How noisy are the fans on your T5's? I need to buy some fans for my canopy and am running the same T5 retro you are. I almost bought a bunch of 24 db fans but feared they might be too noisy. I'd be curious to hear what you think of the noise level coming off of 28 db fans. I might just pick those fans up if they aren't all that noisy.
The tank is looking FANTASTIC!!! I've been following along.
well you will have to wait for my brother to comment on the actual specs of the fans. Our tank is in our unfinished basement so it is kind of noisy down there already, but the fans cant even be heard. In a quiet room they would be heard but wouldn't be loud at all..
Well we are getting pretty full of corals right now with the amount of rock in our tank. The plan is to add a few more pieces of rock to build up the left side as well as the gap between the gsp and the middle monti cap to fill the tank out just a little bit more. Were gonna try to cherry pick a few nice pieces of coraline covered rock either from a LFS or someone on the board since we don't have much coraline on our rocks.
Thanks for all the comments folks. It only took 51 pictures, but we finally made it to page 3!
The fans are from NewEgg, they are the 80mm MassCool case fans. Here is the direct link; FYI I bought 10 fans and found uses for 8, cause they're just that awesome. As Charlie mentioned they are silent and can not be heard over the skimmer or return pumps. If you under-drive them at 9 or 10V they will be even quieter, but they obviously will push less air. I was going to do this, but when I tested them out at 12V the first time I threw that idea out the window as I didn't think it was needed.
I don't know how you got that shot of the wrasse, Charlie. You must have sat down there a long time and taken a lot of pictures!
The next big project will be an LED array for some unique sunset and sunrise effects. It'll include a few different types and colors of LEDs all run by a micro controller (PIC, to be exact) for a whole lot of custom effects. Release date TBD.
Well it was time to thin out the tank a little. The GSP rock is now gone, and a few more pounds of new LR were put in so some of our frags could be put into permanent homes. The only casualty with the reaquascaping was our 30+ head hammer colony breaking into two pieces, but we made it work. Better pics to come during the week, but I just wanted to post a few to give you all a taste.
Wow I didn't notice how fake the clowns look in that first picture. I swear they weren't added with PS, its just the actinic bulbs screwing with the camera.
(Link to slightly larger photo. Original is 4300x1600, but of course that is too large for any free image hosting sites)
A shot from the left side. Didn't clean the glass of algae since it is the only thing our starry blenny eats.
There is plenty on the right side and back glass, so he stays nice n' fat.
I think the AquaSun bulb threw off this photo a bit. The brain has no pink in it unfortunately.
Good shot of the lobo.
And finally the 'ric rock'. Three, soon to be four, blue ricordia floridia, as well as two green ricordia floridia.
And a growing bunch of green ricordia yuma.
I think we've finally found our sweet spot with this tank. After battles with bubble algae, bryopsis, cyano, snail death, and now hair algae, we're back lookin' just fine. We still can't keep snails for the most part, but our blenny and rabbitfish do a great job of keeping the glass and rocks clean. A conch would be nice for the sand bed, but we can't keep snails so, yeah...