250 Gallon Starphire SPS tank

[LittleBlueGT]

Those zoos look pretty good, your whole tank and setup does for that matter!

Thanks. Unfortunately I still find the zoos hard to photograph correctly. I sometimes take pics in raw, but the software that came with my camera only has adjuctments for green/magenta, not blue/yellow, thus I have a hard time making the color temp look realistic.


These green zoos (my favorites) have started to really spread on the starboard in the last month or so. This pic was taken in March, now there are 50% more.

 

[LittleBlueGT]

These zoos are about 5 times the size now.

 

[melev]

Sounds like a lot of changes. Also your sump area increased a lot more then mine would. I might make the change just to give me a larger fuge area. For BB guys a fuge is a frag grow out area. I am sure Bomber would like that. I hope this would give me a slight drop in temp but probably not as much as yours. In interests of electrical efficiency maybe you should drop your temp a degree or two?

My light rack works very well. It developed a slight vibration noise that was cured by tightening one of the screws holding the rail in place. I wish I could comment on growth, it appears to be good. The fact is a have not had an SPS tank long enough to know any better. I would strongly recommend this system to anybody serious about corals, and serious about saving money.

I don't need to drop the tank temperature any further. The heaters do come on, but only briefly at night. The fish room maintains 78F around the clock. During this winter, I'll bump it back up to 80F I'm pretty sure. Also, by then my woodwork will be up and the temperature of that room will be isolated.

By increasing your sump size, you'll have more room for fans. If you chose to use multiple computer fans you could get some good cooling for very little power. They sell fans made for damp conditions. You could even resort to IceCap fans, which cost more but are built to last.

Thanks for the update. I was curious. Do you have the light rack running on a timer only when the lights are on?

 

[LittleBlueGT]

By increasing your sump size, you'll have more room for fans. If you chose to use multiple computer fans you could get some good cooling for very little power. They sell fans made for damp conditions. You could even resort to IceCap fans, which cost more but are built to last.

Thanks for the update. I was curious. Do you have the light rack running on a timer only when the lights are on?

I already have a HUGE computer fan for cooling. But a larger sump will help.

My light rack runs on a timer that runs my T5s, so it is on a couple of hours before my halides turn on, and a couple of hours after.

 

[LittleBlueGT]

I have decided to redo my fish room, sell my sump, get a larger sump, and just make everything including electrical much neater. I probably will not do it for a while (it depends when I sell my sump) but it will cost a bit. I hope to make it much easier to frag corals and grow them in my sump. I also hope to make maintenance even easier.

I also figured that not only will the increased surface area help with temp, but the increased volume will make a big difference as well.

 

[tgunn]

I have decided to redo my fish room, sell my sump, get a larger sump, and just make everything including electrical much neater. I probably will not do it for a while (it depends when I sell my sump) but it will cost a bit. I hope to make it much easier to frag corals and grow them in my sump. I also hope to make maintenance even easier.

I also figured that not only will the increased surface area help with temp, but the increased volume will make a big difference as well.

Sounds like a fun project! How big a sump do you think you'll go for? I guess more surface area would probably be a big thing..

Going to try building the sump yourself?

Later,
Tyler

 

[LittleBlueGT]

Sounds like a fun project! How big a sump do you think you'll go for? I guess more surface area would probably be a big thing..

Going to try building the sump yourself?

Later,
Tyler

I might try it myself. I am thinking 24 x 72 and only 14 high.

 

[tgunn]

I might try it myself. I am thinking 24 x 72 and only 14 high.

Sounds like a great size. Should give you lots more surface area for evaporation, and the shallow depth with make lighting the frag growout much less demanding than a deep tank...

Later,
Tyler

 

[melev]

I like 16" high. It adds an additional potential volume of 15 more gallons, in case you need it to hold that much one day.

 

[LittleBlueGT]

I was actually thinking of 84 x 24 x 14 (or 16)

That would give me 118 or 135 gallon sump. 60% full would give me around 80 gallons. Right now I have an extra capacity of 35 gallons in my sump. With the new one I will have easily 50 gallons of extra capacity. I will have to work it out more closely when I figure out how much space I have to work with. I want access and maintenance to be high priority.

 

[LittleBlueGT]

I will be using a Bluewave ballast running a 250DE bulb to grow frags with. I will use the old bulbs from the main display. It will be fairly high off the water.

Do you think that much lighting will be enough?

 

[agarza]

LSM I'm a long time reader, not much of a poster, but really wanted to drop a line and tell you that your thread is inspiring as well as incredibly well documented. Thanks for sharing. Learning a lot and planning a lot for my dream tank next year. Congrats and cheers.

 

[melev]

Ben, how long do you run your ozone daily?

 

[LittleBlueGT]

Ben, how long do you run your ozone daily?

I run 24/7 at 25% of 200 mg/hr.

Sometimes I run 50%, but it doesn't make much difference.

 

[Flatlander]

I seen Bens tank in person yesterday. :eek1: Very nice, along with some ingenious ideas.

Thanks for the great hospitality Ben. It was nice meeting you. Look foward to swapping some frags in the future.

 

[LittleBlueGT]

I seen Bens tank in person yesterday. :eek1: Very nice, along with some ingenious ideas.

Thanks for the great hospitality Ben. It was nice meeting you. Look foward to swapping some frags in the future.

Thanks Doug. We will be a fragging!

 

[LittleBlueGT]

I lost an Anthias a few days ago. I opened up the big door on my canopy and found this lying on the top of my glass brace.

 

[dougchambers]

LSM - How many and what kind of Anthias do you have? What is your feeding routine like for them?

-Doug

 

[LittleBlueGT]

LSM - How many and what kind of Anthias do you have? What is your feeding routine like for them?

-Doug

I originally got 11 of them, this is the first confirmed dead. I have never been able to count more then about 9 at once in the main tank, but there are many hiding places. They each have their own hiding places at night.

I feed the tank between one and four times a day, it just depends on if I am home or not. I will go away for up to 5 days at a time w/o feeding, but not very often.

 

[LittleBlueGT]

I have been trying to track down a problem for about a month now, low ORP. My ORP used to always read about 420, and then it went to around 300 for some reason. I checked the ozone generator and it was working well, so I was not sure what had happened. One would imagine that a jump that severe would be noticable in the livestock. On the contrary everything is doing great, SPS are growing quite quickly actually.

Last week I decided to turn off the ozone to see what happens. The ORP slowly went down to 280 and the glass got a thin film of algae about 2 days sooner then normal. I then unhooked the ozone tube and turned on the unit, I could smell ozone, that 's for sure!

I then looked at the ORP probe, I thought maybe I should clean it again, even though they tend to read high (not low) when they are dirty.

Was it ever clean!

It was soo clean the glass around the probe was not even there!

I have decided to sell my ORP controller because I don't feel that I need it on my tank. Maybe if I had a huge industrial ozone generator, but with my tank running my ozone 24/7 works just great.