Week 3: Reefing on the Edge

From a 6-gallon nano to this in a week? Not quite...

Charlotte Interruptus   
By Brian K. Griffin

In this series we are setting up the Fluval Edge as a nano reef tank, if you missed the previous articles, you can read them here: 
•  Week 1
•  Week 2.

You’re probably looking at the image and reading the title and saying “What the hell?” 

Sometimes even the best laid plans go astray. It’s one of the reasons that this hobby requires so much patience. I had a lot of setbacks this week, among them; the par meter I was suppose to get was delayed, the heat sinks for the new lighting I am planning were miss-cut and the LED drivers didn’t arrive as expected. The LED drivers have now arrived and the newly cut heat sinks should arrive within a day or two so we’ll be able to continue our trek. I have tested a few of the off the shelf options for LED’s.

I’m still waiting on a par meter, but should be able to provide par readings of these as well delve into a couple of ideas I have for retrofitting Charlotte with some really wicked lighting. 

Thanks for the email! 

Before jumping into the changes and modification done this week, I’d like to acknowledge the 30-40 emails received so far. Thank you for your words of encouragement and questions.  I have been answering them directly, but thought I’d address a couple here:

LauraC from California writes: “Thank you for your series. I have a Fluval Edge and have read your articles with great interest.  Are you going to add a refugium?”
Laura, Thanks for reading my articles, I hope you continue to follow along.  I’m having a great time writing them and working with Charlotte.  Yes, I do have plans for a refugium.  I have planned one out and will write about it in about 3 weeks as long as there are no major setbacks.

JohnR from Chicago sent his compliments and asked: “Why don’t you have full tank shots and pictures of your livestock?”

John, I’ve been asked this question more than once. I also want to look at a tank full of livestock. However, during this phase, I need to do par readings in the tank.  I have to lower the water level to move the sensor around then fill it back up to take the readings.  This has to be done with each light tested. 

I decided not to put any livestock other than the cleanup crew to avoid putting the animals through additional stress.  Don’t worry, we’ll be adding livestock soon enough.  I’m already putting some corals to the side for Charlotte when she is ready.

Now for a recap:

Heating:  Last week I put in a Hydor Mini heater. It didn’t do the job I wanted. (With the original 10W halogen lights on, the tank tends to warm up to 80 or higher, but drops to 75 when the lights go off for the night.) The 7.5 watt version barely pulled up Charlottes’ temperature 3 degrees over the ambient temperature. Maybe the 15 watt version would have worked, but I really didn’t want to buy another heater only to see it fail.

As I said last week, I wanted to try the Hydor because of its slender profile and could be hidden in the filter box. I decided to use a larger heater that I didn’t need to worry about. This week I got a Rena 50w SmartHeater.  It’s an inline heater that Rena makes for their line of hang-on filters. You can set the temperature on this heater and an LED will flash if the temperature is +/- 5 degrees from what it is set at. For a nano, it’s nice to get a visual warning when the temperature is off this much. Within a couple of hours, Charlotte was at 78 degrees.

A work in progress: new Rena heater blends into the black background of the tank.

I took a look at it and thought I could modify the Edge filter to make it work.  The Rena is designed for the intake of the filter to fit inside of the heater. I took the end of the Edge Filter off and made sure that it would fit in the Rena heater. I measured and cut off the bottom part.  I inserted this in the Rena filter, made sure it was snug then attached it back to the Edge filter.  WOW!!!  It works! This was money well spent and you can hardly see it against Charlottes’  black background. Although if you had the Burnt Orange or Pewter color you would see it. The saying is true, “Black is beautiful.”

Water Splash: The water splash reaching the lights was still an ongoing problem.  The temporary splash guard kept a lot of water off the lamps, but they still needed to be dried off each day. I needed a way to keep the water off the existing lamps as well as something that would work with any new lights. Please don’t crucify me for the quality of my workmanship; I wanted to get it done quickly.
The box fits inside Charlottes’ opening and around the light bar.  It’s notched in the back to fit around the arms located on the back of the light bar.

The box “floats” in the opening and is held upright by the water pressure inside Charlotte.  It can be used for the original lamps and probably any retrofit that is used within the light bar. Water flows from the filter into the tank behind the box. Since it’s just a “floater”, as the water evaporates, it tends to tilt backwards to a point and is more visible from the front.  It could probably be mounted on the light bar for more stability, but, that’s a rather permanent mod that I don’t want to do yet. 

 
After a week of use, no water has entered the box and the lights have been completely dry.  I think that we found a solution.  While it does need tweaking, it keeps the lights dry.

Getting Away....

This week, I took a ride for a short break to visit Sanjay Joshi In Pennsylvania to catch up on things and ask some questions about LEDs. I met Sanjay about 10 years ago when I was operating Reefers.  He’d come to the store with some of the New York Mafia (a group of reef hobbyists from New York, actually some of my idols in this hobby:  Greg Schiemer, Randy Donowitz, Terry Siegel). 

I try and visit Sanjay when I can, although it’s not as often as I want.  After getting there, I thought about sharing a few current shots of Sanjay’s 500 gallon home tank as well as the 500 gallon tank at Penn State with you.  Of course I didn’t have the forethought to bring my camera with me, so you’ll have to suffer through these photos taken with my iPhone.

 
Sanjay’s 500 gallon home tank.

This tank is loaded with SPS.  You name it, he’s got it!!!  I counted 43 fish in this aquarium, he says there are probably more.  The corals are absolutely stunning!!!

We drove over to Penn State and I was floored.  The corals had doubled in size since I was there last and it was only a year ago!  One of my favorite sayings is “There is always room for one more coral.”  I have to say that this 500 gallon tank is full.  There is absolutely no room for any new corals.  It is indeed a forest of corals.

This blue staghorn at Sanjay's Penn State reef is growing out of the water. It’s about 2 feet tall and about 15-16 inches across.

 
Every coral is HUGE in this tank.  The frogspawn pressed against the glass in this picture is a good 18” across.  The favia next to it is the size of a bowling ball.
 
Here’s a shot of one of a pair of Banded Angelfish (Apolemichthys arcuatus).

 
A top down view.  The green millepora is ORA Nathan's Green Millie.
 
 

This aquarium is just AWESOME.
 

 
Of course, we couldn’t enjoy this aquarium if it wasn’t for the hard work of Sanjay Joshi to make this aquarium what it is.  Way to go Sanjay!!!  Keep that glass clean!!

I hope that you enjoyed this little interruption.  Next week, we should be able to jump into lighting with a vengeance!  Please stay tuned.

Note:  While I do have a par meter on the way, I’d like a backup plan.  If you are reading this and can provide a par meter for this project, please email me at brian@oceangalleryii.com.
 

Brian Griffin setup his first saltwater aquarium back in the mid 70's while attending Florida State University. From that moment on, he fell in love with the hobby. Over the years, he's have had many reef aquariums, the largest being a 8'x4'x2' lookdown system with a total of just over 1800 gallons. He became known in the industry when he started Reefers – A Marine Aquaria Store back in 1999. The company closed its doors in 2002, but he's been active and in touch with the industry and has had the pleasure of rubbing elbows with some of the greats associated with this hobby. Besides his two sons and women, he has an undying passion for the hobby of reefkeeping. He worked with ZeroEdge Aquarium and helped them bring the ZeroEdge name to a new level in the industry. Today he "resides" at Ocean Gallery 2 located in North Plainfield, NJ doing what he does best, helping people set up successful reefs.