Reef Aquarium Gardening
Part 4
Please refer to the previous editions of these articles for our definition of a reef garden and why we encourage these types of marine aquariums.
With our new aquarium positioned into its location after being tested for leaks and the protein skimmer installed, we started to fill it with RO/DI water. As you would have read from our previous article, we mixed the new salt mix in with the RO/DI water using an Aquaclear 802 power head pump. This ensures that the salt is continually being mixed in with the water while it is being filled. As the aquarium would take several days to be filled with water, we moved onto the job of installing the lighting.
Lighting
During the planning stage of our reef aquarium garden we had already decided that soft corals would make up the vast majority of the corals we would keep. The reason we had decided to choose soft corals is that most soft corals can be easily propagated and do not require the intense lighting that some of the so called hard corals require. Also, many new hobbyists start with soft corals as they are normally associated with easy to keep corals. Keeping these types of corals allowed us to choose fluorescent lighting instead of metal halides.
Reefs UK has had amazing success and incredible growth rates keeping our corals under a combination of Hagen Power-Glo and Hagen Marine-Glo fluorescent tubes. We have tried many of the fluorescent tubes on the market and found that Hagens tubes not only bring out the different pigments in the corals and fish, but also increase the growth rates of the corals we keep. We have even successfully kept a number of species that are said to require very intense lighting under Hagens fluorescent tubes with surprising growth rates including anemones and acropora. Taking into consideration these points and our many years of success using the Power-Glo and Marine-Glo tubes, we were confident that this lighting would be more than adequate for our reef aquarium garden.
As we have mentioned in previous articles, our aquarium is 60" long by 24" high and 24" deep. With these measurements in mind, we opted for three 48" Hagen Marine-Glo florescent tubes and three 48" Hagen Power-Glo florescent tubes. All six tubes would be powered by three Hagen Glomat2 40watt ballasts (fluorescent tube starter units). Each of these ballasts are capable of powering 2 florescent tubes, which reduced the amount of plugs that were needed for the reef aquarium. As many of you know, this is an important consideration due to the amount of messy cables always associated with the equipment used on any aquarium.
To ensure the light from fluorescent tubes are directed downwards into the aquarium, we always use polished aluminium reflectors which bounce the light into the aquarium rather than escaping upwards and lighting the inside of the hood. You can buy custom made reflectors or simply make your own by purchasing polished aluminium sheeting from a DIY store.
As we had cover glass on the top of our aquarium, we simply rested the fluorescent tubes over the top of the glass ensuring that the ends of the tubes were safely overhanging onto the glass struts which run from front to back. This would provide a safe way of keeping the lighting as close to the aquarium water as possible but would prevent a florescent tube accidentally coming in contact with the aquarium water. We also secured the three Hagen Glomat2 ballests on the wider glass struts ensuring that these would also have no contact with water and could not accidentally be knocked into the aquarium.
When planning lighting for any marine aquarium, it is important to make sure that all the lighting does not come on at the same time and go off at the same time. We need to try and emulate the rising and setting of the sun during the day. To achieve this, we purchased electronic timers to plug the lights into. These timers had battery backup so in the event of a power failure the timers would keep their settings. When you have as many power failures as we do, this is an important feature. For example, if you have a power failure for a number of hours, mechanical timers would become out of synchronisation with the actual time so you could find that your lights switch themselves on in the middle of the night when the power had been restored. With electronic timers that have a battery backup, the actual time and its settings (when to switch lights on and off) are continually stored in memory.
We opted to switch the blue actinic Marine-Glo tubes to come on first and go off last. The brighter Power-Glo lights come on last but were turned off first. Although we cannot truly represent true daylight, this staggered lighting introduces the light for the reef aquarium garden over a period of time and darkens the aquarium over a few hours rather than instantly.
Thermometer, Pumps And UPS
As we have mentioned earlier, we unfortunately have a number of power cuts through the year so we had to ensure that some basic equipment would continue to run during lose of power. To achieve this, we purchased a large Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). Basically this is a piece of equipment that plugs into any mains socket and contains a battery that continually charges itself while power is supplied to it. When it detects a power failure, it automatically switches power over to the battery and continues to power any equipment you have plugged into the UPS. When the power is restored, the UPS automatically switches back to mains power and recharges its batteries.
In our experience with power cuts, this is one of the most important pieces of equipment for a reef aquarium and one that many hobbyists disregard. Long periods without power can be catastrophic for all the animals we keep in a reef aquarium and this simple piece of equipment can keep things running for many hours without mains power. The more batteries the UPS has, the longer your aquarium will run for and the more you can power. Although we purchased a large UPS and paid 580.00, smaller UPS can be purchased for under 100.00. The best place to purchase a UPS is from a computer retailer as they are mainly used to keep computer systems running in the event of a power failure.
To ensure the batteries in a UPS run for as long as possible during a power failure, it is important to only connect up vital pieces of equipment. We decided to connect our 300watt heater to keep the water at the correct water temperature and a single Aquaclear 802 power head to keep the water circulating around the aquarium. Connecting these 2 pieces of equipment to the UPS is a simple matter of either changing the plugs on the equipment with the plug connectors supplied with the UPS or connecting a 4 way power strip to the UPS and plug in the equipment into the power strip.
Once the thermometer was set at 78f, both the thermometer and the one power head connected to the UPS were place into the aquarium. To ensure we had sufficient water flow around our reef aquarium garden, we also placed another 3 Aquaclear 802 power heads into the aquarium and plugged these directly into normal mains sockets. This would provide us with an approximate flow around our aquarium of 6000 litres per hour equating to approximately 10 times the total volume of the aquarium. Although corals and fish should not be subjected to direct water flow, they do require strong currents so it is important to provide significant water movement through a reef aquarium. For those who have dived over a reef, will understand how rough the reefs can be during the day.
In the next article, we discuss how we placed the living rock into the aquarium and we start to stock our reef garden with corals.
Costs to-date (UK pounds)
1 x Sebray Aquarium (60" x 30" x 24") including cabinet = 450.00
1 x Deltec AP850 protein skimmer = 300.00
1 x Eheim 1250 Pump = 50.00
1 x Eheim 12mm flexible tubing = 4.50
1 x Kent Hi-S Maxxima = 250.00
2 x Boots winemaker fermenters = 12.00
1 x Kent Salt (200US Gallons) = 47.50
1 x Hydrometer = 15.00
4 x Aquaclear 802 powerheads = 148.00
1 x Tronic 300 watt heater = 16.00
2 x Electronic Timers = 14.00
3 x Hagen 40watt Marine-Glo = 40.00
3 x Hagen 40watt Power-Glo = 42.00
3 x Hagen Glomat2 40watt ballasts = 57.00
1 x APC Smart 2200 UPS = 580.00
TOTAL : 2027.50