Tank resealing w/no silicon at all- 1700 Gallons
- Thread starter spiff44
- Start date
I changed the lights again after my house got hit my lighting and every LED power supply got fried. It blew my heater too, but I got that repaired. I think it looks much better I wont mess with those cheap 300 LED 5050 strips any more.
Here are a couple videos from back when I did that. I have rearranged the lights a lot since these and I swapped most of the pink grow lights with blue ones. So these videos show when it was way too pink. Anyway, the lights are all LEDs.. using regular socket type spots. There are 40 of them.
Here is a link to the lightbar thread:
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/f...with-40-E26-swivelable-rotating-sockets/page2
No new fish in the last 8 months except 2 Pearsei cichlids. They went from about 2.5-3inches back in May to over 10 inches today. I never saw fish grow that fast. They totally get along with everything in the tank, even torchlight tetras, the smallest in the tank. Theyre exactly like neons except copper instead of blue color.
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Just found this thread.. awesome tank, thanks for sharing the videos and all the information.
One thing I wanted to suggest. If you are using all plastic plants, you might want to think about using a sulfur denitrator instead of UV.
The dentirator will convert all your nitrates into nitrogen gas. If properly sized, your tank will pretty much stay at zero nitrates all the time.
The water becomes crystal clear because there's no nitrogen. Now the downside is that there's a little maintenance with the denitrator.
You need to occasionally open a valve to let the nitrogen gas out. When you are first starting, this is every day. Once you get the nitrates low, it's maybe once a week. Also, maybe 2/year you need to basically get the media out and hose it down (leave a little bit "Dirty" to recycle the system).
This is because the good bacteria that converts the nitrates to nitrogen eventually grows a thick film and clogs water flow.
But I am bringing this up because you were talking about the benefits of UV. I had a UV on, and loved it, but since I have the dentritator, I turned off my UV, and my water is crystal clear. Fish are healthier too because no nitrates. Less water changes necesssary too.
So I think it's a worthwhile addition on any big tank that doesn't have live plants, if the budget allows it. I found a used Korellin one on ebay pretty cheap. There's always people getting out of the reef hobby.
Anyhow, UV is fine and good, just something to think about.. Not many people use these, I love them and am stealing your thread to talk about them
GReat tank again Watched every video and loved it.
One thing I wanted to suggest. If you are using all plastic plants, you might want to think about using a sulfur denitrator instead of UV.
The dentirator will convert all your nitrates into nitrogen gas. If properly sized, your tank will pretty much stay at zero nitrates all the time.
The water becomes crystal clear because there's no nitrogen. Now the downside is that there's a little maintenance with the denitrator.
You need to occasionally open a valve to let the nitrogen gas out. When you are first starting, this is every day. Once you get the nitrates low, it's maybe once a week. Also, maybe 2/year you need to basically get the media out and hose it down (leave a little bit "Dirty" to recycle the system).
This is because the good bacteria that converts the nitrates to nitrogen eventually grows a thick film and clogs water flow.
But I am bringing this up because you were talking about the benefits of UV. I had a UV on, and loved it, but since I have the dentritator, I turned off my UV, and my water is crystal clear. Fish are healthier too because no nitrates. Less water changes necesssary too.
So I think it's a worthwhile addition on any big tank that doesn't have live plants, if the budget allows it. I found a used Korellin one on ebay pretty cheap. There's always people getting out of the reef hobby.
Anyhow, UV is fine and good, just something to think about.. Not many people use these, I love them and am stealing your thread to talk about them
GReat tank again
Watched every video and loved it.
Just found this thread.. awesome tank, thanks for sharing the videos and all the information.
One thing I wanted to suggest. If you are using all plastic plants, you might want to think about using a sulfur denitrator instead of UV.
The dentirator will convert all your nitrates into nitrogen gas. If properly sized, your tank will pretty much stay at zero nitrates all the time.
The water becomes crystal clear because there's no nitrogen. Now the downside is that there's a little maintenance with the denitrator.
You need to occasionally open a valve to let the nitrogen gas out. When you are first starting, this is every day. Once you get the nitrates low, it's maybe once a week. Also, maybe 2/year you need to basically get the media out and hose it down (leave a little bit "Dirty" to recycle the system).
This is because the good bacteria that converts the nitrates to nitrogen eventually grows a thick film and clogs water flow.
But I am bringing this up because you were talking about the benefits of UV. I had a UV on, and loved it, but since I have the dentritator, I turned off my UV, and my water is crystal clear. Fish are healthier too because no nitrates. Less water changes necesssary too.
So I think it's a worthwhile addition on any big tank that doesn't have live plants, if the budget allows it. I found a used Korellin one on ebay pretty cheap. There's always people getting out of the reef hobby.
Anyhow, UV is fine and good, just something to think about.. Not many people use these, I love them and am stealing your thread to talk about them
GReat tank again
Hey Paul.. glad you liked the videos. Interesting thoughts regarding the reactors. I checked them out but I'm not sure they're well suited to my tank. The big thing I saw that was a deal breaker was the flow... it sounds like they take a very slow flow to work right.. this would probably mean running many of these things to make a significant dent on readings. To be honest, I don't have a nitrate issue at all right now. I'm have almost 2 gallons of Purigen in the filter setup at any given time.. that keeps nitrates below 5% all the time. I experimented.. it takes a couple months of not changing the water before nitrate readings start to creep up.
Oh ok, if you don't need a denitrator, that's fine.. Just saying it's an alternative for UV. Most people use UV to keep the water clear.
When you first start a dinitrator.. yes, the flow is very slow, like maybe a drop a second. Then you ramp it up.
Right now, my reactor has a pretty good flow through it.. It's still 1/4" tubing but it's flowing pretty good.
I have a 300 gallon tank (plus sump water).. but anyhow, I did the math a long time ago, when the reactor is cranking through, it takes something like 3-4 days to cycle all the water though it. I can't remember the exact number, but anyhow, it's like a 25% water change every day (for the sake of nitrates, I realize there's other benefits to water changing)..
Since you have a lot of small fish, I can see you don't have a nitrate problem, but I have a malawi tank that I feed heavy to keep aggression down.. it's been a godsend for me, but I realize it's not for everyone. I still think for SOME tanks, it's a good alternative to UV.
Anyhow, your tank is still awesome..
Gotcha.. and thanks for the kind words. For me the main purpose of the UV is for disinfecting, not so much to clear the water. My tank has always had the presence of Ich and columnaris... which sucks. Its hard to do anything about it other than mitigate as much as you can. So I run a lot of UV and use salt.
