sfdan's 400 gallon SPS peninsula

[sfdan]

Well I re-learned a valuable lesson which is don't count your SPS until they are growing and encrusting.

Unfortunately that nice chunk of Orange Passion (and a not photographed Fox Flame) never acclimated to the tank and each of them RTNed after about a week in my tank. Around the same time as those corals were dying I got back an ATI ICP test results which showed extremely low levels of Iodine in the tank. So I started dosing Iodine to get back to normal levels and I saw the health of a lot of my SPS (especially the Montiporas) noticeably increase. I have no way to know if it was the low levels of iodine, or shipping stress, or bad luck or whatever but I'm going to have to give those a try again.

The ICP test also showed some low levels of Vanadium and Manganese. I have no idea how important these elements are, but I starting using Red Sea colors to see if I notice any difference. I'm dosing based on my calcium consumption which I calculated at about 2.5ppm per day. I'll send off a water sample for another ATI test in a few weeks so hopefully I'll be able to gauge if I'm horribly over or under-dosing something.

I'm also naturally doing about a 10-15% water change this month as I got a trio of Dispar Anthias and I'm going to use about 70-80 gallons of water getting them through the TTM method. Funny note about Dispar anthias... they do not like being trapped for the tank transfers, they absolutely freak out.

Also huge huge huge thumbs up on the Damsels. The 3 Azure damsels and 3 Rolland's damsels are awesome additions to the tank. They spend a ton of time in the the water column and also bring out the orchid dottybacks as they all jostle for space. They sometimes school together and sometimes chase each other around the tank. Constant action. The tank is at least twice as lively with them around. In QT I ended up having to use 2 acclimation boxes, one for the biggest one who was bullying everybody and one for the smallest one who was being bullied by everyone else. But in the full tank there is no problems at all as there is ample space and hiding spots for all of them.

[sfdan]

Coral pictures for this update:

BC Bubblebath Unicorn. Probably the fastest growing coral in my tank at the moment, lots of encrusting in the last month. Completely changed colors from green with dark purple tips to a pink with green highlights and light purple tips.



Cali Tort I got as a little nub. Starting to grow out a little bit, but the most profound change is the coloration of this one. The neon green has really developed on the inside and the polyps with neon blue tips. Really excited for this to grow out.



This mini-colony came from my other tank, and I had no idea what it was. I'm now fairly sure it is the "ORA German Blue Polyp Acro". In addition to being damn near bulletproof, as it was the only acro that survived the dinos in the last tank, it's coloration is getting pretty nice these days. The polyps have developed a really deep blue, nicely contrasting against the very light yellow/green skin. I upgraded its location to a spot with a higher PAR so I'm interesting to see how that affects the coloration.

[sfdan]

And here are some full tank shots:

[sfdan]

After my previous losses of the Fox Flame and Orange Passion, I really became concerned that maybe something was wrong in the tank and the ICP test showed the low levels of Iodine. I'm now very convinced that was the problem, as after I dosed it back to normal the overall tank health rapidly improved and things have been great for the past month.

I'm also now dosing Red Sea Colors A, B, C & D in the hopes that they will provide the necessary supplementation for whatever is missing. The only element of those I can test is potassium, and the rest of them I'm just going based on faith that the dosage is good. My current dose is 14ml/week of all of them, which I dose every Monday morning. I'll do an ICP test at some point in the next month or two, but things are going great right now so I'm just going to keep going.

So I tried once again with the Orange Passion and Fox Flame, and so far, so good. Both of them have encrusted and seem to be very healthy:

SC Orange Passion, which I'm acclimating to higher light, right now living about mid-way through the tank on a frag rack:


Fox Flame, who is already epoxied into it's permanent home towards the bottom of the tank:


I'm also very excited about this Tyree Superman frag, which will also go right under the lights after I finish acclimating it. The picture does not do justice to the blue tips which are stunning. Great PE as well. This one is going to end up in a high light, high flow area to hopefully bring out as much blue as possible:


And how about a growth shot. The fuzzy purple tipped acro has got a lot of growth:

Sept 26th:


Dec 1st:


I put it relatively low in the tank, and because of that the purple tips have faded a little bit. I'll eventually move it higher to try to bring them back out, but for the moment as it seems to be very happy where it is so I'll let it keep growing.

[rygar]

Originally Posted by marioensf

Nice to see some halides, in San Francisco, as in PG&E loves halides!

Yessss!! I agree. I have only 3 400 watt halides with some VHO actinics over a tank with a 10' x 4' footprint and am happy with the light spread. Looks just like your looking into the ocean. I started out with 5 and didn't like it, so went down to 4...still too much to look natural. So went to 3 and sat back and smiled. That was it. (corals are all doing great...sps, lps, softies, gorgonians)

And by the way, I tried LEDs that were supposed to compare to VHO actinics, but they didn't. Maybe they do on a shallower tank. So I had to reset the whole thing up for VHOs again.

4-5 hours per day for halides is what they are saying or your just feeding algae, so I have been running like that for a year. Only change is less algae.

Plus you can get halide fixtures for pennies in comparison. Bulbs not so much, but running them 4 hours a day will get you 2 years out of them.

So I say very wise choice on using halides. Smaller tanks I can understand LEDs. I do on mine, and love the. Makes sense to me there. But big tanks, unless you have a whole lot of cash to fork out up front, LED's can be the way to go. Or if you have no place for the heat to go. Not bashing LED's...just letting the guy know that I think he is being extremely smart for doing halides, and there many of us out there with big tanks still loving them.

[McPuff]

Originally Posted by rygar

Yessss!! I agree. I have only 3 400 watt halides with some VHO actinics over a tank with a 10' x 4' footprint and am happy with the light spread. Looks just like your looking into the ocean. I started out with 5 and didn't like it, so went down to 4...still too much to look natural. So went to 3 and sat back and smiled. That was it. (corals are all doing great...sps, lps, softies, gorgonians)

And by the way, I tried LEDs that were supposed to compare to VHO actinics, but they didn't. Maybe they do on a shallower tank. So I had to reset the whole thing up for VHOs again.

4-5 hours per day for halides is what they are saying or your just feeding algae, so I have been running like that for a year. Only change is less algae.

Plus you can get halide fixtures for pennies in comparison. Bulbs not so much, but running them 4 hours a day will get you 2 years out of them.

So I say very wise choice on using halides. Smaller tanks I can understand LEDs. I do on mine, and love the. Makes sense to me there. But big tanks, unless you have a whole lot of cash to fork out up front, LED's can be the way to go. Or if you have no place for the heat to go. Not bashing LED's...just letting the guy know that I think he is being extremely smart for doing halides, and there many of us out there with big tanks still loving them.

This is a good point. I thought about going back to halides (3 x 400) because of how many LED fixtures are required for really good coverage in my 300. I found some good used lights though and have it under control now. Going any bigger (and with SPS) it's just SO expensive to buy the LEDs. If you're only running halides 4 hours per day then I'm not sure the LEDs would ever pay off financially in comparison. If I ever get a larger tank, I'll simply stop growing SPS, go with softies only, and use fewer LED lights (that I already own). :0)

[Raul-7]

Beautiful! Peninsula aquariums are the smartest option [as well as islands]; so many viewing angles and allows the aquarium to the center of attention in such a profound way.

[sfsuphysics]

Originally Posted by rygar

Yessss!! I agree. I have only 3 400 watt halides with some VHO actinics over a tank with a 10' x 4' footprint and am happy with the light spread.

Just think you could get the same coverage with 10 Radion fixtures, at about 190 watts each that's only 1900 watts versus your 1200

I kid, I kid... or do I?


Btw didn't think they made VHOs any more.

[sfdan]

I think it is clear that halides are just a simpler and cheaper option for larger tanks. I don't think I've gone into the pricing in the thread, but all the lighting equipment, brand new, was:

Halides:
4 Reflectors: $330
4 Ballasts: $550
4 MH Bulbs: $240
Halide Total: $1120

T5s:
6 T5 Retro kits: $600
12 T5 bulbs: ~$300
T5 Total: $900

I don't think there is any LED system that could even come close to this pricing, and half the cost was on T5s which I'd probably still have in an LED system anyways. So I think at minimum an LED system would be an extra $2000, and maybe more depending on how fancy I wanted to go. And I doubt if you counted up all the wattage the LEDs would end up saving any energy either.

On the other hand... LEDs look different than halides. My aquarium has 3 distinct looks: Bright daylight with halides, crisp blue with T5s + LEDs and electric blue when only the LED actinics are on. The corals all look different in the 3 lights, and I prefer the look of some corals in certain lights than others. I think the LED actinics in particular bring out a lot of wacky patterns in the corals, often patterns that aren't even visible under the other lighting conditions. So I do understand why people like the look of LEDs, and especially why people like the controllability of LEDs to dial in exactly how they want their tank to look. But it clearly comes with (a lot) more upfront expense, and probably a higher degree of difficulty in terms of keeping the corals happy. I don't think there is necessarily a right or wrong answer, which is probably why I've got all 3 types of lights on my tank, but I'm still quite happy with the halides being the primary light source.

[sfsuphysics]

Absolutely know what you mean, way back when I had a 375g tank with a 5' x 6' foot print and wrapping my mind around how to light it was a bit frustrating, I did end up making some DIY LEDs which kind of did the trick without any sort of lenses so that they would spread wide, but nothing was simpler than a 250W metal halide in lumenarc reflector just lit up so much it wasn't funny, and I didn't even go with high end bulbs either. Granted the tank did fail but for other reasons than lighting.

Don't get me wrong I love the idea behind LEDs where you can have the slow ramp up and ramp down, but yeah covering a lot of square footage is definitely pricey... especially when you already own the reflectors and the ballasts (with plenty of extras too!). My 200g will be MHs, at least from the start, we'll see how well it works as time goes on, but I don't have any fancy corals anymore so I can screw around with the light, but my 180 from days of reefing past did absolutely fantastic with MHs (with these same bulbs) and T5s.

[bitwise]

Just stumbled on this thread searching for Turbo Aquatics ATSs. Awesome job on everything and the engineering know-how to put everything together like you've done.

Do you have any updates? How do you like the Turbo ATS?

[sfdan]

Originally Posted by bitwise

Just stumbled on this thread searching for Turbo Aquatics ATSs. Awesome job on everything and the engineering know-how to put everything together like you've done.

Do you have any updates? How do you like the Turbo ATS?

The scrubber is great. The build quality is top notch and every component is well thought out. I had opted into a light experiment where he was testing different spectrums of lights, and after using that spectrum for a while (which I thought was fine), Bud told me the other spectrum was better and without prompting by me shipped me a new set of lights to put in the scrubber.

So while I can't comment yet on how the new ATS lights are doing, basically every cleaning the scrubber is full of algae and I don't have any algae issues in the DT.

I have had a little bit of cyano in the DT, but I don't think that is the fault of the ATS. I also had been avoiding chemicals for a long time, but finally gave in and did a dosage of red cyano rx and it basically wiped out all the cyano in a couple days and nothing else seemed to be impacted.

I want to post some updated coral pictures but I lent my macro lens to my friend and don't have any good way to photograph them.

But basically for the tank, no news is good news. The corals are growing, all the fish are happy, and with the pesky cyano gone everything is looking great. Probably the best addition recently was some "assorted conchs" from reefcleaners, which are incredibly impressive in how quickly they motor around the tank cleaning up the sandbed.

My long term plan had been to add 2 more tangs as the final fish early this year, but I'm not sure I'm going to do that. I can just add snails if I need more herbivores, and I think I enjoy the dynamics and territory disputes among the small fish more than I enjoy the tangs swimming around. I honestly can watch the damsels tussle for territory all day long. So my next additions (and maybe final additions) will probably be among:

- 3 lemon damsels
- 3 anthias of some kind (maybe lyretail)
- pair of flame hawk
- midas blenny
- another watchman goby to hopefully form a pair with my current one

And once I get my macro lens I'll get some shots of the corals. I have a few new additions from battlecorals which are spectacular, and hopefully by the time I get my lens back they'll be encrusting and starting to grow.

[sfdan]

Let's see how I did:

Originally Posted by sfdan

- 3 lemon damsels
- 3 anthias of some kind (maybe lyretail)
- pair of flame hawk
- midas blenny

Nope, nope, nope, nope.

- another watchman goby to hopefully form a pair with my current one

Yes! Just a month ago I decided to give this a shot, so I got another captive bred watchman goby from ORA, got it through QT, and then very deftfully released it (by hand) near the cave where my other watchman goby lived. I did not know what was going to happen next, but they didn't immediately start fighting so I thought that was a good sign. Then the next day they seemed to be somewhat uneasily sharing the cave, but now 2 weeks later they seem about as paired up as could be. So hopefully they continue to enjoy each other's company for years to come.



I also changed my mind on the tangs, and boy was that a good decision. I decided to add 3 captive bred yellow tangs, and they've grown from tiny little 1.5" fish to 3-4" in a manner of months. They've also done a great deal to stabilize the tank based on their prodigious appetites and nutrient creation.

I was quite naive in my last post, as I thought the tank was relatively stable but it was really just about to begin one battle before the next. First cyano, then cyano again, then derbesia. The derbesia in particular took a long time to conquer, and just overgrew and killed a lot of my corals, which was a bummer.

It was interesting though seeing which corals could outcompete derbesia. For example, it was nice to see that my SC Orange Passion had no problem beating back the derbesia and had pretty decent growth for the year (and is really starting to take off now -- picture doesn't capture how electric blue the tips are):



Forest fire digi probably quadrupted in size during the great derbesia battle and is now looking incredible. Here is a marco shot of a new growth shoot:



And finally I was in LA a few months ago, and among some nice pieces I got at Vivid Aquariums, I finally got a classic green slimer. Not the fanciest coral in the world but man it is a classic and it photographs really nicely:



I'm once again feeling confident in the tank and filling it with frags, so hopefully in a few months things continue going in the position direction and I'll have some nice growth shots.

[gentledental4u]

I have some VHO retrofit kits trade for Hawkins?