10 gallon low tech softie tank build

[labnjab]

We are in the process of building a low tech, low budget softie tank. Right now it just finished cycling. We have 12 lbs live rock, 15-20 lbs aragonite sand, a koralia 1 powerhead and a jagar 100watt heater. We're going skimmerless as it will be mostly softies.

Lighting will be DIY LED. We're going with 10, 3 watt gu10 bulbs. 5 white, 5 blue. I'm building the housing out of diamond plate aluminum and will include 2 fans. I know someone that is using the 3watt gu10 bulbs on a 5 gallon and sps is growing almost as good as they do under halides. We just ordered the bulbs from china (best deal) and they will hopefully be here by the end of the month.

We plan on stocking most of the softies and leathers that are currently in our 75 gallon. We also want to add some colorfull mushrooms and zoas. We'd also like to move our open brain and one or 2 of our candy cane colonies from our 75 gallon to this tank. We'll also want to stock a small cuc and possibly a yellow clown goby or something that size. Water changes will be done using water from our 75 gallon and hopefully we won't have to supplement anything.

So far we only have $150 invested and that includes lighting, rock and the powerhead. Everything else we already had.

Here it is so far

We're leaving the sand open for the lps. The rockwork is pretty much complete other then a few pieces that will come from our 75. Its fully cycled and just awaiting the lighting. Let me know what you think. Thank you

 

[walzy444]

That k1 isnt going to be too much flow? lol I have 1 k1 in my 35 hex and i still feel like its making a cyclone effect lol Looks good tho! Im curious about LEDs, I need to learn more on them. I have no idea what they compare to. or how many you need in a tank, how far they penetrate down ect.. I wonder if you could create a pendant sort of.. with like 3 of those lightbulbs that are LEDs in side... hm Let me know how they work out.

 

[lisa foster]

I will be curious about the led build looks so complicated to me.

 

[labnjab]

Thank you. I love flow Our 75 has 4 k2's, a k1, and a mag9.5 return, and we had a 29 gallon before with 2 koralia 2's and a mag 9.5 return and I still wasn't happy with the flow, but for the 10 gallon I've been debating on dropping it down to a koralia nano. With no stock yet it doesn't look so bad but I'm sure it will probably blow everything around once we start adding things.


I'm not completely sure of the lights performance. Its more of an experiment. I like the results I see on my friends 5 gallon so I'm hoping I'll get the same results on this tank. The best thing about the bulbs is they have an internal driver so all you need are the bulbs and a socket. I just finished building the housing for the lights last night. It doesn't look half bad. I'll post some pics this afternoon

 

[labnjab]

We have the light about 75% complete. I received the last 2 sockets this afternoon so I will wire them in tonight. The I just need to wire in the fan and wait on the bulbs.

Here's the housing and sockets. The wiring is all soldered and heat shrunk and will be cleaned up once I get the last 2 sockets installed. We are going to have 2 plugs, once for the blue and one for the white.

The tank is cycled and we've adding a few hermits and snails from our 75. Hopefully the bulbs will be in soon. We also traded the k1 for a nano

 

[labnjab]

Update

Half the bulbs came in so we installed them and moved a few of the hardier corals in. The bulbs are a little more yellow then I like, but I'll see if there is an improvement when we add the blue. If we still don't like them then I'll switch them to a higher spectrum.

Heres the fts, its more yellow in person. The lights just kicked on so the coral are still "sleeping"

and the lights

We took the optics off, which reduces par, but gets ridof the spot light look. We will have some par readings once we meet up with a friend to borrow a par meter. Hopefully the last 5 bulbs will show up soon.

 

[labnjab]

We have all the lights running now and I am impressed. I will hopefully have par readings this weekend but it is bright and the pictures don't do the colors justice.

 

[mak3mydae]

With a tank so shallow, par should be fine with or without optics. If anything, i would leave them off so the colors can blend a bit better and reduces that spotlight effect you were talking about. Love the rockwork btw

 

[trajik ink]

looks good! can't wait to see an update in the future.

 

[labnjab]

Thank you. We did leave the optics off, I couldn't stand the spot light. I am kinda curious as to what the par is, although like you said, I'm sure its plenty. A friend is growing sps with 5 of these bulbs in a 5 gallon. We're a focusing mostly on softies but would like put an open brain and a few candy cane colonies in the sand bed

 

[labnjab]

I forgot to mention that I also love how the bulbs don't warm up the tank. We were debating on running a fan but didn't, and even after 12 hours of light the tank stays at 80 degrees

 

[labnjab]

We borrowed a par meter from our local reef club to take some readings of our new lights on our 10 gallon nano and also the halides on our 75. Here what we got and these are the averages. I'm not familiar with whats good our bad other then all stonies are growing awesome in our 75 no matter where they are in the tank.

75 gallon with 2x250 watt hqi with dirty lenses and heavy flow and surface agitation, so theres room for improvement
1100 1 inch from bulbs
500 just below the surface
250 midway
150 on the sand
I'm going to clean up the lenses today and see if the reading improves.

Note: we have several acros and 2 clams growing happily on the sand bed

10 gallon with 10x3 watt gu10 led bulbs
Without optics
500 above water
200-230 just below surface
70-80 midway
50-60 on the sandbed
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking these numbers are just perfect for the softies and lps we plan to stock in this tank, since clams and acros are growing at a par of 150 in our 75

With optics-and it looks horrible, like a bunch of spot lights
1000 above the water
800 just below the surface
300 midway
200 on the sand

The leds have a huge difference in par with or without optics, but with optics it looks horrible so I'm leaving them off. Either way its pretty good for the price and energy savings. We have room in the fixture to add 8 more gu10 bulbs and play around with optics and no optics to get the best look and par. With the right combination it can be comparable to halides on shallow tanks.

 

[labnjab]

Its been a while since we updated. I added 8 more bulbs, 5 lbs more rock and a ton of coral. Everything is doing great. The leather has gotten huge. The LEDs are working out great and no nuisance algae yet and tons of coralline on the glass. We still haven't added any fish but hope to soon.

 

[PasstheTorch]

Nice! Looks great

 

[tigerslacrosse4]

I run a K nano in my 10 and its perfect flow for softies and easy LPS should you ever want some SPS that K1 should be perfect though

 

[labnjab]

Thank you. The k1 is working out a lot better then the k nano was. We added a darwin perc to it Monday night. We didnt really want a clown for this tank, but have always wanted a Darwin, and he only cost us 2 sps frags. We may add 1 more small fish, but are undecided at the moment.

Im curently debating on upgrading to a higher quality led set-up. For some reason the gu10 bulbs have shifted color a little and its looking a little more yellow. I may swich out a few bulbs to play with the color 1st, but we may eventually upgrade them to something better

Sent from my FroyoEris using Tapatalk

 

[labnjab]

Just wanted to update this, as its been a while and the tank is approaching the year mark

We upgraded the lighting to 16 3 watt Cree XR-E's (8 cool white and 8 royal blue) with 80 degree optics. We also traded all the slow growing zoas for ricordia which will hopefully grow quicker


Here's a fts and some pictures around the tank, including the new rics. They haven't fully opened yet because the lights just turned on, and I know I need to clean the powerhead, lol. Its going in the 75 gallon for the rabbitfish to clean off