Neo Nano!

S

steelcaveman

Premium Member
Yup - a nano build log.
The good news - it will not take long.
DeepSea Aquatics 34g nano tank and stand.
Last night and most of today was spent taking down my 140g reef and with the help of a few great reefers it now sits in my garage till a new home is found.
I am hoping to get the plumbing right the first time! - hahahahah.
Good thing Lowes is less than a one mile drive.
I utilized the plumbing expertise of Drew for the makeshift overflow and cutting a hole in the sponge for the internal overflow box.
 
To reduce the amount of back flow into the sump from the cascading return, I added an extension with flex tube and a barbed T-fitting.
The plumbing to the tank is complete.
Let's hope it doesn't leak.
 
Time to add water.
First to hit the water - star fish.
Got a make shift setup going till the final area is complete.
And yeah yeah - no leaking!!!!!
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Note - all the water, liverock and the sump are from my 140g.
To assist in the transition - I am utilizing Seachem Stability.
 
Pic of the stuff in the tank.
I am shocked how much stuff fits in this Neo Nano.
I hooked up a Tunze Nano wavebox - that is why the surface is wavy looking - with it off the surface barely ripples.
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Here is a pic of the tanks future home. The closet is to the right and will house the refugium, Auto top off & UV.
The chiller will go to the right of the tank and the CA reactor will go under the stand.
If anyone here has experience on how to best use a CA reactor on a Nano please chime in. I have a feeling that I may need to consider a high end CO2 dispenser.
 
The Hamilton light arrived. Luckily Bill at Neptunes Cove opened it, and we noticed that the light had a lot of blemishes that were caused by Hamilton Technologies.
This is the first time I have actually seen Sharpie pen used to cover up blemishes.
This is after it took about two weeks to arrive. Hamilton is sending a new light - but in the meantime I am using the banged up light. One of the T5 lights does not work either. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR A LIGHT COSTING OVER $500 TO ARRIVE IN THIS CONDITION. I fear they are using 1980's GM workers/engineers/accountants for their new product line.

I will be hanging the fixture, but not going to waste time hanging this one.
 
Today I replaced the T5 bulbs with the ATI blue plus.
Wow - what an improvement!
Even better news is that it was only the bulb and not the fixture regarding the other T5 not working.
The water is cloudy as I put in too much Phyto - forgot - this isn't 140g.
I went to Exotic Aquatics and saw an old friend working their again -hi Taylor - thanks for the deal on the Gorgorian - I dipped it, cleaned it up and put it in some good flow. And way too much phyto - Looking sweet.
 
other than the blemishes how do you like the light? Im thinking of getting one. Did you get the 250watt? Also did you get the electronic ballast upgrade?
 
@steelcaveman wrote:
If anyone here has experience on how to best use a CA reactor on a Nano please chime in. I have a feeling that I may need to consider a high end CO2 dispenser. said:
John,

Member blide uses a Ca reactor on his 20G nano with a standard setup and it works fine. He has scaled down the sump and skimmer that you see in his thread. :lol: http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=39771&highlight=

Cheers,
Click to expand...
 
The light is really slick.
I went with the 150 w and the electric ballast.
I knew that I was going with the ATI blue plus T5 bulbs and didn't want to fry my corals so I opted for the 150w - plus the water is not deep.
Then again I may be wrong and the 250w may be better.
The electric ballasts are very nice!
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The T5 bulbs that came with the fixture are pretty bad - IMO.
I am not a fan of how the HQI bulb is installed.
The glass slides a little less than 1/2 way to allow access. My fingers are kind of stubby - so it was a challenge. There is a way to unscrew the casing that makes the bulb a lot easier to install. The 14k bulb looks good!!!
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The paint appears to be flaking off. It does not appear that the metal was prepped/primed.
I wish the T5's had the screw caps like on the Hagen Glo fixture instead of a cheap plastic cover, but all tripped out fixtures that I found used the cheap plastic cover. I am not convinced that the plastic parts around the T5's & led's wont warp from the heat of the Metal Halide. On a good note, the fan is very good.
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There is a plastic strip at the end of the fixture for access to the T5's - it does not fit well.
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The fixture needs to be up higher from the tank than the leg mounts would suggest, as the led light points straight down on the far right and far left of the tank - they should have had a slight angle to them or had a swivel feature - that would have been really easy to install, inexpensive and a very nice feature.
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The fixture does have a light shield that I really like. It slides out if you don't like it.
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Then there are the Sharpie pen marks. That's after waiting about 2 weeks for the fixture to arrive.
If you bought a new black Lexus that arrived with 9 dings and scratches that were touched up with a Sharpie pen, you would likely be disappointed - not even Kia would do this. Yes, there are 9 different points of damage that were covered up with a Sharpie pen. Hopefully it doesn't take two more weeks to get a new one.
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I ordered a hanging kit from Zero Edge. Should be here any day. I requested a slight modification so I could place the base of the kit on the floor behind the tank and still mount the bracket to the wall without cutting out part of the base board. The hanging kit was pretty expensive - but I just don't feel comfortable with my DIY prowess on hanging a light over water - Plus I wanted it to look good.
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If the fixture did not have sharpie pen marks and the paint wasn't flaking - I would be happy with the fixture.
 
John,

Good write-up. :lol: On the led's..... it it possible to rotate then 180* so that they would then point inward??

Cheers,
 
Ron - I'll find out if I can DIY a LED mount when the new one arrives and it is time to hang the light.
Here is a pic of the skimmer the morning after the phyto festival.
 
Great write up. I am using a MH with 2x39 watt Blue+ bulbs. I agree that they are very bright! I bought a 32"x24"x15" rimless tank and I am going to hang a fixture so Im trying to decide which one to get. Right now its either the fixture you have or the ATI sunpower 6x24watt T5's. http://www.atiaquaristik.com/index.php?id=125,0,0,1,0,0 Its hard to decide.
 
Can you please resize your pictures to fit our screens? Ive got my browser open at 1920 pixels wide, and the images are wider.

Thanks for your help.
 
I'll see what I can do about pic size.
I am using a mac and basically have just been taking the pics, exporting to desktop, and uploading to site.
I'll have to play with it for while to figure out how to make the pics a little smaller.
What is the optimal size???
I have a pretty big widescreen and the pics look pretty good on my setup.
 
You can store them in photo bucket and easily resize them there.


Can you take a couple pics of the fixture over your tank. Im curious as to how it look over it.
 
@steelcaveman wrote:
I'll see what I can do about pic size. I am using a mac and basically have just been taking the pics said:
I think the forum software used to do some automatic resizing, and that just changed recently...

If you're exporting them out of iPhoto, just select Size: Custom, and Max Dimension of 800 pixels -- that usually works out fairly well for posting on the board.

Great build thread!
Click to expand...
 
Light hanging.
I ordered the hanging kit last week and here it is - with the extra mounting plate!
Looks pretty slick.
Mounting to the wall - I inserted the shorter mounts into the wall and inserted the screws from the longer ones. Seems to have worked really well.
On the fourth hole I hit a problem. There is something behind the dry wall and it moves a bit. Decided that causing an electrical fire would be bad. The three mounts are each rated to hold two of the fixtures and some of the weight is supported by the floor - so I feel that is secure.
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Lets see how these pics look. The real reason for the post!
They look pretty tiny on my screen - take up almost 33% of the horizontal and less then half of the vertical view. Let me know if they will look better a bit larger.
 
Hamilton replaced the light - and they are proud of it!
They put their name on the is one.
My little watermelon frag seems happy too.
Friday is the big day - move the tank to it's permanent location.
 
Looks good man. If you need any help with the move, give me a shout. I'll probably be home from work around 6:00 or so.

Josh
 
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