hanseriff.de

First LED steps with my little reef

RalfP — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 14:06:47 +0000

Hey all,
after playing around with some LED fixtures above the fragtanks for quite a while, I decided to use this lightbulb change cycle, to reduce the amount of small bulbs, using LED instead. A small, 24Watt T5 costs nearly as much as a 54Watt one, so bulb-cost per Watt is really bad with the small ones.
LED should last for several years, not the %&§# 6 months for the blueish T5s.

The bulbs on the pic have already been changed in this cycle, the LED are the new “to be changed next week” ones.
The bulbs on the pic are:
4 with 4*54 Watts [2*AquaScience blue / 1*AquaScience special / 1*Giesemann Aquapink]
1 with 4*24 Watts [2*AquaScience blue / 1*AquaScience special / 1*Giesemann Aquapink]
4 MH (HQI) 400 Watts [2*Giesemann Megachrome coral / 2*Giesemann Megachrome marine]
4 LED spots max. 90 Watts [Kessil A350-Tuna Blue] ( http://www.kessil.com )

I am really curious about the new light colors.
For now, there are the old 4 lamps with 4*24Watts T5 each, in order to let the coral adapt to the newly changed bulbs. I’ll give them a week or so.
The Kessils have separate adjustable “blue” and “white” channels. For a start, the white will be set so something around 60%, the blue 50%.
With this, power consumption should be lower than the stated max. 90Watts and also lower, than the 4* (4*24Watts) T5s with LED having more PAR.

Early in the morning, July 2012

RalfP — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:51:22 +0000

“Green slimmer”, the green, branched Acropora is taking over again,
think I’ll have to do some “gardening” the next weeks and refill the fragtanks.

New “Dreambox” arrived

RalfP — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 12:18:19 +0000

The new filter box from Royal Exclusive finally arrived. It took 2 months and not the promised 2 weeks.
I am in the process of installing it now, water is already flowing through and the skimmer is working.
Now the electrodes, water replacement, automatic water change etc. will be installed.
It’s 200x74x49cm and the biggest pipe connector is 63mm in diameter.

Fish are back

RalfP — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 10:35:54 +0000

Fish are finally back in their old (new made) tank.

Redoing my discus tank

RalfP — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:02:08 +0000

Downstairs, I was keeping a heavily planted and lighted 180x60x60cm freshwater tank with some discus and other fish. In order to being able to keep the plants, there were some minerals and hardness in the not colored water.

Having my wild discus (Blueface Heckel from Rio Negro) in mind, I decided to redo the tank and turn it into something Rio Negro biotope like. That’s nearly no hardness and minerals in the water, no plants, lots of wood, leaves, yellowish sand etc. etc.
The river biotope is called “Rio Negro”, because there are lots of humic acids and tannins that add color and lowers the pH.
In my case this is done with different leaves and the wood (moor). Later, the filter will be prepared with peat.

The Heckel discus and also about 50 blue Neon Tetras (Paracheirodon simulans) from the previous setup are swimming in 200 liter plastic rainbarrels. The rainbarrels are connected to the two box filters, that will later be reconnected to the tank.
For now, tank has to cycle and fish are very slowly adapted to the new tank water in the meantime.
Think I’ll still have to wait a week to move them in.

My little reef featured by Advanced Aquarist

RalfP — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:30:06 +0000

I was feeling really honored as Advanced Aquarist,
a publication that really deserves it’s name,
asked me if I want to have my tank featured in their media.

I gladly agreed, wrote some text and took pictures, describing how my
reef is run und how it developed in the last 6 years.

Today, they published and here it is:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/1/aquarium

There is also a new video there. *hinthinthint* ;-)
Ralf

Server update

RalfP — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:25:39 +0000

Hi,
I changed from using the ooold cashh.de domain to using a more appropriate “hanseriff.de”.
“Hanse” derived from the old “Hanse”, a baltic and northern sea trading organization, that built it’s base structure before the year 1250.
Hamburg, the city were I live is a “Hanse”-city, “Hansestadt Hamburg” and riff is meaning “reef” in german.

Doing the above mentioned, I also moved the pages to a new machine and updated all running software. Hopefully it’s all better now. A new slideshow in the gallery and a imho cleaner look etc..

Thanks for viewing!
RalfP

Simultaneous Tridacna clam spawning

RalfP — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:00:03 +0000

Yesterday, a quite large Tridacna maxima started to release sperm at 8pm.
The other clams (2nd large T. maxima, 4 med. T. maxima, 3 large T. derasa) joined in.
30 min later, they stopped.
After a short break, the large clams started to release eggs.
30 min later, they stopped.
It took the reef an hour to have clean water again.
Unfortunately no larvae will survive (UV/filter/coral/wrong sperm:egg ratio)
This happens at least 3 times a year, usually triggered by environment changes.
This time, I changed the one year old 4*400Watts MH bulbs two days prior to this event.
Lucky me, that the cam was ready.

music by duckett / CC BY-NC 3.0

3 min. Video

RalfP — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:10:21 +0000

This is what the reef looks like today.
You may want to switch to HD if your bandwidth allows that.

music by morgantj / CC BY 3.0

No I am not dead, neither is the reef

RalfP — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:14:51 +0000

A lot of coral had to move for the new look.
Cyano bacteria are gone.
I took some pics during the different bluelight phases.