Aquarium

My 30 gallon Oceanic cube saltwater aquarium is a constantly changing ongoing project that provides me with endless oportunity to innovate.

I first got into keeping saltwater aquariums about 4 years ago, my first tank was a 10 gallon (formerly my freshwater African cichlid tank), which was quickly replaced with a 15 gallon tall. I kept the 15 Gallon for about a year, with marginal success, and then I happened upon this Oceanic 30 gallon cube. It was just so stunning sitting there in the fish shop I had to buy it. For the next 3 years I slowly learned the ins and outs of keeping saltwater aquariums, I experimented with building my own filtration systems, as well as a few other things while trying to find that perfect balance.

When I moved to a new apartment back in August of '08 something happened to my tank and one of the seals was damaged. This resulted in a slow leak that mandated I get the tank replaced. Luckily I bought an Oceanic brand tank which carries a lifetime warranty (and for $300 tank+stand it had better).

Now that I had my fish in a temporary tank barrowed from a friend of mine and a new tank on its way to me, I decided to use the opportunity to implement some ideas that I had over the years. Since this was going to be a brand new tank I had the opportunity to set things up in a way that’s almost imposable with an established tank. Now I hate seeing powerheads in an aquarium, there ugly and in my opinion can ruin a picturesque aquascape. However my tank has a tempered glass bottom and cannot have holes drilled into it for filtration systems. So my solution was to design an under sand wave maker system that sits on the glass.

I began by opening AutoCAD and getting out my tape measure, I measured out the inside dimensions of my existing damaged tank and the spill box which sits inside the tank. Then I designed the plumbing. 2 elbows, 2 threaded elbows 2x screw-in flex pipe with .5" exhaust nozzles, a SCWD which is what helps make the waves, and a Rio+ 1000 400gph powerhead. The plumbing is made of PVC, and is zip-tied to egg crate. The Egg crate is there to spread the weight of the rocks evenly across the bottom of the tank, as well as prevent the rocks from touching the bottom glass directly. The plumbing system was built and tested inside the old tank so that it was ready to go in the new tank immediately.

I also took the time to upgrade the exterior plumbing, specifically the return line from the filter. I replaced the return hose with PVC which is mounted to the stand with enough clearance that the threaded elbow didn’t touch the tank. I used flex pipe with a .5" nozzle here as well. There are 2 return lines, they both connect to a SCWD which alternates output between the two just like the under sand system. All four nozzles are aimed at each other to create as much flow, and surface agitation as possible.

As you can see the end result came out pretty neat and clean, you barely notice the nozzles in the front bottom and rear top corners of the tank. However, now I was unsatisfied with my lighting. I longed to have metal halides, which in addition to having a very pleasing light spectrum makes light ripples on the sand of the tank. However they get ungodly hot and are expensive to run as well as maintain. The heat alone is enough of an issue for me to lose interest, but as usual I had an idea on how to solve this. LED lighting is the solution that I came up with, but no one was commercially producing an affordable (sub $300) LED fixture in the size that I needed (20").

Time to build it!

I spent allot of time doing research into this, there are a few brave hobbyists who have constructed LED lighting for there aquariums but not many. Information is scarce at best, I figured that I had about 40watts of lighting but I needed more. After much searching I found a $50 panel that I could modify that had 225 white and blue LED's and put out about 60watts of light. The fixture measured 12"x12" which would not fit on top of my tank. So I got some plexi glass, pulled out my trusty ol dremmel, and got to work.

First I cut the circuit board in 3 pieces about 4"x12", and then I cut the last piece in half. I cut my plexi case to fit on top of the inner rim of the tank which would keep it in place. I then mounted the circuit boards to the plexi so I had an idea of how they would orientate to each other. Then I got to soldering the cut circuit pathways (that took a while). When I was finished I gave the frame a quick coat of black paint and placed it on top of the tank.

Using the new fixture I got a very nice increase in light output and the colors in the tank really began to "POP". Now I decided to solve my greatest adversary since I got into saltwater tanks... ME!

Since I got into the aquarium hobby, I have never been able to keep my arm out of the tank, and it never fails that I got my rocks set up perfectly and something would happen, they would move and I would pull my hair out trying to fix them (VERY BAD FOR THE TANK). So after some brief research I discovered that people were using insulating foam to build artificial reefs. Including my favorite local fish shop, so I went in and scrutinized the hell outta there setup. It looked good, especially since it had been setup over 2 years ago. I was convinced that this was the way to go, so I bought a can of black (its really like a cobalt blue grey) Expanding Spray Foam insulation for ponds from them, and after much begging and pleading convinced one of my best friends to give me a hand (has more of an aquarium purist, and kind of thinks im nuts with some of my ideas for the tank). We transferred the fish to a temporary tank, drained the tank except for 1" at the bottom to keep the sand alive and took out all the rocks to let them partially dry.

Unfortunately I do not have pictures of this process; it was to dirty to document.

We got the rock that would be the base of the reef arranged in a way that was pleasing, and used the spray foam as mortar to hold everything together. I frequently grabbed a handful of sand to rub into the foam to make it "Live foam" meaning that it had a surface with bacteria on it. after 3 hours of work the last rock went into place, I covered the reef in wet sand, then wet paper towels (don’t want the rocks to dry out, it kills the bacteria which should be there) and we covered the tank with a trash bag for the next 24 hours for the foam to dry..

24 hours later the tank was refilled with brand new water, and allowed to run for another 24 hours with carbon filtration to filter out any toxins which might be in the foam. After a 50% water change the fish went home to there tank..

I also build a small Cage out of the left over egg crate for a miniature refugium in my sump (filter). It’s filled with rocks, sand, and plants now there are Snails, a crab, and allot of copepods (bugs) which fish will eat on site, but are good for the tank, so you want as many as possible.

About 3 months after I finished my LED lighting fixture disaster struck, I completely forgot about condensation! Moisture was building up on the bottom of the fixture at night and corroding the terminals and circuit pathways. Unfortunately in only noticed after half the fixture was useless. I had meant to go out and buy some more plexi glass but it slipped my mind.

So I started doing research into building a new fixture, a better fixture and I stumbled upon the Eco-Lamps KR91-18FB. This is an impressive $250 Light Fixture, it puts out about 120 watts of light and is garneted for 50,000 hours. Finally I had my metal halide alternative solution.

Before After