renman303

Tim,

Thanks for the response! Doesn’t take long for a tank to crash when you are gone most of the time. Now I’m home again, I plan on going back to water changes every 10 days (10%). I cleared the rubble out of the sump and started with a clean slate. Still have all sand and about 200 lb rock in the 225 g. The tank itself was set up in 2008 (14 years now).
 

New filter socks with larger porous media intercepting, first. These are now cleaned out daily. All pumps cleaned throughly. Salinity levels checked at 1.023. Other parameters to be checked and posted tomorrow as I wanted time for this water/ filtration change to settle a bit.

You mentioned “hard coral” to be added? Any particular that you would recommend?

Also, old lights are gone and Kessil A160WE’s are now installed.  Still running original “Ehim 1262 (2/ea)” from sump. Internal circulation is Tunze 6105 Turbelle and a ReefWave 45 Gyre. New GFO and Carbon as of 7 May (yesterday). 
Pics: old to new.

My reef tank has been devastated by Cyano. I have been traveling and husbandry has been on the back burner.
I have been using a lot of live rock in my 55 gallon sump in addition to a couple hundred pounds that are in my 225 gallon.

I’m wondering if the detritus is just building up in my refugium? Does anyone else run a ton of live rock in there sump? I’m thinking maybe if I get rid of all of this but it would be just easier to clean without an area for the detritus to build up?  Thoughts? Pics?

I have a stunning Picasso Trigger that I would like to move! Looking for Clams here.

Do you have a pic of what they look like?

Dave

Close up's of fish faces!

TTT

Still have two Sunlight Supply 400w ballasts available. Retail over $200/ea! You can have both for $200!

or any REASONABLE offer!

UPDATE: It's been one month since 86'ing my Metal Halide lights. No ill effects whatsoever! Now for the good part....Where my chiller used to turn on all the time to keep the water temperature down...averaging 82t-84 during peak heat days (Chiller was set for 81) The current temperature has never varied more than 1 degree with NO CHILLER USE AT ALL! Current temperature readings are a consistant 79.5 - 80.5 degrees!

No worries...I've been very busy lately.

I'm always too late for an entry!

@JBrougher; I looked at the AquaRay, Aqua Beam lights...They are very impressive as CREE's being used but, out of curiosity, why are you looking for so much lighting power for such a small tank? You certainly don't want to bleach out your corals? And the cost is pretty exorbitant...1 of the 18" Marineland Reef Fixtures would be more than adequate IMO.... The lumens on the Marineland 18" are 1305 and 1200 for the Aquabeam.

Dave

lookn good RENMAN, will be interested to know the outcome in a few months. Keep us posted

Anytime you guys want to come up for a look, you're welcome. Maybe we can have another meeting at my place since the addition of the ATS and LED's?

Eric, I agree...one cord is the only drawback but they are literally 1/2 the price of all of the other LED's on the market. I looked at the ones that are made of "strips" that you can DASE Chain together. They are also 1W but MORE than 3 times the price. Those have two cords. I figured that I can live with one for awhile or maybe just get some blue moonlights later. In these pics, the first is with the 9 Blue LED's and my T5 Actinics. The second is with the 9 Blue 460 nm LED's only! IMO, it's way too bright for moonlighting! The shimmer with just the Blues only is AWESOME!

My apologies for the pics I took them with my Android Phone.

Regards,

Dave

@DaJMaasta: First, there is more than enough blue in the Marineland lights. These are for Reefs. I'll take a picture tonight with nothing but the 9-460nm Blue's on. I do have 2x 48" T5's running blue and 2x36" T5's running 50/50 and Actinic. There is less light in the three LED lights that I'm running compared to the 3-400w MH's that were running. I noted above that they appear to be more on the level of 250MH's in their current output. I actually prefer the lighting now over the 3x400W setup. I'm not sure about your claim of "1/5-1/6 of your 3x400W MH setup"...Where are you getting this information? There is a PAR listing on the Marineland site. I'm not sure where you would find a PAR listing for MH? In fact, it completely depends on the Ballasts and the exact bulbs that you use. Besides, PAR is not everything...no matter who tells you that "You need X amount of watts per gallon". The tank will become accustom to nearly any light conditions. You can easily move corals up the rocks closer to the lights or lower. My tank, being 31" deep has less light at the bottom but, I temporarily have the lights mounted to the top of my canopy which is also 11" off of the water. I will lower them later when I build a new "tilt" canopy. The PAR/LUX on my lamps is 130/12700 at 12" underwater and 64/5870 at 24" underwater. My sandbed from the surface is between 22.5" and 25" from the surface. I have been running the T5's by themselves for more than a month now until the LED's arrived and no ill effects. In fact, most places in the ocean do not have blinding light. I've actually done the antithesis to everything that has been told to me on my tank with no bad effects. If you want to see a working experiment in action, I invite you to come visit.

Dave

What system do you like? I certainly couldn't find anything comparable for the price? BTW, they work beautifully, and are very low profile and lightweight.

I've had the tank up for 3 years now with LPS, softies, plate coral, Sailfin Tang, Blue line Wrasses, Pink Bar Goby and Tiger Pistol, Clownfish...about 14 fish in all.

Bump....Bueller....?.......Anyone....?...$150 for the pair!

This is a steal if you need to go to MH!

I just bought 3 Marineland LED systems for my 225 gallon. I've only posted on pic on my blog. One of their 18 lights would be more than enough. And cost?....at Drs. Foster and Smith, only $152.99 !!!!

I have recently sold my 3 MH 400w fixtures, bulbs and one of the three 400W Ballasts. Two Ballasts are still available if anyone is interested?

I have purchased 3 Marineland 18" LED Lights composed of 18-1w White (10k) Bulbs and 3-1w Blue (460nm) Bulbs. This gave me a total of 56 White and 9 Blue across the length of the tank.

Now, I was going to build the LED setup but the cost to do this with power supplies, wire, LED's, heat sinks and my time would have been ~$700. So far these three units have set me back $458 total. The only bad part of the Marineland lights is there is only one power cord for both the Blue and White LED's with a rocker switch to go between or an Off position. Two cords would have allowed separate timers. Oh well....Might have to modify this later? But, these were literally 1/3 the cost of those with two cords and most of the costlier models used either 6500k white spectrum bulbs or 8k bulbs.

Now, I think a bit more lighting may be needed as these put out about the same light as a 250k MH bulb. So, I do have a bit of a "softer" look, which I like. But, because of the width of the light only being 5", it does give some "shadow" to the back of the tank. Now, IMO...this can be a good thing allowing you to adjust corals to lighter or darker conditions as they need. The 400w MH's that I had were BLINDING! I'm not sure that's good either. To me, this new look incorporates more of what I remember while diving in Hawai'i. I figure I can always add more light if needed. Anyway, I'll add more shots in the coming days but here is my initial install. Granted, I hung them in a hurry as my tank has been running on Blue T5's for about a month without any bright lights. I'm going to modify the hood to make this more ascetically pleasing soon.

Dave

Bump....Bueller....?.......Anyone....?...$175 for the pair!

@DerrickH: I'm not sure it really matters you can go with "Slower allows more time for Nitrates/Organic matter to be processed" or "The more times you turn over the water in an hour, the better".? I prefer the latter of the two keeping the pH of the tank and sump more evenly balanced. Your tank should be loaded with LR as your sump. I also include plants and algae in the sump for Nitrates. I only have one baffle on the input of the sump, Refug in the center, and one on the output just to keep plants out of the pumps but, this could also be done with a LR wall...which I am going to. Just my $.02.

Cheers!

Pulse start magnetic.

I have 2 each:

Blue Wave 1 400W Metal Halide Ballast by Sunlight Supply.

Sunlight Supply's 400 Watt Blue Wave I Pulse Start Ballast is a top quality Aquarium Lighting Ballast. This 400W remote assembled pulse start metal halide ballast has rubber feet, a back lit on/off switch, louvers for cooling, carrying handle, high temperature 100° capacitor and power cord. The ballast has a heat dispersing extruded aluminum enclosure with durable blue powder coat finish. Pulse-start metal halide ballasts are recommended for use with German made Ushio & Radium bulbs. Pulse start ballasts provide a higher starting voltage and igniter designed specifically to ignite these lamps. The igniter starts the lamp and the ballasts' core and coil operates the lamp, allowing for optimization of both lamp and ballast performance.

Retail: $200 Each. Sell for $100 each!

I have 2 Eheim 1262's feeding back into my tank. External overflow provides the gravity fed Sump. The Eheim's are running full open each at 900gph! You can see my sump on my blog.

Dave

renman303

I understand that there is someone in Austin that can repair Tunze's? Both my Wavemaker and my Turabelle Stream with Controllers will not pulse. They will for about 30 sec. then just shoot a steady stream. They are about 2 years old so, I'm not sure about the warranty? I have completely cleaned the parts hoping that was the problem but, to no avail?.....

Suggestions?

Dave

Icecap 400w ballast set with all 3 reflectors and all bulbs now gone.

Still have two Sunlight Supply 400w ballasts available. Retail over $200/ea! You can have both for $200!

Dave

@ jonny125: Trying to sell all 3 sets together as one or in single sets first as most people want a ballast, reflector and bulb. I'll let you know later about separating them. Right now $225 for ballast, bulb, reflector.