Reef Addicts - Blogs - Snorkeler's Cube by snorkeler

Getting the water params right 2 / On the way to Balling Plus

snorkeler — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:15:36 GMT

Continuing the water parameters story:

14Apr:
At night, PWC (Patrial Water Change) of 40L

16Apr:
Alk 7.4 dKH
Ca 500 ppm
Mg 850 ppm

Added 45 ml of Eco Mg, last drops in the bottle...

17Apr:
At night, added 1 cap of Purple Up (happen to have a more than half full bottle here)

19Apr:
At night, added 10ml of Elos primeline 01.alkali (Ca, Mg and Strontium)

22Apr:
Mid-day, measured and got:
pH 8.2
Alk 8.6 dKH
Ca 500 ppm
Mg 1000 ppm

So, everything seems at the same level, more or less. I don't want to buy and add more Mg supplement for I did that in the distant past with little success, they get quite expensive, and I'm going to start Balling (more ahead).

You know, I'm a little suspicious of these Ca and Mg measurements, in fact that's one of the things that turned me off in water measurements a while ago - it seems so easy to measure wrong. Like, "add 8 drops", ok, but the first drop normally starts forming on the side of the reagent bottle, so, is it the right size? My current Ca/Mg test has an "add a spoon" of a reagent powder, but it isn't a precision spoon and they don't tell you exactly how much to put. My old Mg test was so complex to execute I had the feeling anything slightly wrong would lead to a misreading. Anyway... it is what it is, better with a "less than precise" test than without it...

Balling coming up...

I'm going to be away from the tank for about a week, and after returning I'll go Balling Plus. The Balling System, a concept similar to Randy's Two Part and used very much in Germany, has been in my mind almost since I started the tank but I was never able to find where to buy the parts at an affordable price, nor was I absolutely sure I wanted to do it with my little experience, for it seemed a little advanced.

Fast forward 3 years later, I've got some experience, I found an affordable supplier, I've got a dosing pump and compared to the "add supplement here, test, add supplement there, test, ..." the Balling method seems quite simple.

Just buy the 3 powder mixes, dissolve in RO or RO/DI, start dosing according to instructions (with an automated dosing pump), measure once per week and then start adjusting the dose. Seems pretty simple. Also, if I continue with the low Mg which has plagued my aquarium since I started testing for Mg I can just increase the dose of the Mg solution until it gradually reaches the level I want, then reduce the dose back to "normal".

I bought my mixes from Denilson Bratz for 92BRL (46USD), here is a picture of the three bags that arrived. They are to be dissolved in 3L (A:Ca), 7.5L (B:KH) and 3L (C:Mg), and in normal use should last about 300 days:

When I get back I'll set this up and let's see how it goes. Intending to do a small PWC per week of 20L (8%) in parallel with the Balling Plus method.

Getting the water params right

snorkeler — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:03:49 GMT

Since I got an LFS to do some cleanup and water testing (previous blog post) I've been working to get the water parameters back into normality.

I'll post about it, telling my journey, for I hope others with the same skill level as mine (low...) and also the same time to dedicate to the tank as I have (not much...) can learn from my experience.

In fact, that is half of why I post this blog... it is so easy to read about what the high fliers in this hobby get done (spending considerably more money and time than I want to spend), problem is I'm not one of them and sometimes I long to read the stories of average Joes like me (or being more honest, less than average Joes like me, much less, LOL)... so this blog is my story for the other less than average Joes out there ;-) .

You've read about how this tank got dominated and then saved from aiptasia, green valonia then red valonia. Lots of patience to get where I'm at. Now let's see if I can get the water parameters, specially Mg, back into normality.

Here is the water parameters story so far:

4Apr:
Alk 6.4 dKH
Ca 320 ppm
Mg <850 ppm

Added Alk buffer, 50ml of Red Sea Success Buffer

6Apr:
Alk: 8dKH
Ca: 350 ppm
Mg: 850 ppm

Added 50ml of Seachem Aquavitro Ca

7Apr:
40L (16%) Partial Water Change

Added 50ml of Seachem Aquavitro Ca

8Apr:
Alk 9dKH
Ca 450 ppm
Mg 825 ppm

Added 60ml of Eco Magnesium

9Apr:
Added 50ml of Eco Magnesium

13Apr:
Measured in the morning:
Alk 8 dKH
Ca 500 ppm
Mg 1000 ppm

Added 55ml of Eco Magnesium

At 18:00 did a 10L (4%) PWC.

That's it for now... all parameters seems to be getting into the right values.

One thing I'd add is that this time for my water changes I'm not letting the salt water sit in the container for long periods of time. In the past (1 year ago or more) I'd let the salt water sit in the container for days, sometimes weeks before I used it. I think that was making the Ca and Mg precipitate on the walls, because gradually a thin later or yellowish brittle stuff formed on the walls. In a very old blog post I have a picture of that. My guess is that when I used the salt water it was already low on Ca and Mg. This time I'm not letting it sit for more than 24hs. Maybe that is why this time my Mg is going up quicker than before...

Snorkeler

Had a new LFS come do some maintenance

snorkeler — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 02:12:34 GMT

I decided to test a new LFS that recently opened in the neighborhood, http://www.danisfish.com.br. The guys seem nice and knowledgeable, they have a good set of products for sale, and they are very close, which always helps. In fact, they're the closest LFS to my home.

So I hired them to do a one time tank maintenance, involving general cleanup of pumps, glass, scraping algae off rocks (only a small patch left), doing a partial water change and measuring water parameters. You might ask "why pay for that? you should be doing it!"... yes, I know, but I haven't been able to dedicate time to do it and a little lazy to do all the water tests and cleaning :rolleyes: , so... I normally also learn something from these cases.

So I worked "home office" today morning, and at 11AM they were supposed to arrive. 11:20 and nothing... humm... not good... I call them and to make a long story short they were late because of an emergency at another customer but got to my apartment at 11:40.

Maintenance went well, I liked the way they executed the cleanup. Careful and complete. The return pumps were very dirty :o , and they cleared up a piece of my skimmer air intake which I didn't know needed periodic checking. It started to produce much more bubbles and extract more skimate after that. Just learning that I guess paid the cost of the maintenance... :) That was positive.

PWC was of 60L, of 250L total system, about 24%, more than I normally do. I normally change 20L at maximum.

They took a bottle of water back to the LFS to do the water tests, which is OK but I would have preferred if they had done them at my home. They also didn't send me the results by email, I had to stop by at the end of the day after work and ask, and they didn't seem very organized with my data to be honest... that was negative.

The parameters are bad, according to their measurements, which is what I expected:
Ca: 320ppm
Alk: 6dKH
PO4: 10ppm
Salinity: 1.024

Now, I was expecting them to measure more parameters, which was a little bit disappointing. Lack of NO3 and Mg was a negative point, specially Mg which is a pain to test.

Not 100% sure I trusted the measurements I took out my test kits, a few maybe too old I admit, and tested, resulting in:
Ca: 250 (can't be... that's too low)
Alk: 6.4dKH
PO4: 0ppm (probably not...)
Salinity: 1.023
NO3: 0ppm (probably correct, as my tank has lots and lots of denitrification and little bio load)
pH: 8,4
Mg: <850 (not sure I trust this one, but, I was expecting very low)

Ended the day adding 60ml of Red Sea Success Coral Buffer to try to raise the Alk, and I'll be considering adding other stuff to bring Ca and Mg up later. Just need to decide what products to buy to do that. I have a few leftover Mg and Ca buffers from the past, but since I never succeeded in raising Mg for long periods I'm a little weary to use them.

The LFS guys recommended Tropic Marin Bio Calcium, but I never used it so I'm not sure I believe it will be good.

In the really long term I'd like too have a Balling method setup, but that will need to wait until I get the water back into normal levels first....

Snorkeler

Anenone ate but spit it out...

snorkeler — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 11:15:50 GMT

Yesterday I fed the anemone with a piece of shrimp. All seemed good, it gobbled it down slowly, was looking great after. Today it was looking good too, then 15 min ago I noticed it was all shtiveled up, deflated, and the shrimp piece was lying nearby...

Doesn't seem like any tank mate pulled it out, for the piece is just sitting there and nobody is eating it, nobody is even touching it... not even the mithrax crabs...

Pictures:

The shrimp came from fishmonger only one day before feeding time, it was kept in the fridge the whole time before feeding, it was smelling but after I threw the head away and washed it the smell stopped.... all apparently ok.

Maybe the piece was too big for the anemone?

I'll try again maybe today with a smaller piece....

Any advice from anyone with an anemone?

Snork

Little anemone added

snorkeler — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:08:51 GMT

We got a new tank inhabitant this week, a small anemone!

I had intended to get a slightly larger one but when I was able to go to the LFS it had been bought. They sell fairly quick over here...

So they still had this little guy, which seemed to be healthy, would fit easily in my small tank, was less expensive, almost a bargain (R$100, roughly US$50), so I decided to buy it.

The picture above is about 1 hour after being added to the tank.

Today, one day later, it hasn't moved around yet just "stuck its neck out" a little from the rock crevice it's anchored to, seems like I chose a location it likes.

One caveat, the LFS had a signifiant number of large aiptasias in the tank where this guy came from, so now I'm under the risk of getting aiptasias again (remember, I erradicated them in Nov 2012... ). I asked them to cut down the rock on which the anemone was to the smallest size possible to reduce the risk (I couldn't take just the anemone because it was gripping firmly the rock crevice it was in).

Let's see, if the aiptasias come back it'll be peppermint shrimp season again....

Snorkeler

Attached Thumbnails

Footage of mithrax eating red bubble algae

snorkeler — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 02:49:36 GMT

Here it is:

Mithrax/algae balance and Aiptasias gone

snorkeler — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 23:49:31 GMT

My tank hasn't seen much action lately, I have't been very good on the maintenance, but there is one thing I take pleasure in it: observing the balance between algae and mithrax crabs.

I have two distinct areas with green hair algae, and a few areas now sparsely populated by with red bubble algae. The hair algae grows, then the crabs eat it and you see less of it, the reb bubble sometimes makes gains on a rock, a few weeks later thet are gone, the mithrax ate it.

I'm going to try to post to Youtube an HD video I make in November of the mithrax eating red bubble algae. Some people have doubts if they eat them, well, they do.

It is cool, I like this. A fairly balanced ecosystem. The algae are not getting out of control dominating everything, neither are the crabs starving and dying.

I've kept my feeding well limited, I have found a way of releasing the pellets in the flow of an MP10 so that almost all of the pellets are eaten and very few fall to the floor.

Another thing I'd like to coment about are Aiptasias. Remember I had a lot of them, including in my sump, then I got two peppermint shrimp who ate them all in the display tank,but I still had them in the sump? Well, more or less three months ago I noticed the sump seemd to be aiptasia free. Not sure why, maybe because I spent a few months without lighting the sump except for a little blue leds, so the aiptasias starved? Maybe they're still there, just "hiding"?

Well, in mid movember the last of that peppermint shrimp pair died, and since then no Aiptasias have been found in my tank. I'm observing, I believe they will show up again in the display tank some point in the future, let's see.

Mithrax eat red bubble algae, slowly, but do...

snorkeler — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 10:06:24 GMT

Short note to say that I've obseved one of my Mithrax crabs eating red bubble algae.

I was having the impression the RBA was slowly reducing in the tank, but I wasn't 100% sure. A few nights ago I saw one of the crabs eating it (sorry, no pictures).

But it must be quite nutritious for they are taking a lot longer to get rid of the RBA than they did with the GBA/valonias..... I'm not even sure they will one day eat them all, but I hope so... ;-)

BTW, Galaxea died after 3 weeks in the tank, quite humbling. My water quality must be quite bad in terms of stability.... going to keep it a fish and shrimp/crab only with easy soft corals for now....

Got a Galaxea Green

snorkeler — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 02:02:20 GMT

I unexpectedly bought a Galaxea Green frag today... Left the car at the washing station, 45 minutes queue, went for a walk with the kids and decided to check out an LFS closeby which I hadn't been to in years.

Well, they had a small Galaxea Grenn frag which looked good and wasn't expensive (R$80 ~ US$40) so I decided to get it. I've got good flow in the tank now, good lighting too, so it should work out.

Picture after arrival:

Picture 1 hour later, with a little of polyp extension:

One Green Chromis dead

snorkeler — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 23:11:04 GMT

One of my 5 Green Chromis was behaving strange for some 4 months, it stopped swimming with the others, was always hiding or swimming at the cube's corners and apparently wasn't eating anymore. It was the largest specimen, possibly the older fish.

Well, yesterday it died. Found it stuck sideways on one of my MP10s. When I was trying to remove it a peppermint shrimp came by and took it away, immediately starting to eat it.

Not much was left when I came back home... well, I guess we can say it was recycled :-)

It'll be missed.

Some conclusions and pictures

snorkeler — Sun, 06 May 2012 02:19:10 GMT

Got some time to post, will continue my thought process from the last blog post.

I concluded a few things from my experience in these 2.5 years:
I should underfeed my fish. First because I probably have a tendency to overfeed, second because they don't get easy food in the wild. Come on, "real" fish have a hard life! They swim a lot, compete a lot for food and don't get that much prey every day.
I should finger feed my fish. A tank as small as mine (DT=180L/48G) doesn't need more than a pinch of granulated food per day.
The mix of fish and invertebrates is critical, in the sense that you need fish that eat food in all sections of the aquarium:
I started without fish that ate food on the surface, so leftovers that floated would become detritus. With the 5 green chromis I have now that problem is gone.
I need invertebrates that eat well, like my peppermint shrimp pair, who are ALWAYS hungry, and I believe they find the stuff that falls to the floor which the fish normally don't eat.
If possible I should always have invertebrates or fish that also eat pests, like my peppermints who eat up the inevitable aiptasias, and the mithrax crabs I had who ate the valonias.
I should avoid flake food. It is hard for me to dose it well, and, hard to see if it was all eaten up or not. Much easier to do that with granulated food, or even dry cyclop-eeze in powder (as long as I have fish that eat those who float). Also easier to see that with home made food, which is easier to dose right.
I ran for too long without a refugium. My refugium helps to export nutrients and is producing a large pod population which I believe makes it up to the DT and helps feed the fish. Not a great algae harvest, but, every week I'm removing a bit of valonias, cheato and other carpet like algae, organic matter that which without the refugium would stay in the system.
I should frequently blow the rocks with a turkey baster, and stir the sand surface to ensure the detritus is puffed up and makes it to the sump.
When the tank was a few months old I started doing that, following the advice in Paletta's book, and respectable clouds of "dust" came up from that... but one or two weeks after I started I got a green hair algae bloom.
I thought the bloom was the result of forcing organic matter into the water column, so I stopped the procedure. Maybe it was, but I think it was a big mistake to stop.
When I washed the rock in my recent cleanup the water would come out quite brown after each rinse. It took some 5 or 6 rinses to get normal water color after the rinse. Imagine how much junk was inside the rock's pores...
I ran for too long with too little water flow. Nowadays with the pair of MP10 I have it is visible how detritus that lifts from the substrate gets puffed up by the flow and gradually makes it to the drain and into the sump.
Using a filter sock on the drain pipe seems to do marvels to remove organic matter, as long as I clean it every week. I am impressed by how much junk I am removing from the 50 micron bag every week as I clean it up.

I'm not sure if there is hope for this tank in the long run. As a FOWLR sure, as they don't seem to mind algae, buy I'd like to have some corals. Right now only my hardy Palithoa has survived well. My last zoa colony, which had been quite hardy up to now and I thought would survive the cleanup, seems to be going south...

I might decide to redo this tank. Redo, not expand, since I don't have space to expand. The design this guy created attracts me very much (he is known as Basso, is somewhat of an old marine aquarium guru in the Brazilian forums, and from following his posts I can understand why, the man is always experimenting and discovering simple and effective ways to get the aquarium thing done). This design is cleaner and simpler than my current design, but still a cube like structure:
A. A post with pictures of a new aquarium running it
B. First post of the thread about this aquarium model showing pictures of the structure/setup
C. Second post with pictures of the structure/setup
If it seems like a simple cube that means you haven't figured it out. I know the vast majority of you won't be able to read the Portuguese of the posts, but if you pay attention to the pictures you'll figure it out or get very close, here are the two most important aspects of this design:
He has a closed loop pointing up in the middle, to ensure good flow.
He drains water to the sump using 3 of the cube's corners, and his return from the sump is done using the last of the cube's corners. Low volume pump for the return because the strong closed loop takes care of the flow.

Finally, here are some full tank shots of my tank, taken today. As you might notice the red bubble algae wants to come back, but, at least its comeback is slower than the last time. I like the whiter and pinker look after the cleanup, it was too dark before with bubble algae on the rock everywhere.
Left side view:

"Front" view (assuming the glass with the MP10s is the "back" of this cube):
Right side view:

Time to sleep... Hope to post the next time not too far from today...

Snorkeler

Rock cleanup day

snorkeler — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 20:05:27 GMT

It has been a while since I last posted, mostly due to lack of time due to work overload.

Which obviously meant I also had little time to take care of the tank, and it went backwards. :(

My 4 mithrax crabs gradually died (of age I believe), leaving me without valonia eaters, which isn't good. One of the mithrax crabs (the hardiest of them, last to die) apparently was of a different species and I caught him eating my zoa colony. Moved him to the sump a month ago, and I guess he died because I haven't seen him since.

The red bubble algae, which I mentioned before, and for which I have no consumer, gradually took over all the rocks. Rocks in the DT were either covered with red algae or a combination of red algae and valonias. One one occasion, about 3 months ago, I took out two rocks and scraped the algae out. It grew back fairly quickly.

Today I took out all the rocks (not all at once) and scraped them all, removing all the red algae (well, removing 99% of the red algae). If the stuff were edible the amount I removed would easily feed one fat or two thin vegetarians. Really, if piled up on a dish it would be a considerable amount (sorry, no pictures).

As I moved rocks in the tank detritus from the crushed coral substrate clouded the water. No, they turned the water into milk, yeah, that's a better description. The obvious conclusion from that is that over the years I've overfed and "under cleaned" the tank. Now I have a nice reservoir of organic matter sitting in my 10 cm deep crushed coral base, ready to feed anything that wants to grow.

About a year ago I bought, but never used, a 50 micron bag to remove stuff from the water. Decided to use it. Guess what happened? When the water was milky and I tied this bag to the pipe bringing water from the DT into the sump, my skimmer went crazy. Crazy means started to produce a thick foam, of the type that doesn't dissolve when you touch it. Like shaving cream, but with wider bubbles. No special smell (I was afraid of soap on the bag, but that wasn't it), just I guess an abundance of fine particles of organic matter in the water ready to produce that horrible foam you see on the shore of polluted beaches...

I have several conclusions out of this all, which I'll post in a later blog. Got to go now...

Snorkeler

September 18th: Annual Maintenance

snorkeler — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 01:49:41 GMT

Time is short, so much to do and so little time.... once again I post about something I did almost a month ago. I almost skipped this one, but, blogs are about sharing experience and I think the pictures will be useful to teach people what NOT to do :D.

Compĺeted my annual maintenance cleanup... and concluded annual is too long a period to do it :rolleyes:.

Before you see the pictures please mind that my refugium is lighted by a non direction compact fluorescent light, therefore light is hitting where it shouldn't. Don't do the same when you setup your refugium. I need to change that lamp for directional lights or maybe add a hood/shield so the light hits mostly the refugium and not all the sump area.

Here it goes... what my skimmer looked like after a year without cleanup and under too much light:

Closeup of the skimmer's base, some of these are aiptasias... I have an aiptasia infestation in the sump. Got rid of all of them except those in the baffles area... don't know how to get rid of them:

Another closup of the base, lots of sponges, a few bristleworms:

Top of the skimmer's body. Yes, that was a carpet of algae inside it:

The other side of the skimmer's base:

Here is how the skimmer looked like after the cleanup:

After cleaning the skimmer's body, which was a pain because it doesn't disassemble, cleaning the two return pumps, the refugium feeder pump, the heater, the hoses, scraping most of the sump's glass to remove sponges, aiptasias and most of the coraline algae, I then removed about 40L of water with all the junk that decanted at the bottom. The sump got clean, not 100% but clean enough for the time I had, except for the baffles for which I didn't have an utensil to reach into.

I did everything wearing gloves for I was afraid of being stung by any aiptasia.

Added new salt water, but, suspecting it was quite cold I decided to add it before reconnecting any return pump and checking temperatures. Good choice, as my tank is set to 26.5C (~80F) and the temperature probe in the sump found the new salt water was at:

(that's 75F)

Not good, very far from 26.5C (~80F) so I put in an extra heater and a powerhead in the sump and let the new water heating up until it reached 25.9C (~78.5C). In this picture you can see how the refugium light is a "sump" light...

After about 40 minutes it reached the right temperature and I reinstalled the return pumps and then the skimmer.

One thing that is a mystery to me is why does my cheato grow so little, or, not seem to grow at all if I get algae growth even in the skimmer with the same lighting conditions.... hard to understand.

There must be lots of organic matter in the water because I have red bubble algae in the DT, in the refugium, valonias in the refugium and a few small ones in the DT, some green hair algae in some DT spots, but, cheato who is supposed to grow like crazy in nutrient rich water isn't growing.

I haven't measured parameters for quite a while now, only intend to do so when I get back to doing regular, predictable, water changes. As I started, time is at a premium right now and water tests take quite a lot of time....

My "next steps" list for this tank is (not necessarily in this order):
Change refugium lighting
Add a fan to the refugium to cool down the tank when over 27.0C .
Change the power supply of the DT's LED lighting, current one is weak and not reaching full lighting potential
Add an LCD display to the LED controller, and maybe a temperature probe too.
Manual removal of the red bubble algae in the DT in the next water changes. That's going to be tough as there are a lot and they grow back quite quickly. I scraped one of the rocks clear recently and it is blooming like a mushroom farm does... but I have to continue removing to get that organic matter out of the system.
Regular WC and parameter testing again.
Snorkeler

September 7th-14th: LED fixture online and working.

snorkeler — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:04:42 GMT

Finally, after almost a year between planning, prototyping, building and coding, my DIY LED fixture came to life. On Sept 6th the woodworking shop, LD Marcenaria delivered the new hood (they are very good, super recommend them to anyone living in S�o Paulo). It looked good, had dimensions according to the Google Sketch I had drawn, seems strong, etc.

Installation was way longer than just swapping the old hood for the new one because I had to redo the Aluminum structure of the fixture. I decided to elevate the LEDs and use tighter optics (15o and 25o), and the hood was made tall taking that into account, but, I couldn�t find time to redo the structure before the hood was delivered. That proved to be time and sweat consuming ... without a power tool cutting the aluminum was quite a workout :sigh:. But nothing offsets the joy of seeing the thing working.

Well, if you've been following this blog you know it's an Arduino controlled, MOSFET driven, 12V 3LED lamp blue/white fixture, bla, bla, bla, so I won't repeat the details or this is going to get boring... ;)

Time to see some pictures of the hood, fixture and important details.

This is the hood from the outside. It is rather tall, which I didn't like but got used to (but my wife liked it better than the old stout hood, go figure....).

This is the hood open exposing the lights and structure. I have A LOT more room to put hands/arms in and do tank maintenance with this hood. Simply loved that.

This is the hood from above, showing the plastic tupperware box with the Arduino controller. You can see how it is open, letting heat escape upwards and reducing humidity in the hood:

Here is a detail in the controller, manual override switches. The middle white switch defines if the drivers get the Arduino's PWM signal or manual white/blue full on/off signals. The other two switches are the manual white/blue full on/off switches (duh). This is handy for testing and for those moments when you absolutely need to light the tank up to full power.

This is a closeup of how I connected lamps to controller, using connector pairs. Red+Black are for the white lights, whilst Blue+Grey are for the blue lights:

This is a closeup of one of the lamps sitting on the structure. Notice I use plastic spacers to gently tilt the lamps inwards, so the light is better used. If I kept the lamps horizontal some of the light would hit the aquarium walls, which would be a waste.

Although the hood was "online" on Sept 7th it didn't work right until Sep 14th due to some bug squashing needed in my Arduino sketch.

In the final Arduino sketch I also merged in code that enables me to send serial commands through the Arduino development environment. That made it easier to force the controller into a certain weather profile for the day or set the date/time. This sketch is V-1-3-0, has a non-trapezoidal light curve that mimics the sunrise and sunset of the Great Barrier Reef, includes weather/cloud simulation (with �lightning� during �thunderstorms�) also based on GBR weather data. It is fun to watch. No moonlight yet, neither support for an LCD (which I haven't bought yet), those I intend to add one day in a future V-1-4-0.

I haven�t measured PAR yet, but I�m quite positive it is much better than before. A local reefer that has a PAR meeter agreed to come over and do some measurements, need to schedule that with him. I�m nor expecting super high SPS compatible numbers, but high enough for soft and maybe even LPS corals in some bright/tall spots.

I only have 8 �LED lamps� with 3x3W LEDs in each, which for a 3600 cm2 surface area (558 in2) is in the low range. I can upgrade the system to 12 �LED lamps� but in the short term I�m not looking forward to the extra work that will involve :rolleyes: .

I also noticed I have an issue with my power source limiting maximum LED brightness. I used a PC ATX power supply rated in theory as 17A @ 12V, but, as load is added the voltage drops significantly. With the 8 lamps on 100% it drops to 10.5V... which means the current drops too and the LEDs aren't as bright as they should. I have already identified a good replacement (this one), intend to buy it this week. So, PAR measurements only after that is resolved. This is its power curve, notice it keeps voltage fairly steady as current/load increases:

Here is a tank shot, which I'm not very proud of posting, not because of the light (which I like and the picture doesn't reproduce faithfully), but because of the red bubble algae all around... yes, I let them grow too much... I was using all my reef time to finish this LED fixture and Arduino code. Now I'll attack the red bubble algae as I start to pay attention again to water changes, measure parameters, etc.

That�s it, I�m a happy member of the �DIY LED Club� now!!

Snorkeler

Light curves of my weather simulator

snorkeler — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:37:56 GMT

First day of vacations, not feeling well, spent most of the day either at the bathroom or sleeping.... at night I was feeling a little better, so I decided to work on the Arduino sketch, try to finalize v1.0 of it. Testing was still needed, so I proceeded with the test generating sample light curves for the various day types. By day type I mean "clear day", "cloudy day of various intensities", "thunderstorm day", each defined by an Okta number from 0 to 8.

Created charts using LibreOffice's X-Y chart plot, with X being time elapsed since start of day and Y being 0-100% of light intensity. Detected a bug with Okta 5 and 6 days, fixed it, and now everything seems to be working fine.

Enough talking, here are the charts:

The days with Thunderstorms (oktas 5, 6 and 8) would have random lightning flashes while inside the thunderstorm. That I might not implement in version 1.0 of the controller, will depend on time. Also I probably won't implement moonlight in version 1.0, but plan to do so later. Already found code online to define moon phase, will need to find some more defining when moonrise and moonset happens.

Snorkeler