130g Reef Build with Shadowbox

[OctopusesGarden]

Originally Posted by 426Hemi

Looking great. I love the shadow box look, and the sand only area is a great idea.

Thank you! I appreciate it. We wanted to give it that look of "the drop off" from Finding Nemo....where the reef ends and the sand begins. I need a small rock to put on the flat rock so there is more of a transition to it.

[OctopusesGarden]

Lighting update:

I found that Ecotech is releasing their second generation XR30W (called the G2) at the end of November, and it will put out 50% more light than the "G1", and will be priced at $649. I'm going to go with two of those, and keep my AI Nano light for the middle of the tank to fill in the light gap, if it exists. I'm impressed with what the little Nano light puts out, even in a deep tank like this. If I end up not needing the Nano, I'll sell it with the 24g nano tank it was lighting.

Skimmer update:

I ordered a Reef Octopus xs160...can't wait to get it going. With the live sand and live rock, I never saw a spike in Ammonia, even after adding the livestock (small amount that we have, anyway). I do see a small amount of Nitrate, so that tells me the live sand and rock are doing their job very well. Also, added some chato in the refugium to help get rid of Nitrates.

[OctopusesGarden]

Lighting update:

I found that Ecotech is releasing their second generation XR30W (called the G2) at the end of November, and it will put out 50% more light than the "G1", and will be priced at $649. I'm going to go with two of those, and keep my AI Nano light for the middle of the tank to fill in the light gap, if it exists. I'm impressed with what the little Nano light puts out, even in a deep tank like this. If I end up not needing the Nano, I'll sell it with the 24g nano tank it was lighting.

Skimmer update:

I ordered a Reef Octopus xs160...can't wait to get it going. With the live sand and live rock, I never saw a spike in Ammonia, even after adding the livestock (small amount that we have, anyway). I do see a small amount of Nitrate, so that tells me the live sand and rock are doing their job very well. Also, added some chato in the refugium to help get rid of Nitrates.

[OctopusesGarden]

My two Radion XR30w G2 lights will arrive today! Can't wait to get them! I designed a $30 rail / track system that will allow me to move them around for the best positioning, and will let me move them out of the way for maintenance. I will upload pics later today after they are installed. Until now, I have temporarily been using an AI Nano from my nano tank, and my corals have been doing great! I didn't expect that! I will continue to use the AI Nano to fill in light between the Radions if there is a visual gap.

The Reef Octopus skimmer is doing great, but i'm still finding that valve sweet spot.

Our powder brown tang is in a QT for the second time, due to what i believe is ich. This time I did an RO/DI freshwater dip for 5 minutes, and then put him in a QT with coppersafe. The visible ich was gone off the fish in minutes. He is acting and eating great in the QT. i'm not really sure how long to leave him in there. My clowns, diamond goby, and Bangi Cardinal are all doing great and never exhibited signs of ich, so they were left in the DT. After hours of research on treating and preventing ich, there seem to be two conflicting schools of thought redgarding ich. One group of people say ich is always in the water and a fish is either immune to it or not, usually based on stress levels (poor water quality or harrassing fish, neither of which I have). The other people say that ich will not be in the tank after 6-7 weeks of all fish being removed, due to the lack of a host. I'm not a marine biologist, so I'm not sure what to believe. If only there were an ich test kit!! Ha! I figure i will leave the tang in the QT for a month and put him back in the DT again. If he gets ich again, he's on his own to fight it off, as I'm tired of dismantling my live rock to catch him. Maybe garlic-soaked food would help, but I have read that ohas never been scientifically proven to help.

[OctopusesGarden]

Got in the new Ecotech Marine Radion XR30w G2 LED lights, and all I can say is WOW!!! You could land a plane with these lights. I don't have a PAR meter, but the photos I took of the tank were taken in manual mode so that I could match the photo to what it looks like in person.

I designed a very simple rail / track system so that the lights can slide left to right, and the whole track can move front to back. This allows me to position the lights wherever I want, and I can slide the whole track back toward the rear of the tank when I need to clean algae, move rocks, put in new livestock, etc. I used angle aluminum from Home Depot. It takes four 1 1/8" X 4' pieces at $6 each, so this is VERY cheap to do. I will tie back the power cords later, but will allow some slack for the movement of the lights. It took about 10 minutes to build the whole thing, and the front to back rails are resting on the wood strips that the canopy uses to rest on the top of the tank. Aluminum is held together with JB Weld SteelStick (in the process of using it right now, so I'll report back later if it fails).



Holy cow these are bright! I was seeing spots for a while after taking a quick look at them.

[OctopusesGarden]

If you have more than one Radion light, you can put them into a group and specify a time offset between them. This allows you to see a sweeping sun up / sun down affect and for sweeping cloud cover modes. Here is what it looks like around 10pm, when the left light is out completely (it's cycle ends at 10pm), and the right light is trailing behind by 30 minutes, so it too will be dark at 10:30pm.



Some people will argue that sun up / sun down features are just gimmicks that the livestock doesn't care about, but I don't agree. If a fish or invert senses that it's getting dark, they have plenty of time to find a hiding spot and get comfortable, just like in nature. We've seen that behavior with the gradual sun down, and it's pretty neat. I would much rather have a gradual transition than a 100% lights off timer. That has to spook the livestock a little! Same thing for sun up...just seems more natural and thus less stressful on everything.

I'm using the Natural mode, which mimics the sun rising and setting, all the while changing the color spectrum to match what hits a real reef throughout the day. I really like the teal look it has in the evening. The cycle starts at 8am, and I haven't been home at that time to see the "sun up" part of the cycle yet. The software is pretty good, but has its quirks as any software does. I tried the online version, which is in beta right now, and it doesn't appear to offer any features that the computer software offers, and I think a computer has to be connected to one of the lights in order to use the online version of the software. I don't have a spare computer to put near the tank, so right now the online version doesn't do much for me. I'll stick to programming it via USB and then unplugging it when I'm done. You can invoke demo modes from the light's touch-sensitive buttons anyway. Now, if you could join the lights to your wifi network and make them truly wireless with no USB requirements, I'd really like that. I could change the schedule or invoke demo modes from my iPad or iPhone without having to connect any USB cords. Another cool feature would be to show where the light is in its cycle throughout the day (RGB value, brightness, etc.). That is a nice feature that AI offers and I looked at it frequently on my AI Nano when I was using it.

[fridmani1]

I was looking to build a similar type rail system for my Radions. I went with thicker aluminum because I was afraid of flexing. Do you see and flexing with your rails? The thicker rails are about double the cost.

I was thinking to drill through the rails and attach from top to the fixture. Your idea to lay them on top is interesting.

Your tank looks great BTW.

[OctopusesGarden]

Thanks! I don't have any issues with flexing...seems to be very stable so far, and the aliminum just looks cool! I wanted to avoid a fixed location for the lights, since it's so much easier to work in the tank when the lights are slid out of the way. If that really isn't an issue for you, your idea to mount the lights to it sounds great.

Thanks for the reply!

[knight2255]

Great job on the tank... shadowbox, aquascape, leds all look awesome.

[OctopusesGarden]

Thanks a lot! I appreciate it! I need to add some more livestock. I'd love to some schooling fish.

[Spirofucci]

I like this build, the shadow box idea is great!

[OctopusesGarden]

Here are the latest pics of the tank.

[syedjilani]

Any updat of your beautiful tank. Love to know more about shadowbox.