DIY Tank cover

Keeping cool in the summer, and I don't mean wearing your baseball cap backwards with dark shades on!

My current seashell tank has a glass condensation tray which in the winter keeps the heat in well, but in the summer it keeps too much heat in. The simple answer is to remove the glass condensation tray however this leaves the top of the tank open giving the fish the perfect opportunity for carpet surfing (fish jumping out). What I needed was a DIY mesh cover, allowing the heat to escape, keep the fish in the water and still allow enough light to penetrate the water.

• Pros 
• Lets heat out
• Condensation tray not their to get gunked up and block light entering the tank
• Cons
• More evaporation means topping up with RO more
• Could potentially cause damp above the tank, however I have an extractor fan fitted to remove this issue, plus trickle vents in the windows always open. 

My DIY skills are a bit hit and miss, so first on the shopping list was fly netting. This stuff is cheap at around £2 for 2m x 1m and easy to work with. Next I needed to make a frame to hold the netting. I scourged the garage and found some plastic L shaped stuff, almost like trunking. It was perfect size and shape to make the frame. Cutting the plastic to shape I used hot glue to glue the 4 sides together and then used sticky back Velcro which came with the netting to secure the netting making sure to pull it tight so it doesn't sag into the tank. Pictures below show the DIY mesh cover and then fitted in place. Sorry for the poor light, I put this together at around 10pm last night so the moon lights were on.

Marine Tank Lighting

A big part of any fish tank setup is the light unit. Most people just see it as a way to light up the tank to display what's inside it. However in keeping Marine life the lighting unit is extremely important. Many corals are photosynthetic meaning they use 'light' to create its own food and as a results grow and thrive. Light also helps keep a stable PH, something often over looked, a stable PH is important to keeping your inhabitants happy and healthy.

In my tank I use a LED unit to light my tank, LEDs are cheaper to run than conventional lighting, they are also very customisable and programmable. What this means is that in my 3' long unit I can have a mixture of white, blue, red, and UV LEDs and each channel can be programmed from 0-100% brightness. There are 3 channels in my unit which can be programmed to change brightness every 30mins, channel 1 moon lighting 0-10% channel 2 blue and UV 0-100% and finally white, red, and green 0-100%.

Getting the right intensity of light for the corrent time period can be difficult. Below Image 1 shows how I originally had my light setup, ramps up slowly, peaks then begins to ramp down again. After seeking advice from a forum called Ultimate Reef I was advised to have a longer peak intensity and ramp it up and down quicker. Image 2 below shows what I am running now.

Image 1

Image 2