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nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Screen-capture-1
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Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build.

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nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Empty Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build.

Post by DonnieP Mon 31 Jan 2011, 2:12 pm

My tank build was posted on another forum so I am moving all the info here for anyone interest. Some of this info is from months back but I will bring you up to date. Sorry If some of it looks out of place, this was confusing:>)

August 30, 2010
My jbj 28 led is around six weeks old now and I have been keeping a photo log of the progress. I hope not to bore anyone with this thread but maybe to help out a newbie in the process of building their own nano. I will try to post links to the products I used if I still have them and post my ups and downs along the way.

If you are planning on setting up a nano and need help or any questions just post them here or shoot me a pm and if I can't help you, I bet someone else on here can, I have found all the members of this club to be very helpful and informative when I needed it. Also a lot of my livestock has come from folks on this board.

To get started, below are pics of the stand waiting to be assembled.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Stand_11

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Stand_12


After I assembled the stand and other parts, I filled the tank with freshwater out on the porch to make sure there were no leaks. After leak test, I setup the tank and filled with saltwater. I have a 20 gallon rubbermaid Brute trashcan from Home Depot that I mix water in. I have a four stage Ro-Di unit that makes my water. The water from the unit tests -0- TDS (total dissolved solids) . I use a maxijet 1200 in the can to mix the salt, at present I am using Reef Crystals but this may change later if I find this salt is not up to par. With just the liverock in the tank, my water parameters are as below.

salinity 1026-35ppt lowered to 1025 for better fish health after one month
temp 79*
Alk 10 dkh dropped to 8dkh after one month
calcium 520 dropped to 480 after one month
phos 0
nitrate 0
ammonia 0

Below are pics of the first tank fill along with pics of the refugium I built that ended up being to small for the volume, it worked great was just to small, the next one will have more water volume, but in the stand, I am limited to 14' x 11" not much room. Also a pic of my homemade pvc overflow which worked great even on restarts it right on trucking. I may just forego the sump-fuge and run the tank with the fuge in the rear chamber.

BTW, I am not going to use a skimmer, I think a skimmer removes to much usefull stuff in a small tank, instead I will rely on weekly 10%-15% water changes, thats only about three gallons a week.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Salt_w10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Fuge_f10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Overfl10


Next are pics of the filter basket I built for the center chamber, It is modeled after the factory basket but I made the center section bigger for Chaeto and my basket is deeper also and the eggcrate allows for more flow through the basket, all in all it works great. I also made a clip to hold the basket secure against the water overflow and made the back and sides higher so there no more water runover the back.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Basket10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Basket11


Then came the live rock! I ordered my rock from Gulfliverock.com The guys name is Dan and man he has some killer liverock, I had it flown to Shreveport where I picked it up so it was only out of the water for one day. There was lots of macro algae which I later pulled off but now it has regrown into some really cool stuff, I will post pics later in this build. Dans link is below.

Of course with wild aquacultured liverock comes some hitch hickers, some good some bad. I have removed two Mantis and mean little isopod that tried to make a meal out of a clownfish, but lots of good stuff to, to be posted later.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Live_r10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Live_r11

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Live_r12

A note on growing Chaeto! I got my first bunch of Chaeto Algae about a week after I added liverock and it just turned to mush in the filter basket. I have the jbj nano glow refugium light on the back of the tank but it was no help, the Chaeto died, well when I had bought the Chaeto I had way to much so I put in a fist size bunch in a clear plastic soap dish from Walmart, $2.50 I think, and added this in the main tank just in case. Well after about four weeks after setup, I noticed the Chaeto was really growing so I placed a chunk back in the filter basket. Well it grows so fast now that I have to trim half of it each week with water chages.

I no longer have Chaeto in the main tank.

In my filter basket I run filter floss on top, Chaeto next and then purigen, after the basket in the compartment meant for a skimmer I run chemipure elite, the water flows from bottom to top in this chamber and it flows past maybe some through the chemipure.

I plan on building a carbon reactor that will fit into this chamber but haven't gotten to it yet. A company used to make a reactor that would fit here but they are no longer in business, if anyone has one I would sure like to buy it, save me the trouble of building one. The reactor is a Sapphire Aquatics Nano media reactor.

Below is a pic of the Chaeto growing in the basket before a trim. This was half this size last week.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Chaeto10

The wavemaker included with the tank has multiple setting on it from alternating from 10 sec to several minutes. I am currently using the setting on the wavemaker to run both return pumps together during the day and switching to 20 seconds back and forth at night, the corals seem to like this setup.

I have on my Christmas list an mp10 for current, I think this will be cool but they are expensive, around $220.00.

My clean up crew was the first livestock to go in when the tank was about two weeks old. My cuc came from Gulfstreamacquatics on ebay, Clean up crew everything was as advertised, I was very pleased.Crew consited of :


The medium package includes the following:
15 - blue leg hermit crabs
10 - scarlet reef hermits (not red leg hermits which can eat blue leg hermits)
15 - astrea turbo snails
4 - nassarius snails
3 - peppermint shrimp
2 - emerald crab
1 - serpent starfish

I had him change the sand sifting star to another Peppermint.
Below are pics of the cuc.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Cuc10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Serpan10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Cuc210

Now for the good part, I started adding corals when the tank was about two and a half weeks old, slowly to see how it would go. My first coral was a green Sinularia from a friend on this board (thanks Gabe). After the Sinularia started doing so well, I bought more sps frags from Gabe and added them. One was a Hyndophora rigida, another a Green Slimer, I also added Some cool looking Palies and little chunk of star polyp and two heads of Frogspawn from Gabe. The picks are from when they were first added, up to date pics later.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Frogsp10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Hydnop10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Green_10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Palies10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Sinula10

My last two coral additions were sps I got at a LFS One a purple tip acropora and a green fuzzy Acro. The purple tip was buried below the sand at the LFS and the growth on top of the plug was dead but has been recovering nicely in my tank, I think it will be fully grown back over the plug in another week or two. The green fuzzy has been mounted in its permanant spot and is looking great, I will mount the purple tip when it is all healed up. The pics below are of the corals the day I got them, updated pics to come.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Green_11

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Purple10

I almost forgot, I have added two false Percula Clowns to the tank, The pic below is of the first two bought from a LFS. One of the Percs didn't do very well and he was attacked by a parasitic Isopod and he finally died from this. I was fortunate that another member on this board had two Percs for sale so I bought them. The day I went to get them he could only catch one with all the rocks in the tank but I expect to be getting that other little guy before long, as soon as he sells the rock in the tank and can catch the little guy. I will try to get a pair from these three.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Clown_10

I love the LED! Only time will tell if the corals love it as much. There is absolutely no heat from the lights, my tank runs only 1-1.5 degree difference from day and night. I have my heater set on 78 and the highest I have seen the temp was 80 back when we had all the 102 degree days. I like the fact that the system has three different light setups that work with timers.


a. Daylight – 25 x 3 Watt – 14K
b. Dawn/Dusk – 4 x 3 Watt – Actinic/466nm
c. Moon – 2 x 1 Watt – Nite-Vu/456nm

LEDs do not produce any ultra-violet radiation that is harmful for living organisms and do not contain any toxic mercury that is harmful for the environment.

The 89 watts of led produce the same Par rating as a 150 watt metal halide.

August 31, 2010
Well, I took a few pics today and here they are. I think it is coming along nicely!
Note the huge Starlet coral that came on the liverock, it has totally healed from the injury it received in transit from another rock sitting on it.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. My_ree10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Frogsp11

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Sinula11

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Starle10

September 10, 2010
New additions! First pic is a red and green nuclear Blasto, the pic don't do it justice! Second is Dragon Eye Zoe's.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Red_an10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Dragon10

December 5, 2010
I finally got my ato float switch hooked up and the ato is working perfectly! Its a really inexpensive setup with only a $12.00 hydro lifter pump, a $6.00 float swich, a $6.00 refridgerator water container from Walmart. I only get about 1.5 cups of evaporation daily so the 1.5 gallon water container from walmart will last a long time, and the narrow container fits right into my stand nicely.

For my trial period I will only be filling the water container 1/3 full of ro-di water at a time until I am sure this system works ok, if the float should stick or something and empty the entire contents in the tank, it wont be enough to change the salinity enough to hurt anything. Shoot I have plugged in the hydro lifter and forgot about it many times, thats why I finally said to heck with it and hooked up the float swith, at least it remembers when to add water and when to stop, its tough gettin old :>)

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Ato_fl10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Ato_co10

December 30, 2010
My latest addition to my nano. I added this orange sea star about a week ago. I know they don't have a good track record for staying alive very long but my Wife was with me when we saw it and said that starfish is awful pretty, if you want it I will buy it for you so man I jumped all over that. She is getting more and more interested in the tank.
I was planning on trading off that big ole green Sinularia I grew from one of Gabes frags but she flat told me that Sinularia aint goin nowhere. I do need to get rid of it though, it is out growing my tank fast, I will post a pic of it below to.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Orange10

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Sinula12

January 13, 2011
Just an update on the Orange Sea Star! So far so good, he is still very active feeding all over the rock, at least it looks like he is feeding, he spends the night high up on the glass and works the rocks during the day. I know these guys don't usually do good in a tank but so far he acts like he is at home, keeping fingers crossed.

nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Orange11

Well, I did get rid of the Green Sinularia and have added some other things to the tank, The updated tank can be seen here. Up to date tank pics.
DonnieP
DonnieP
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nano - Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build. Empty Re: Donnie's 28g JBJ led nano build.

Post by Rockman386 Sat 18 Feb 2012, 3:01 pm

Donnie,
I love looking at your tank. I have seen it a hundred times and it never gets old. You set up everything just perfect!
Rockman386
Rockman386
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