Funlad3's 24G JBJ Nano

[Funlad3]

Hi all! For those of you who don't know me, I've been reefing for eight years or so, and I've worked in industry on and off for the last few years. I haven't had a display running for four years, and I'm finally going to set up a used LED 24 gallon JBJ NanoCube that I picked up at a friend's store a few months ago. I'm a big SPS lover, so naturally, I'm going to make a few modifications to the tank.

I'm going to go for high flow, so I'm going to run a sump with a way-too-large return pump. I don't want any powerheads or equipment in the tank itself, so I'm going to aim for at least 1000 GPH on the return line so that I can have at least 45-50 times turnover per hour.

The stock LEDs should be strong enough for how short the tank is, but I also have plenty of old lights laying around, so I may try to swap some of the diodes out for tons of 3W Cree LEDs.

Anyways, here's what I've done so far:


The overflow box and back chambers needed to come out:

After I tore them out, I drilled two holes for the sump and better filtration:

Two 1" bulkheads installed and fitting perfectly:

I have the stand marked up and I'm ready to cut this Red Sea Reefer stand down to size:

I have other equipment laying around. Heaters, ATO, and an overrated skimmer are all taken care of. I'm collecting and putting aside plating, encrusting, bouldering, and thick branching SPS for this tank. Until then, it's time to break out the circular saw and cut the stand.

- Ben

 

[goat585]

What are you going to use for a sump?

 

[Funlad3]

What are you going to use for a sump?

I'm going to build a custom sump out of 1/4" glass. The Red Sea stand has a vinyl padded interior, so I shouldn't have to worry about it cracking from uneven stress. I'm going to build it tall and wide to try to add as much water volume as possible.

 

[bryman]

I love nanos. Looking forward to your DIY project.

 

[conchman]

I would leave the stand as is and add support inside. Under the deck. That way it would support your wanting the larger sump possible. Steel stock (find at vocal menards) works well, cut and fabricate as needed. Would also leave you extra deck space, while working in and around the tank.

Looks good so far, nice work...

 

[Funlad3]

I would leave the stand as is and add support inside. Under the deck. That way it would support your wanting the larger sump possible. Steel stock (find at vocal menards) works well, cut and fabricate as needed. Would also leave you extra deck space, while working in and around the tank.

Looks good so far, nice work...

The stand has to go in a tiny space in my equally tiny dorm in Florida, so I have to cut it down. It's plenty strong, though; the stand is designed for a roughly 20 gallon sump that would have come stock with the Red Sea Reefer system. I've already been inside to take it apart; it held me just fine, so it'll hold just about any sized sump I can squeeze in.

 

[Funlad3]

Just a little bit of progress today...


The 250 GPH stock return pump was way too small for my liking.

So in a Craigslist miracle, I picked up a Mag 9.5 instead. This should give me about 40 times turnover per hour and keep my future SPS happy.

I also rummaged around the basement to see what plumbing I had laying around. A ball valve, some random fittings, and a ton of LocLine. Not bad for the low price of free!

I'll be out of town for the next week or so, so I guess I'll have to finish the build stage then. Happy holidays!

- Ben

 

[Funlad3]

Update! I'm going to try to finish most of my plumbing today:

I've also started playing around with rockwork. Marco rock cement is infuriating to use. It takes forever to set and completely fails if there's the slightest shift in the rocks. I'm going to try to epoxy them and then strengthen the bond with more Marco later.

Because I want this tank to be SPS dominant, I've been thinking a lot about the lights. I was looking at the hood last night, and I realized that there's no way the stock LEDs are going to work for me. They run at about 1.2 watts each, and there are two moonlights. They also only really cover the center third of the tank. No bueno.

So I was digging through the basement and found some of my old custom Chinese LEDs that had died on me. The LEDs are good, but the drivers got super electrocute-y, so they've been out of commission. I checked a few measurements, though, and if I cut these in half, they'll fit perfectly in the Nanocube's splashbox. I should be able to bring them back to life with $40 of drivers. These lights gave me the best growth I've ever had, so I'm excited.

I just dipped all of the coral in my basement holding tank, too. It should all be pest free, but you can't ever be too careful. It's good to be making progress!

- Ben

 

[Funlad3]

One broken vice later...

The heat sink and circuit board are now halved!

After more cutting to size on the back, they now fit into the hood with plenty of room on the sides for fans and heat management.

The splashguard fits perfectly! The hazed back third is going to help diffuse the light right along my overflow box, where the rocks and corals will be the tallest. This should help me get some good color spread and keep the light from being too intense for the coral.

I ordered two ballasts from Rapid LED today, and they should each run one string of LEDs each. I opted for analog dimming, and I think I'm going to keep the potentiometers and ballasts in the cabinet to minimize the heat in the hood and the tank. I still need to rewire the circuit board that I cut in half, but that should be as simple as soldiering wire between the now-halved circuits.

I'm going to try to finally get the stand cut to size tomorrow so that I can finally order the glass for my sump. I have silicone and acrylic for the overflow coming later this week from McMaster Carr, so I can finally start working on the sump as soon as I order the glass.

Time to go play with more rockwork...

- Ben

 

[Funlad3]

Today's work started with some boxes from McMaster-Carr...

Clear silicone for my yet-to-be-designed sump, black silicone for putting the overflow in place, and black acrylic (in cling wrap) for the box itself.

After some handywork with my router and hole bit, the overflow was good to go.

Perfect fit...

I also cut the stand down to size, sort of... I forgot to factor in the width of the second side panel, so I'm still 3/4" too wide. As is, the tank is perfectly flush with the stand, but adding the second side panel is going to leave extra space.

This still works out well, though; I had been cutting off of the right side of the stand, and I'm almost out of wood to support the back corner. If I cut any more away on the right side, I'd have a problem. Next time I break out the circular saw, I'm going to have to cut the 3/4" from the left side. The stand should still be structurally sound by the time I'm done hacking away at it.

My ballasts should get here on Monday, so the lighting is on standby until I have all of the parts. I may try to order the glass for the sump tomorrow even though the stand isn't done; it's far enough along I can figure out exactly how much space I'll have to work with inside the cabinet. Once I get that done, I can finally finish up my plumbing.

- Ben

 

[Funlad3]

The bulkheads are a perfect fit. Got to love the reflectiveness of polished acrylic!

 

[Danieldv6]

Interesting tank mod..following..I have a jbj24 sitting on bsmnt rightnow

 

[Funlad3]

Brief update...

I'm officially a college grad, so now I'm back and working on the tank again. A tank crash killed my first pair of flame angels while I was away, so the tank has been running on standby in the dark for about three months. I got home last week and brought a pair of flame angels from my favorite fish supplier. The small one is already in the tank with a diamond goby and a new CUC. Hopefully it establishes the nano as its own quickly so I can add the second, much larger, flame soon. I'm hoping that they pair up quickly; we'll see how that works.

I still have to get my actual lights up and running before I add corals; right now, I just have a super old/cheap LED blackbox running over the hole for the feeding lid. It works for now, but I want to finish my Frankenstein build...

More to come.


Brief FTS:

Larger Flame Angel (super misbarred; my favorite). He's hanging in my coral holding tank in the basement for now.

 

[Funlad3]

Another update:

The CUC has done a fantastic job cleaning up diatoms and the first hints of algae, so the tank is currently spotless. Test corals have been in the tank for a week or two, depending on the species, and I think that the tank is ready for me to move in the last of my abused SPS. All of the softies and LPS have been doing great, and I've been getting good PE on the two SPS frags I've been playing with.

The diamond goby jumped, but one of my blue star wrasses suddenly appeared after two weeks and is eating like a pig. There still might be one more wrasse (blue star or radiant) hiding in the sand, but I can't be sure. The small flame angel is eating a bit better and has finally stopped losing weight, but it only eats the first few pieces of food whenever it's added. To cope, I've been feeding the tank 2-4 times per day, but that leaves a lot of extra food floating around; I'm hoping to get more small fish to take care of the extra this week.

I still want to get my custom lights finished so I can reassemble the hood, but it's not my top priority.

Pictures:

Small flame (You can see that it's still underweight along its back. Hopefully I can fatten it up in a few weeks so I can add the larger flame.):

Blue star wrasse:

Orange branching hammer (still getting its color back)

Blue Maxima (before the CUC took care of the algae. I'm going to kill the aiptasia once I have time later this week.):

Red leg hermit crab (surprisingly putting in work) and OG Mummy Eye Chalice (courtesy of [MENTION=454]maidia[/MENTION]):

A very cluttered FTS:

 

[Funlad3]

A quick and belated update:

I got a spoiled batch of Hikari brine, and all of my fish died. From happy and eating to dead in about two hours. I'm still rethinking stocking, but I'm probably going to end up going with some Australian fish.

In the mean time, I broke down my severely neglected coral holding tank and moved everything into the nano. Only one piece hasn't done well, and it had more to do with placement/shading than anything else. I moved it to another tank and it's doing fine. These pictures are two weeks old, and it's already surprising how much many of these corals have colored up and grown, especially because I only got my dosing pumps running a week ago. More to come...

 

[Funlad3]

First, a few things about this tank.

It's acrylic with a bowed front, so it's impossible to get clear pictures of all of the corals due to the distortion, which is beyond frustrating.

With no fish in the nano, I've been able to open the return pump to full throttle. I have crazy flow, but that means that the tank is getting 35-40 times turnover and the sump is getting close to 90 times turnover per hour. That means microbubbles, which I'm fine with.

I still haven't been able to get my custom lights working (I haven't tried since January), so I'm still dealing with some pretty harsh shading from the front to back. I'm currently using a $50 blackbox LED unit without lenses, so the light that I do have is diffused but even. That said, most of my corals (which have been severely neglected for anywhere between 6 months and two years) are coloring up well and starting to grow again. I can't wait to see what they do if I ever get my custom lights running again.

Anyways, here are two full tank shots. The first is from the front, the second is at an angle to highlight the shading that I have to deal with.

This has to be the brightest green I've seen on an acro.

I'm really liking this piece and how fast it's growing/healing/encrusting. Again, for having the dosing pump up for about a week, this thing is on fire.

This is a hairy possibly-millie that had a ton of potential when I first bought it six months ago. It's finally starting to get some color back.

Here's an encrusting nub of an acro that has refused to die. I really like the coralite structure, and I'm hopeful for the color to keep developing.

These three frags were salvaged from a colony that underwent everything from bleaching to RTN to AEFW over the course of a year. They're finally perking up.

This was a cool piece, once. It's finally giving me some polyp extension, so hopefully color and growth come next.

I picked up a browned out frag of pink millie from a local shop last week, and it's greening out on me. Hopefully it'll pink up again once I get my real lights on the tank.

This is probably just going to turn out to be a bonsai acro, but I haven't seen an acro this purple in a half-decade. I have high hopes for how I might be able to tweak the color with higher light...

This came off of a frag of a super bright maricultured Acropora suharsoni that had supposedly been growing in captivity for around a year. I bought it completely bleached, but the color is already coming back. I've been wanting a healthy piece of this species for years.

This should be an interesting piece to watch. It has good PE and base coloration, so it'll be fun to see it shake off the brown.

Tubbs Montipora stellata is getting closer and closer to what it should be.

Encrusting monti section of the tank:

This mushroom has a special place in my heart; I'm not much of a softy person, but this strain of mushroom was in one of the tanks at Eckerd College, where I just finished up my degree in Political Science. I was originally going to major in Marine Biology, but I didn't like the focus of the program and graduated with a minor. The department resource manager and I never really got along (he killed a few thousand dollars worth of my coral, I left an 8'x4' fiberglass sump under his building), so when my friend told me that the school's display tanks were being broken down and that he could take anything we wanted, I got one of these mushrooms. We bagged it up at midnight the night I moved out, so it's definitely a sentimental piece. It doesn't hurt that it's bright green. Anyways:

My hand-collected Hawaiian zoas and palys are still going strong:

My SPS geek coral is the only coral that isn't doing too well for some reason. It's a Turbinaria bifrons, it's getting good flow and moderate light, and it refuses to extend its polyps and started receding a day ago. I'm going to keep an eye on it and move it to a tank with a heavier bioload if it keeps getting worse.

My other Turbinaria is doing fantastically:

I've been cyclically killing and saving this cyphastrea (I think?) for about two years. One of these days, I might even let it color up.

That's all for now. I have my dosing pump set to maintain my calcium and alkalinity at 450 ppm and 10 dkh, respectively, throughout the week while also matching consumption of the corals. As I get more data points every week on growth and consumption, the excel program that I wrote should get more accurate projecting weekly consumption so that I can better maintain these levels.

Now I just have to sit back and wait for growth and for someone to get some of the fish I want in stock.

 

[Funlad3]

Some pickups that I made today at a local place's Fourth of July sale. At $30 a piece, these weren't the cheapest frags, but having commercially grown and sold acros for years myself, I have no problem paying for the work that goes into producing frags this healthy and happy. Polyps out within five minutes of being glued.


Group shot:

Pretty unsure of what this will turn into. It almost looks like a red planet, but it's off of a wild colony and this piece is way too massive in shape to my eye. It's in high flow in front of my return, so if I'm lucky, I'll get a table out of it.

I'm always a sucker for stags, and this one came from a wild colony that was a bright metallic blue. Hopefully this piece will grow faster than the other thick branching staghorns I've worked with.

This piece shows how much of a sucker I am for polyps. Especially when they're in such contrast with the rest of a piece...

I have a few other pieces that I should get within the next week or so. I really want to drive my overall calcium and alkalinity consumption up in this tank to see if I can boost growth...

 

[Funlad3]

This needs to stop.

Luckily, I'm out of space in the tank until I get my actual light built and get my shadowing problem resolved.

 

[Funlad3]

Just a quick teaser...

 

[Funlad3]

I couldn't even wait a week to add new pieces... Oh well. Indo gold torch and Aussie acro are in the tank.