It's doing well however my cabbage leather looks a little down and I am not sure why. Getting plenty of light and all. However since I added the extra lighting I am getting some green algae growing on the rocks, substrate and even the shell of one of my hermit crabs. I don't have a skimmer but I keep up with my water changes religiously. All water parameters are good. Every day I lower the lighting a little. I was at 12h on, 12h off. Now I'm running 10 hours on, 14 hours off. I have the fan setup on a timer to only run when the lights are on because I was losing 45 ounces of water per day. Now it's less than half that.
I did try and run the lights without the fan for a day and the temperature in the tank shot to almost 83! :S
I have an Idea for another mod to help with this however, I'll post some pics and details when it's done. I want to make a cover for the internal filter to evaporation from there which I suspect is the place it's escaping the most. The lucite cover I made closes in almost every thing else except this.
It's waiting on my next trip to the hardware store.
On another note I have decided I need to invest in a RO/DI unit. My LFS is about 10 miles from here. Price for RO with salt $1.66 per gallon, price for RO without is $1.00
I replace 2.2g per week in water changes, plus 0.15g or so of RO per day due to evaporation.
In 6 months that is 27 gallons of fresh RO water at $1.00 per gallon, plus 5 trips to the LFS.
Salt ro in 6 months is 53 gallons at $1.66 per gallon, 10 trips to the LFS (because I have 5 gallon containers.)
That's $114.98 for the water alone not counting the trips back and forth to the LFS.
A total of 15 trips at 20 miles round trip is 300 miles, I get about 30 miles per gallon in my Ford Focus so that's 10 gallons at a cost (ATM) of $4.00 per gallon is another $40.00
Or a total of 154.98, I can get an RO/DI unit for $100 or so plus shipping.
If anyone was thinking about investing in one, do the math! You might come out ahead.