Gnubbs Blog

I wrote last week that I just bought a Nikon D50. To start with, I am very happy with this camera. It certainly does everything that I need. Plus, this whole being able to see an image right after taking it and not having to pay for pictures is awesome. I have shot more photos this weekend than I did the entire year leading up to it.

One of the projects that I worked on this weekend was to build a macro lens. I will blog about that when I get a chance, but I want to pop a picture online in the mean time. This is a photo of my blastomossa coral in my aquarium. Each of the polyps in the photo is about as big around as a dime. This image was shot with my homemade macro lense at f5.6, 1/320th exposure, ISO 200. Overall I would say this is about 1:1 magnification. I realize it is out of focus, but bear with me.

Okay. I don’t often write anything about my aquarium, but this is probably my favorite thing to play with while indoors. Or at least second favorite… Aquariums to me seem like a near perfect hobby for geeks and engineers.

First, saltwater/reef aquariums can be made as arbitrarily complex as you like. You can have a simple aquarium that is entirely contained in a glass box and do all of the work by hand. On the other extreme you can have tanks that are hundreds of gallons with amazing complex computer controlled life support systems. I am currently somewhere in between.

My current tank is a 20 gallon reef tank. Occupants currently include some snails, crabs, a fish and coral. Plus an entire ecosystem of worms, copepods, amphipods, tiny starfish, feather dusters, sponges and who knows what else that I haven’t caught sight of yet. I have a protein skimmer and a chemical filter that hang on the back of the tank, and a heater and some water pumps inside the tank. Add 110 watts of Power Compact Fluorescent lighting and you have a decent picture of my little time ocean.

The problem lately has been that it is looking a bit more like a swamp than an ocean. I have been overrun by red scrub algae. It is like red steel wool growing on every available surface. I have been fighting this problem for a while, but only recently have I gotten serious about it. First, I upgraded to a real protein skimmer. Next I switched from more or less tap water to RO/DI water. I have added more scavengers (snails and sponges) and used chemical filters to reduce phosphates.

Well, I am hopefully making some head way here. The algae does not seem to be growing back as fast as it once did. I just ordered a new powerhead and plumbing parts to improve water movement. I also ordered all new bulbs for my lighting. All of these things plus improvements in my husbandry should finally fix these problems.

Or maybe they won’t and I will have to come up with some more ideas. That is why reef keeping is so good for geeks. Everytime I look at my system I see something could be improved. I see a problem I could fix or a parameter that I could control more accurately. Some problems I can go out and buy a piece of technology to fix, some problems require process improvements to fix, and sometimes I get to pull out the dremel tool and super glue and build a solution myself.

It seems like it would be a lot harder to geek out owning cat.

Keeping a reef is a fundamentally cool thing to do as an engineer. If you get a dog, you have a dog. Sure you can train it and stuff, but generally you just have a dog. A reef on the other hand requires a great deal of problem solving, design, and creativity to construct and maintain. It is a perfect hobby for an engineer.

A succesfull reef requires months of design, building, revision, chemistry… You have to figure out lighting systems, water flow, water quality monitoring, stocking levels, temperature control, evapation control, chemistry maintenance. You have a lot of work on your hands. If you choose a 12g reef things will be even more interesting.

Some of the more challenging aspects of a small reef are maintaining water quality. On my tank, I have natural filtration in the form of a deep sand bed and rock that bacteria live on. I also do nutrient export by growning seaweed in a refugium hanging on the back of the tank.

Temperature on a small tank is another challenge. With the amount of lighting you need to raise coral, the water temp can skyrocket during the day and plummet at night. I am currently using a 150 watt ceramic heater and a 50 watt peltier cooler to keep my temps just right (77 degrees).

Did I mention lighting? Try fitting 100 watts of power compact flourescent in an area 12×17 inches. (about the same amount of lights as 500 watts of of regular flourescent. That is about 10 of those banks of lights above your desk at work. That is 90 lienear feet of regular flourescents)

I have yet to even hit water chemistry and water motion and I have already gotten out the dremel tool a couple of times. And if this isn’t fun enough for you, you can pursue the grail of a completely automated aquarium. Or a computer controlled aquarium. Or you can just try and get some coral and fish to stay alive and propagate in your little microcosm.

With a reef, you can pursue it as science or art. As an engineer, I am pursing mine as science. And it just happens to be gorgeous too.

I got crabs this week. Snails as well. I guess I should qualify that these creatures live in my reef aquarium. 12 gallons of salt water, 12 pounds of rock, 15 pounds of sand, and 50 watts of power compact lighting love. I will post more on the creation of the reef shortly.