weekend while I'm waiting on the new light. I've had to skip a few days periodically when I've run out of stuff so it won't be too big of an impact.
 
 
 

Don't you run cryptic filtration anyway?

 
 
In fact, I discovered it's actually more cryptic than I thought! I cracked open my smaller canister to change out the carbon and phos yesterday and took a look at the space around the media basket, which I normally ignore. It's turning into a sponge colony. I also pulled some bizarre sponges out of the refugium that I didn't know were there. I kept them submerged while moving them to the HOTB new fuge so they should be ok. I should've taken pics...will have to do after I get the light sorted. They are not pineapple sponges; one actually looked like a bath sponge.
 
Probably something similar is going on in the other canister I've got, but I haven't looked inside in ages. I basically never have to maintain it because I prefilter it and it's got its own CUC-like thing going on in there with enormous Amphipods that keep it from silting up. There might be sponges there now too; will have to look at some point. 

 

[gregswimm]

Ya, that's the sort of awesome stuff you get when you run a skimmerless tank.

 

[Donya]

The new light should be here tomorrow. Test results are still pretty good (zero on ammonia/nitrite, pH holding between 8.0-8.2) , although nitrate has been slowly creeping up the past couple of days, so I'll be doing another WC today to knock it back down a bit. That's really the only difference I've seen so far, getting readings on nitrate that are definitely over 5ppm for a change. It makes sense given that the photosynthesis side of the filtration will have taken a hit. Everything else seems fine still.

 

[gregswimm]

Vinegar dosing will help with the nitrate.

 

[Donya]

Vinegar would also bring the pH down though. The pH usually sits closer to 8.4 for this tank so although it's ok where it is now (8.0-8.2 depending on time of day), there's not much wiggle room if I mucked it up and I'd have to do more WCs to fix it. I thought carbon dosing requires a skimmer though to actually complete the waste removal? Not something I've read much about since I normally do nutrient export via macroalgae. I'm guessing that once the new light arrives the pH will probably go back up again, which would mean more of a buffer zone if I tried something like carbon dosing. Fixture is out for delivery right now...the wait is killing me LOL.

 

[Donya]

Hagen/Fluval Performance LED Marine & Reef 48" on the tank...
 

 

 
I know it doesn't look bright in the first picture (dang camera...I think it's that LED spotlight on the HOTB fuge causing it), but I'm actually quite impressed so far. It's got a good spectrum and it's so narrow that it would be really easy to supplement a tank like this with something like a few par38s behind it as well if I want to do that at some point. Even though it's narrow, it gives good coverage front to back and I don't see the same sort of band of light that the double-bright was showing lengthwise. Now it's just a matter of seeing how reliable it is as time passes I guess! I see the warranty card actually says 5 years, which is more than the 3 years quoted online and a lot more than the standard 1 year warranty that all the T5 fixtures I've seen have had. 
 
So now it's just my frag tank looks like a kludge. It's 30", and the double-bright that I moved from this tank over to it is 36"...oh well. 

 

[Donya]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[gregswimm]

Vinegar would also bring the pH down though. The pH usually sits closer to 8.4 for this tank so although it's ok where it is now (8.0-8.2 depending on time of day), there's not much wiggle room if I mucked it up and I'd have to do more WCs to fix it. I thought carbon dosing requires a skimmer though to actually complete the waste removal? Not something I've read much about since I normally do nutrient export via macroalgae. I'm guessing that once the new light arrives the pH will probably go back up again, which would mean more of a buffer zone if I tried something like carbon dosing. Fixture is out for delivery right now...the wait is killing me LOL.

The amount of vinegar you add has no measurable impact on the pH.  Most people say you can only dose carbon if you have a protein skimmer.  I have found this not to be entirely true.  If you have sponges and clams (anything that will take food at the 1µm range), they will readily consume the pelagic diatoms that come as a result of dosing.
Tank looks good.  Seems your animals are taking to the new light well.