Cleanup crew and one anemone that I bought so that I could get free shipping
arrive in 10 days.
So there's a few things I need to do to get the Lux 90. Ready.
Thanks.
And cycling. Now for about a month and a half, I use Dr. Ten's ammonia,
chloride, and Brightwell aquatics microfactors seven,
but I also put a lot of live rock in the sump to just populate it with a whole
bunch of different types of bacteria.
I've also been feeding heavily four times a day with an automatic feeder to
really up the biologic of filtration to get it ready for when those
10 clownfish drop all at once. There's lots of nitrates and phosphates.
Anytime I set up a new tank,
there's usually just a ton of nitrates and those nitrates initial nitrates seem
to need some help in order to go down.
And then once the tank settles in my biological filter can catch up.
So my nitrates had been like 30 or 40,
but I've done a couple of water changes now, and I believe they're below 20.
My phosphates on the other hand have been going pretty high. Actually,
they've been going to 0.2 or 0.3.
So I did end up putting in a small amount of DFO into reactor that I'm running
24 hours a day, and the phosphates have stabilized at around 0.1,
but I still want to test it and probably do one more water change to bring those
nitrates down, even lower.
The live rock that I added in the summer just had a ton of Copa pods on it.
So within a couple of weeks,
I could see CocoaPods crawling around the glass on the display tank.
And I also found an online company that sold amphipods.
So I added a thousand amphipods to the tank as well,
to really help as a cleanup crew.
So I placed the order and the first cleanup crew arrival comes in 10
days. I wrote down what I'm getting, I'm getting Astraea sails near writes,
nails, bumblebee, snails, hermit, crabs,
a diamond Watchman Gobi, and then one green bubble tip anemone.
And that's just because I wanted anemones anyways.
And it was about the right price to give me the free shipping from live aquaria.
One of the issues is I have had the lights off during the cycle.
I just turned it on for this video.
So there isn't any algae growth for those cleanup crew members.
So I need to get those lights dialed in first,
so that there's 10 days of the light cycle to encourage some nuisance algae
for that cleanup crew to eat. All right, let's get right to it.
We're gonna start with the lights.
I'm using the.
Max SPECT, razor X, the 150 watt.
I'm a little concerned that I'm not going to be able to get to my par based on
some videos I watched online, but I think if I crank them up all the way,
they might have just enough output to make the anemones happy.
I've had the lights off to prevent nuisance algae,
but obviously since the clean up crew is coming,
it's time to get them dialed in so that I can get some nuisance algae growth for
those cleanup crew members here is what I'm thinking for my overall
lighting goals for this clownfish harem tank par levels.
I am trying to get a consistent 200 to
350 par based on the tops of the rocks
right here.
So I would expect the edges to be somewhere around 200 and then somewhere around
three 50, and then back over to 200 plus or minus 50,
I'm not going to be concerned. So if I can get the levels,
at least in the middle to around three 50,
I'll be pretty happy overall for spectrum.
I know a lot of people just love to run really, really blue tanks. I don't,
I like to have more natural lighting tanks,
but I'm going to prioritize the par output over the spectrum.
So if I need to make this a really blue looking tank,
just to give it enough par I will do that.
And I'm kind of expecting this to look a little bit blue,
but I'm also going to crank up those whites to give it a more natural look as
much as I can anyway, for the photo period,
we're going to basically do a modified AB plus from Ecotech.
We're going to have a seven hour photo period where the lights are going to be
on their full intensity of 200 to 350 par.
And I'm going to do an hour ramp in the morning and then an hour ramp in the
evening. Let's get to work.
I'm actually really glad that I bought a par meter a couple of months ago.
Cause we're going to get this dialed in perfectly and we'll be back in a few
minutes and we'll share all the results with you.
We did. Okay.
It's the lights actually.
So let me show you the schedule I'm running and then the pars let's start with
the park. I don't even think you can read this. I'm so sorry. It's so dark.
Maybe you can read it. This is a picture of the tank, right? And so you can see,
I need to look around, I can't read backwards in the back corner, one 30,
one 60,
but then the tops of all of these rocks to 65 to 80 to 90 to
75 to 65 while it's not quite at the three 50,
I was looking for,
at least the majority of the tank gets over two
50. So I think that will be fine for the anemones.
I was hoping for a little bit more, but I think it's okay.
The schedule worked out pretty good.
I think there are four programmable channels.
You basically have your white channel,
two blue channels and then like your green and your red channel.
So here's what I ended up with to get those par readings that I just showed you
at Oh 700. We have all the channels at zero Oh 800.
We take everything up to 20%. So a really slow ramp to 20%.
So a 20% be 18% C 20% D 12%,
eight to nine. We ramp up to a hundred percent our full photo period.
So that's a 100 [inaudible] C 100 D 70.
Then we keep that there for seven hours.
And that gives you those maximum par ranges of around 250 until
1600 4:00 PM with the same thing, a 100
[inaudible]. Then we do a two hour ramp in the evening from that 100% to the
20%. So 1800 hours or 6:00 PM, a is 20%.
B is 18%. C is 20 and D is 12%.
And then we go from 1800, three hours to 2100 hours, 9:00 PM,
a slow wind down all the way back to all the channels being at zero.
I'm not going to touch that schedule. That's the lighting schedule.
That's what it's going to stay at.
I'm not going to adjust it even once I promise,
because that is my biggest problem in this hobby.
And I think one of the reasons I have problems with anemones is I always tinker.
I'm not going to tinker.
Those lights will remain constant until this tank is broken down,
which will hopefully not be for many, many years.
I think it's time also for another water change. I've been testing the water,
especially for the phosphates and the nitrates every other day.
Maybe a little bit less than that. And I know the levels are little bit high.
My ultimate goal is to keep my nitrates between three to five parts per million
and to keep my phosphates around 0.07 to 0.15.
I think my goal would be 0.1.
I think my phosphates have been pretty close to that,
but my nitrates have been really, really high. So let's do a quick water tests,
see the results, and then we'll come back.
[Inaudible].
Just like I thought the nitrates and the phosphates were both high.
The nitrates obviously being way high,
the phosphates were higher than I expected,
but I've only been running my GFL reactor 12 hours a day.
So I'll just up that to 24 hours a day.
Luckily I made a fresh batch of my Aqua forest saltwater yesterday.
So let's do a quick water change, 20 gallons.
So somewhere around 40% of the tank, I think.
[Inaudible].
Task.
It's the mesh screen in the first ship and I'm getting that diamond Watchman
Gobi. So because I have a fish in there, I need to make a mesh screen.
I've gotten pretty good at doing DIY screens. Over the years,
I have some videos. I'll put links down below to how to make these.
They're nothing special. The ones I make, but they work,
but this one's going to be really challenging because see right here I have the
auto feeder and then the lights are on the rim of the tank,
which means I can't just do my standard rectangular shape.
I'm going to have to do little cutouts.
So luckily I bought some adjustable angles from red sea.
So let's get on that.
Let's make it and we'll come back and we'll show you the results.
I don't think it will be anything special, but hopefully.
[Inaudible].
This is not my best work. So on the one side where I have the automatic feeder,
I use this little red sea BRCA thingy to make this shape right, right there.
And then on the other side, I had to cut it around the light fixture.
So you can see the shape of it.
It is a little wobbly, a little janky,
and there's still a couple of gaps. And I think it will be safe enough. I think,
I think it will be fine. Um, I wish I would have made this better,
but honestly I'm not. I'm just,
I'm just not great at doing these sorts of things,
but hopefully it won't look too bad because it's such a beautiful tank and I
don't want to ruin it with this nasty looking thing.
I might have to go and get some sort of custom lid made eventually so that it
really makes this tank pop and works. It works. That's all the matter.
We have a mesh screen.
Hmm.
Well, believe it or not. It's actually 11 days later,
the livestock has arrived. It was supposed to arrive before noon.
But because of all the shipping issues, it arrived at like 7:00 PM.
So I took some B roll of the inboxing and the drip acclimating.
So let me show you that now. And we'll be back in a second.
[Inaudible].
Now we wait. I have my first livestock in there.
I'm going to test my phosphates and my nitrates frequently like
daily. I'm going to do water changes as those nitrates creep up.
I'll adjust my GFR levels to keep those phosphates really, really dialed in.
And then I'm hoping within two weeks that we are going to get a clutch of
eight, nine, or 10 clownfish,
and then maybe seven to 10 bubble tip anemones,
maybe like this video, please consider subscribing to Marine Depot.
And my first fish tank,
given this video a thumbs up and don't miss out because in a couple of weeks,
we are going to be coming back at you with the addition of clownfish and a
whole bunch of bubbled up anemones. It should be really exciting.
So stay tuned as always have a reef and everybody be well,
we'll see you next time.