Rufessor's 57 Gallon Oceanic Rimless build

I have a funny story... I wrote the code for the lighting and was constantly updating it etc etc and had left the Arduino processor board with the PMW output sitting behind the tank with the USB cable wired onto the processor so I could just plug in my computer and load up the newest version without having to take the plastic housing apart every time I needed to get at the board to load something new.  

Anyhow, I got it finished and had it running for some months but neglected to ever replace the plastic cover on the computer board... well... 

I got a red tooth trigger... and then the program started acting increasingly odd and I figured I had a bug so went through the code, even posted on line that there may be an issue as others are using it... and finally one day my processor stopped comm with my computer... 

I looked back there to figure out what the HECK was up.. and it turns out my red tooth trigger likes to play in the power head ouput on the back left of the tank and was spraying salt water (little bits at a time) onto the processor and shorted out a few pins!! 

Anyhow, I finally ordered a new one and it should be here today.  DAMN FISH!

 That's it- any one want a red tooth!!!!!

Just kidding.... he is staying for now (my other fish have some ragged fins so may not be long for the tank).

Anyhow, I looked... move in to the tank was Nov 28 2011 so growth pics are almost exactly 1 year.  I have to say, looking back to the first shot I posted, I almost don't believe the growth, seriously... but its real and if I added anything it would have been 1 inch frags that have been there even less time... however its been many months since I added coral.

I have been playing with the Light program a tiny bit... noticed that as the day lenght shortens I was seeing some of the Zoas start to "reach" for the light.  They get extended necks and try to find light, and one monti was going a tiny bit brown (hardly brown but just note that coloration was changing) at the same time some of the real high Acros, like Tyree Pink Lemonade and Red Planet were actually coloring up and looking SWEET.... so I figured that I was probably partially bleaching things during the summer with the long days and under lighting now with the short days. 

So-  I re-did part of the program and now it enforces a minimum day length to 12.5 hours, if the rise and set of the sun are closer together than that the program adds back time to bring the day length to 12.5 hours, but I do it assymetrically such that more time is added to the sunset than is subtracted from sunrise since I view the tank more at night after work...  This is now running and I expect colors to get even better now as the real low off to the very edge of the tanks (this is where I see reaching) should gain just enough light to remain happy- while the center should not be bleaching.

To correct the summer intensity- since I really like having the tank match the sun, I decided to calculate the % length of the day over 12.5 hours, which is 45,000 seconds, so if I have a day that is 49,500 seconds long, e.g. 4,500 seconds greater than 45,000 the tank MAX intensity is downgraded by exactly that % in intensity output, so this way- since I am using PWM dimming and the dimming is obtained by flashing the lights at a pre set max current (each string is different to match the LED type) by reducing the flash on time from 100% to 90% I should deliver pretty much exactly 10% less PAR...

So- now during the summer and winter every single day should yield damn close to the same PAR over the tank but with very different light on intervals.  No way to know if this is going to work other than simply let it go and watch the tank as the seasons change.  

Should be an interesting experiment, I am not aware of anyone anywhere doing this...

I kinda sorta started this thinking I wanted to simulate the yearly PAR variation on a reef but in actuality asside from cloud cover equitorial reefs probably see little seasonal variation as the sun angle is minimally altered there... I was curious if I would ever in a million years see a spawn event by matching seasonal light variation... I kinda doubt  I actually have even close to the PAR of an equitorial reef.... but my tank is only 24 inches deep and some corals are literally growing out of the water and those were bleaching so I feel like I had to do something to fix this in the summer... so for now I will see if this works.  I wonder what my PAR is at the water line?  Must be pretty damn high to bleach a Tyree pink lemonade and a Red Planet (not fully, but they go real faint pink in the summer, in the winter (like now) they are GORGEOUS!  So I want to see if I can hold this coloration or even improve it!!!  

LOVE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE THINGS and with PMW and 5 channels... its almost too much to tinker with even for a tinker like me!  :)

Anyhow, my code modifications to the lighting worked and coming out of the depth of winter all the corals kept great color and the light cycle is now back to matching sunrise and sunset since the day length has come up to the point where it meets my minimal light period requirements.  In a month or so I will be able to see if I need to mod things a little bit more to avoid the peak summer light period bleaching that was happening but things look great so far.  Colors are probably about as good as they ever have been in the tank.  I played yet more with the lighting program and decided that I really like the cloud effect but had been limiting it to about 20-30 % of the day.  No longer, I now have it set up so that the % of the day with light intensity variation can be as much as about 80% and further introduced a random component that shifts the color balance on the tank as the intensity changes during a cloud, its kinda cool.  Now the tank produces beautiful light intensity variation (its so smooth it looks like a cloud going over head) but coupled with that is a random variation between the two color channels (basically a white and a blue) so that sometimes the tank takes on a more stark blue dominant white while other times it shifts to a more warm white dominant color... its awesome!  

  

Pics soon!