Ian's Overgrown Nano!

[iantoh]

a purplish blue acro sp from a harlequin shipment:

[iantoh]

I really only decided to have a predominantly acro sp tank, after getting a superb purple nana colony from bro JC85, but i made a foolish mistake about a fortnight or so ago by acquiring bro Fuel's twenty cent sized green carpet anemone.

when i first placed it in the tank, it stayed quite fixedly to the spot where i placed it, so as i shifted things around a few days later, i assumed it'd be "kuai" again, and stay where i was planning to shift it to. well... needless to say, it didnt. whilst i was at work, it ran all over the leftside rock structure in my tank, and presumably stung the purple nana, a purplish stylophora which bro reefaholic kindly gave me that i really liked, and some parts of a green with purple rim monti cap that i got from bro loster.

clearly, i regret tempting fate, as murphys law inevitably realised, and all the three abovemention affected corals started peeling their skin or tissue, and were stn-ing. so i fragged those portions of them which seemed unaffected, but still many of the frags wasted away too, so, im sorry to the bros who passed these nice pieces on to me. what i did manage to save was a small frag of the purple nana, and the green with purple rim cap, though both are still small now.

heres a pic of whats left of the purple nana:

[iantoh]

hmm... onto more postive things.. seeing as hopefully, ive learned my lesson of underestimating anemones....

heres a pic of a purple milli from bro scarab. its huge, and i had to split the large table form into two portions, the other of which resides now on the bottom right hand side of my tank. this is the larger portion, which i hope will regain its previous glory in time. both bros danano and scarab attest to the quality of this piece, so i really hope to be able to coax the brilliant purple shades out again:

[iantoh]

another piece from bro scarab (thanks for giving me this). its a pink milli with blue growth tips, but its yet to show its blue tips in my tank, though of course, i should give it more time as its only been in my tank one week.

[iantoh]

heres a few polyps of some common zooanthids:

[dkk08]

solid tank! Shld see it for urself to believe

Specs Specs Specs!!!

[iantoh]

a macro shot of a purplish blue piece:

[Melvyn Tan]

Nice Garden !

[Panzz]

Nice Tank! would like to see that black cap of yours soon too.

[strat]

hmm... onto more postive things.. seeing as hopefully, ive learned my lesson of underestimating anemones....

heres a pic of a purple milli from bro scarab. its huge, and i had to split the large table form into two portions, the other of which resides now on the bottom right hand side of my tank. this is the larger portion, which i hope will regain its previous glory in time. both bros danano and scarab attest to the quality of this piece, so i really hope to be able to coax the brilliant purple shades out again:

Nice tank man!!!

If you wanna to let go your the other purple colonym let me know.

I am interested!!

[iantoh]

hi bros dkk and melvyn tan,

thanks.

here's how ive got the system set up right now:

1) display tank : 2.7ft x 1ft x 1ft

partition-less sump: 4ft x 1 ft x 1 ft

total water volume : about 150L

horizontal overflow design with two overflow pipes, and two return

pipes. all pipes of 22.5mm

2) lightings: 5 x 39w HO-T5.

Im presently using the D & D tubes, though id honestly prefer ATi.

4 x Aquablue Plus, and 1 x Actinic Plus.

The tubes are encased in two Atman light casings, with their e-ballasts

in-built. I purchased these two fixtures from Nature Aquarium, as i

wished to avoid the salt creep that occurs with retrofit T5s, and at the

same time, be able to mount the lights the way i wished to, which is

with the two light casings tilted slightly towards each other, that is, with

the front light casing tilted about 20 degrees inwards to direct most of

its light towards the centre of the tank, with the back light fixture doing

likewise, being tilted to have its light shine frontwards. i figured, this

way, most of the light will be concentrated within the centre lengthwise

band within the tank, allowing me to keep less light tolerating creatures

on the edges, whilst reducing illumination on the glass sides and

hopefully reducing micro algae growth there too.

i dont have a pic of the light set up right now, but heres a pic of my

horizontal overflow, that spans the length of my tank:

[hammy]

great looking tank !

[neokn]

hi bros dkk and melvyn tan,

thanks.

here's how ive got the system set up right now:

1) display tank : 2.7ft x 1ft x 1ft

partition-less sump: 4ft x 1 ft x 1 ft

total water volume : about 150L

horizontal overflow design with two overflow pipes, and two return

pipes. all pipes of 22.5mm

2) lightings: 5 x 39w HO-T5.

Im presently using the D & D tubes, though id honestly prefer ATi.

4 x Aquablue Plus, and 1 x Actinic Plus.

The tubes are encased in two Atman light casings, with their e-ballasts

in-built. I purchased these two fixtures from Nature Aquarium, as i

wished to avoid the salt creep that occurs with retrofit T5s, and at the

same time, be able to mount the lights the way i wished to, which is

with the two light casings tilted slightly towards each other, that is, with

the front light casing tilted about 20 degrees inwards to direct most of

its light towards the centre of the tank, with the back light fixture doing

likewise, being tilted to have its light shine frontwards. i figured, this

way, most of the light will be concentrated within the centre lengthwise

band within the tank, allowing me to keep less light tolerating creatures

on the edges, whilst reducing illumination on the glass sides and

hopefully reducing micro algae growth there too.

i dont have a pic of the light set up right now, but heres a pic of my

horizontal overflow, that spans the length of my tank:

Ian,

Don't quite understand abt the lighting pert. Can you take picture of it for easy understanding.

[iantoh]

thank you bros panzz and hammy. the great camera work by my friend, nic, is responsible for everything looking so good la. its not so exciting in reality as many are only small frags. macro lense do wonders man!! haha

well.. back to my specs:

3) circulation: I run two return pumps (one Rio 17HF, and one Dymax

4000L/HR pump), plus an additional Seio M820 within the tank.

flow rate is about 120x per hour if i take the effectual return rates for

each return pump to be around 2000L/Hr after the head loss due to

height, making a total of 4000/L/Hr for the two returns, and 2700L/HR

for the Seio 820.

overturn rate is about 70x per hour if my calculations are correct. it

looks ridiculously high, but considering that my display's water volume

is only about 60L, it turns over quite quickly.

my sump:

the two pipes on the left of the picture are my return pipes.

the skimmer is a Bullet Beckett from bro Reefaholic that was a fantastic buy, and the chiller to the right is a Resun CL-650, which i recently changed to from an old Teco RA-680.

the super ugly calcification all over the glass sides of my sump are from the time i had to go back for reservist, and i got my parents to help me top up with kalk and distilled water. they dumped the whole bottle in all at one shot, once every evening, which was according to my instructions except that i said drip it through the drip container rather than pour it in. dunno how im gonna clean that now...

[KennethK]

U should see it live. Oh the colours especially the pink milli playing with the wave. Witness it once, would like to see it again.

[iantoh]

hi there bro neokn,

i shall try to get a picture of my lighting set up soon as i can. in the meantime, try to imagine an attap house, you know, with the two sides of sloping roof, my lights are set up like that. the lights are tilted towards each other slightly so they form a very shallow "A" frame sort of thing, so that their light emission overlaps in the centre of the tank.

sorry if im not getting any clearer. will take a pic soon.

cheers,

ian

[iantoh]

hi there bro kenneth,

where got so nice??!?!???! sure or not? :P

next time, ill be sure to invite you over again bro.. ahhaha. thanks for your lovely comments.

[neokn]

How's the blackcap doing? Almost bought the other 2 but the size wasn't right so I give it a miss.

[c0ol]

Nice tank bro iantoh

btw by looking at your sump which the beckett is in...wont your main tank have lots of mirco bubbles becos of them coming out of the beckett and then pump back into the main tank..??

[iantoh]

more specs:

4) skimmer, as abovementioned: Bullet Beckett from Marinelife. running on a

Rio 20HF, set to skim about 1.5L of skimmate a day, so my top up daily is

about 1.5 litre of quarantined NSW, and 1.5L of Alpheus brand distilled

water.

5) a pic of my CR and former FR in which ive now stuffed 80m of airline

tubing in the hope of making it assume the role of denitrator. both the

CR and makeshift denitrator are fed from tee-offs from a dedicated

Dymax 1700L/HR pump.

CR media is rowalith C+. i shall be kick starting the second chamber

soon as i just bought some zeomag from PR yesterday. CR effluent is

monitored by measuring alkalinity, which i try to keep between 35 to

40dkh.

[iantoh]

hi there bro cool,

i saw you earlier today at the AA gathering at the coffee shop, but you left quite quickly. thanks for your compliments. the air bubbles exiting from the beckett do get sucked in by the return pumps, but somehow, perhaps because the tiny bubbles fuse into larger bubbles as they travel through my pipings, almost no airbubbles are discernable coming out of the two return nozzles in my display. not sure why, but its not been a problem so far.

[iantoh]

and heres my chiller along with my makeshift waste collector that is actually a former discarded canister filter housing:

the chiller is set to kick in at 27degrees, and knock off at 26 degrees with an external thermostat from derek of pac coo. the external thermostats probe is placed just below where the two overflow pumps gush water into the sump.

now that ive converted the FR into a denitrator which i hope will take effect in a month's time, ive got to get another FR. think i shall go with the resun base model as its most cost effective.

... think that about covers everything in my set-up. there is an ice-probe drilled into the tank as a back up chiller, but its not plugged in at the moment as ive too many wires running everywhere already.

[iantoh]

tadah! a pic of my black cap in hiding. its real blur, but the best bro dkk could do with his hp camera, so big thanks to him.

[iantoh]

my fromia:

and another pic of my crocea:

[iantoh]

heres a purple digitata frag from bro vagabond, buts its yet to colour back up:

and heres a pic of the seriatopora caliendrum that i got from bro Wa Lanz. (thanks for the lovely piece bro)