Firestarter's 2ft Standard tank

[Firestarter]

Lightset that is going to be modded.

[Firestarter]

Removed the dreaded outdated iron ballast. Weighs a ton and heats up more than an e-ballast. Good riddance!

[Firestarter]

Played around with the lightset. It is possible to fit 2 bulbs in the hood. Had a dilemma whether to mod it to a 2x36W PL or leave it as 1x36W, since I also had a dual e-ballast. Decided to stick to the plan first. If not enough, can always mod again.

[Firestarter]

Took out the reflectors. The plain hood is all that's left.

[Firestarter]

Time to give it a nice spray of paint. Sprayed it black but ran out of black spray halfway because one of the cans went haywire, and splattered blobs of paint everywhere.

[Firestarter]

Luckily I had other colours as well, choose a cool blue colour instead. I think it looks better than black.

[Firestarter]

Plain blue hood is finally dry.

[Firestarter]

Fitted in the reflectors.

[Firestarter]

Rammed the e-ballast in as it was quite tight.

[Firestarter]

Played around with the wires, so that I can make use of the switch at the side. Then fired the lights up.

[Firestarter]

Final picture of the lightset. All that I have to do now is to change the bulb to a B/W bulb.

Any comments welcomed and appreciated.

[Kalib]

Looking good, so any plans on what's going in there?

[Firestarter]

Still many uncertainties in my mind now. I want to try to keep the setup simple, but I keep having wild ideas to make the setup more complicated. Right now I'm debating whether to run an external DSB tank as I have a similar 1.2ft tank with sandbed. Also, I'm not really sure if the 1x36W PL lights will sustain in the long run. Plan to make a bare bottom tank, and keep some corals like mushrooms first.

[Kalib]

In long run if your looking into keeping LPS or SPS, the 1x36W PL will definitely be insufficient.

[Firestarter]

I'm so afraid to make any mistakes and want to do everything as perfect as possible. Been thinking about equipment to use in the future like iceprobe, T5 lights and so forth.

[Ancelot]

Still many uncertainties in my mind now. I want to try to keep the setup simple, but I keep having wild ideas to make the setup more complicated. Right now I'm debating whether to run an external DSB tank as I have a similar 1.2ft tank with sandbed. Also, I'm not really sure if the 1x36W PL lights will sustain in the long run. Plan to make a bare bottom tank, and keep some corals like mushrooms first.

IMO, I do not see the need to run another tank with DSB inside. Reason is that with your good deal of rocks, I do not foresee you having to worry about overload of nutrients. A simple 10% water change should do the trick nicely (:

anyway I am impressed and truly thrilled that you are using a seio M820 as a return. Truly ingenius and I believe it will work out real well kudos to your creativity!

And scrap iceprobe if you are thinking of setting up a 2ft tank. Water volume is too big to do an substantial temperature change (:

Just my 2 cents worth

[tanks51]

If u partition the tank for IOS one point to note is u will have lesser space.

[Firestarter]

IMO, I do not see the need to run another tank with DSB inside. Reason is that with your good deal of rocks, I do not foresee you having to worry about overload of nutrients. A simple 10% water change should do the trick nicely (:

anyway I am impressed and truly thrilled that you are using a seio M820 as a return. Truly ingenius and I believe it will work out real well kudos to your creativity!

And scrap iceprobe if you are thinking of setting up a 2ft tank. Water volume is too big to do an substantial temperature change (:

Just my 2 cents worth

Hi, thanks for your feedback and suggestions. On further thoughts, I think I'll pass on the external DSB tank. Just took some more pictures and I'll be posting them soon.

As for the iceprobe, I've read that it can only support up to 10G of water, but my tank is 16G. Was wondering if I could just take my chances in it with the help of a fan.

[Firestarter]

If u partition the tank for IOS one point to note is u will have lesser space.

Yes thats true! Was wondering what kinds of fish I can put in after that. Its going to be a real challenge.

[Firestarter]

Fooled around with some cardboard just now, to visualise the IOS.

Cut out a piece of cardboard to act like an acrylic sheet.

[Firestarter]

Placed the Atman 104 skimmer pump and Seio M820 inside the fake IOS.

[Firestarter]

Cut out the return hole for the Seio M820. The real IOS will look something like this.

[Firestarter]

Another look inside the IOS chamber. Got a space at the right side, which can be used to place a mobile DSB.

Haha I'm getting crazy from my weird ideas. Will explain more on the mobile DSB soon.

[Firestarter]

Tank setup with all equipment.

[tanks51]

Bro,

You might have microbubble issue and is there any partition in the IOS?