Jahmic's 20L zoa garden
- Thread starter jahmic
- Start date
Thanks for the comments on the tank and scape everyone...I honestly wasn't too sure how this would turn out but I think I pulled off the look I was going for.Here's the tank filled up with water.
Dumped some salt in yesterday and it's at 1.020 this morning. I'll prob keep it there for acclimating the lucky sixline that gets his own tank...and slowly bump it up as the tank settles in before adding coral.
I'll be pulling a sponge out of the sump of my cube that's been there since day 1 and placing it in the HOB...it should have enough bacteria on it to start seeding the tank.
Once I do start adding coral, I may end up replacing the actinic bulb with another 10k and pick up an actinic LED strip for supplemental lighting. There 'appears' to be enough light in there now for zoas, but I never did get a PAR meter under this light on a 20 long. In my planted tank I measured a PAR of 100-125 at 12" below the fixture...but that was with 10k + 6.7k bulbs, and only through 3 inches of water due to how the light is hanging. Forgot about those 2 details...so I'm second guessing if just a 10k and actinic will be enough, but I'll give it a go and see what happens.
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09bumblebee;193975 said:
Looks geat Khalis. I have lyall's par meter if you would like to use it. He said to let everyone know if they would like to use it. It's very expensive so just be careful as I know you will
No sand bed. I had seen a few bare bottom setups, and honestly prefer the look of a sand bed, but decided to give the bare bottom setup a try. Initially this was just going to be a frag tank...with no sand bed it will be easier to place frag tiles on the bottom of the tank and move things around without disturbing the sand bed. I also wanted to be able to completely vacuum the bottom of the tank to avoid detritus buildup since I'm just running an HOB for filtration.
I was trying to decide between the two. I read a few reviews that indicated BRS gives a nice "mix" of pieces as far as shape and size; conversely most of the reviews I saw for marco indicated how uniform the pieces are. I really wanted to scape the tank in a way that the rocks all sort of blended together, so that was part of the decision. Also read a lot of good feedback as far as marco leaching less phosphates; the rock is definitely clean. Since my tank is limited to macroalgae in the display and water changes for nutrient export, I figured I'd go with the apparently "cleaner" rock. Granted curing the dry rock on my own is also an option...but I didn't have room to set that up at home and wanted to get the rock in the tank right away and just get things rolling. Price-wise...the marco ended up being a little cheaper as well compared to BRS after shipping.
Tank's cycled. Ammonia and nitrite tested at 0 and nitrate is at 2. I dropped a piece of macro in there and will start running the lights on a timer for a few more hrs a day...I've just been running them from 6-9 when I'm home from work; need to go buy another timer. I think I've hit that point where you add up the number of timers in your house and you realize you should've just bought a controller at some point, lol.
Oh I hear ya for sure...I do like the simplicity of just running timers, and honestly wouldn't use most functions that the controllers offer except maybe pH monitoring. It's mainly the space issue with all those timers on my cube; I also have 2 separate power strips so I can shut down my returns, the chiller, the heater, and skimmer with one click for water changes.
A DJ strip with some of those short extension cords sounds like an option I may have to look inti. Hmmm
A DJ strip with some of those short extension cords sounds like an option I may have to look inti. Hmmm
Yea...I cheated.
Added a fish almost immediately and seeded the tank with a filter sponge that had been in my other tank since it was started. The sponge is about an inch thick...4"x16". I cut a 4"x4" square each day and stuck it in the HOB. The sixline showed no signs of stress through the process...figured it would work out since I've done essentially the same for emergency (FW) qt setups with success.
Added a fish almost immediately and seeded the tank with a filter sponge that had been in my other tank since it was started. The sponge is about an inch thick...4"x16". I cut a 4"x4" square each day and stuck it in the HOB. The sixline showed no signs of stress through the process...figured it would work out since I've done essentially the same for emergency (FW) qt setups with success.
09bumblebee;193975 said:
Looks geat Khalis. I have lyall's par meter if you would like to use it. He said to let everyone know if they would like to use it. It's very expensive so just be careful as I know you will
I was able to get some readings done over the past couple days. Excuse the craptastic text graphics...used an equally crappy phone app to superimpose the values over the picture.
10k + actinic
I stopped measuring before getting to the top of the tank since the numbers were noticeably lower than what I was looking for. I was hoping to see PAR values closer to 100 on average. Along the rocks in the center my values ranged from 50 - 65.
10k + 10k
The pic itself was taken under the same lighting...just reusing the same image to show the numbers. Definitely happier with a PAR of 75 at the bottom of the tank. Along the rocks in the center the PAR actually varies from about 75-100...which is what I was hoping to get out of this fixture.
Looks like I'll be running the 10k + 10k combo and adding a little supplemental lighting to add some actinic/blue light to the tank. I'm considering picking up a 24" stunner strip, but I'm not really sure if it would be washed out by the T5s or not.
Edit: Weird...that app decided to crop my photo, lol.
In the last image, the rock up top on the far right measured a PAR of 150. The rock just below it measured at 50...there is a slight overhang shading it. That same rock measured 40 in the previous image running the 10 K plus actinic combo.