A Customdusty Rimless Build

i had my lights measured by a par meter by a lfs owner who happens tobe a friend and he said it was plenty of light for sps. i forgot the amount though. my light islike 10 inch off the water. BTW it looks as if i'm going to buy the second vortech tonight :)!
 
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Nice on the Vortech, you will really appreciate how well it will clean up the look of your tank - Not to mentioned the fierce water movement. I run mine full blast on reef crest, running simultaneously.
 
customdusty said:
Nice on the Vortech, you will really appreciate how well it will clean up the look of your tank - Not to mentioned the fierce water movement. I run mine full blast on reef crest, running simultaneously.
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full blast? no sand storm? i had to turn mine down!
 
No sand storms, no splashing - Remember, there's plenty of space for the flow to go and dissipate in my tank, I've got no rock.
 
customdusty said:
So I'm on the fence about my sticking with the Giesemann light, I am really getting the itch to go back to the T5. I've found that there really is a sweet spot directly beneath the halides, whereas with T5 the entire tank is a sweet spot. I'm generally not fond of the small coverage area and concentrated intensity, the light is more or less dictating where I can put my corals rather than putting them where I want them.

I'm getting some quotes now on a few options:

1) Retrofit my Infiniti fixture to make it 2x250w (instead of 2x150w). Which should allow me to be able to raise the fixture and hopefully increase the coverage.

2) ATI Powermodule 8x54w and 10x54w

3) Giesemann Matrix 8x54w

4) Sfigoli 8x54w
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where are you getting the quote to retrofit the infinity to 2 250 watts? do you mind sharing the cost quoted along with the ballast used?
 
reefsahoy said:
what are you t5 bulb selection with the radiums? is your water really blue? does the colors really pop?
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For a while, I was using 4 ATI Blue+ with the Radiums. The overall color was awfully blue, but I can't say that the water was. I'm in the process now of switching things around to see if I can improve the overall balance of color. With the Radiums and the 4 Blue+, the pop in the flourescent colors was ridiculous, some of my flourescing greens on the few LPS that I have were really sweet. Unfortunately though, reds and especially pinks didn't show their true color, and corals that were already really blue kind of seemed drowned out by putting blue light on blue tissue, which kind of made it appear darker than it was.

A couple of weeks ago, I switched one of the Blue+ out for a KZ Fiji Purple, which helped the red/pink colors and toned down the blue a little bit, but not significantly. Just this week now, I switched the Radiums out for 14k Phoenix to see how they compared. Really, the difference may only be slight. If somebody switched those bulbs on me without telling me, I probably wouldn't have noticed. They are very similar, with a slight edge in overall intensity to the Radiums.

Like I said, I'd like to try and get a more favorable balance of colors but also to improve growth. I have 25-30 frags that you probably can't even make out in the pictures that I'd like to start growing out. The growth under the Radiums hasn't been anything to write home about, but I can't necessarily attribute the growth to the ligthing as I did go through some early changes of my calcium/alkalinity scheme which my have stunted things temporarily.

Next opportunity I have will be the try some 10k Reeflux, and see how that looks with the supplemental blue from the T5s.
 
reefsahoy said:
where are you getting the quote to retrofit the infinity to 2 250 watts? do you mind sharing the cost quoted along with the ballast used?
Click to expand...

I'm having Premium Aquatics quote me the retrofit through Giesemann. As I'm sure you have torn your fixture apart some, the change would simply be to slide out the two reflector assemblies and slide in the new ones. More than likely there wouldn't be any change to the wiring, just plug and play with the new ballasts.
 
when you said the phoenix and radiums are almost the same is that with the t5's on or off? is it that the t5's are drowning out the effect of the MH's?

I saw someone with radiums and atinics and thought it was real nice. have you tried the UVL super atinics with the radiums? i think the uvl super atinics are more like the vho atinics and it will probably balance out the MH's better in that those lights are not bright blue like the giesseman's or ati blue+, but more of a penetrating blueish/purple so it doesn't appear as bright blue but the flourecence is real nice. and you'll see more of the MH colors.
 
In my opinion, the Phoenix and Radiums both looked similar with and without the T5s on. I tried a pair of Pure Actinics with a pair of Blue+ originally, and with the halides on and being next to a Blue+ bulb you really couldn't even tell the actinic was on because they are so dim in comparison. I got rid of the actinics shortly thereafter with no intent to ever use them again. If I had 250w or 400w halides and was using the actinic just to supplement - then maybe. But with the only 150s, I need those additional T5s to be supplying some beneficial PAR rather than just tweaking the color. This was kind of my intent with retrofitting the fixture to 250w, it would give my corals what they need to grow and leave the T5s for aesthetics.

I do think that the Radiums do seem brighter..... I wish I had a meter to measure the PAR at different locations and different bulb combos. (That would be a fun stocking stuffer to send the wife out looking for.)
 
customdusty said:
In my opinion, the Phoenix and Radiums both looked similar with and without the T5s on. I tried a pair of Pure Actinics with a pair of Blue+ originally, and with the halides on and being next to a Blue+ bulb you really couldn't even tell the actinic was on because they are so dim in comparison. I got rid of the actinics shortly thereafter with no intent to ever use them again.
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Dusty, i'll bet you were using giesseman pure atinics! You are right they are useless! if you check out this web site by the grim reefer, http://sites.google.com/site/tfivetesting/par, he did an analysis of t5's and par value and giesseman do not compare to the UVL atinics. When i was all t5's, I also tried the pure atinics by giesseman and thought they were really bad too, then i tried the uvl super atinics and WOW what a difference. so not all atinics t5's are the same. i haven't tried it with MH yet but probably will in the future when i change bulbs.
 
I discovered a big problem today.....

I was in my frag tank giving it a quick cleaning and checking on the progress of my frags when I noticed that a couple of them looked a bit "stressed". Upon further inspection, I discovered that I have a small infestation of AEFW (Acro Eating Flat Worms).

I only added one group of new frags to all of my existing coral about 6 weeks ago, and the frags that I did add were from a fellow reefer with a mature and established, AEFW free tank.

I have not at this point even set up a QT tank, and don't have space to set up anything large enough to house all of my SPS.

So bummed. I don't know what to do from here.
 
Damn, I'm sorry to hear! what a way to start a new year. hope you can eradicate them without doing too much damage to your tank.
 
We will see how it goes. I've got a couple of colonies that look like they are affected and several small frags.

I'm so devastated, I'm going out now to clear my head.
 
Well I've spent a lot of time today checking out my corals for signs of AEFW, and it looks like some species seem to be affected and others not.

I do not see any signs of AEFW on any of my millis, stylos, birdsnest, or montis.

My large green slimer colony looks ok, the smaller looks a little pale along with my valida, but with no signs of worms or eggs. The hardest hit corals are my blue tipped stag, miami orchid, red planet... pretty much just the expensive ORA frags - figures.

I tried blasting a few worms free to see if my radiant wrasse or any fish for that matter would eat them, but none seemed to be interested or notice at all for that matter.

I'm now thinking of setting up a separate QT system, but I'm just not sure how I would want to go about that
 
I've begun to formulate my plan of attack for these AEFWs....

I Ordered some CoralRx last night. I should have it later this week. It seems to deliver some good results based on the reviews of some of our best reefers on RC.

I removed all of the frags from my frag tank and put them in the display tank on a magnetic mounted frag rack. I positioned the most affected frags right up against the glass so I can inspect them rather easily while still in the tank. There seem to be 3 or 4 of them that show some signs of stress, with one of them having easily visible AEFW. A colony of blue tipped stag that is affected has been broken off of the rock and segregated from the rest of my corals. Although I do have a radiant wrasse in the tank, it obviously has not picked at the corals to get at the flatworms so far. As many of my corals appear to be in very good health and with no signs of AEFW, I have not attempted to blast the AEFW off of the suspect corals and risk getting them onto the healthy ones. I also will use the coral with the visible AEFW to test the dosage of CoralRx and ensure that it removes/kills them before hand.

Since I do not have a QT system, I am taking my frag tank offline in hopes of turning it into a QT or using it for something else. I've found that there isn't much point of having a separate grow out tank for frags when more than half of my DT is growing out frags anyways. The frag tank is plumbed seprately to the shared sump with the display tank, so this is simply a matter of closing off a ball valve - not a big deal. What little rock rubble that is in there will be put in the DT and some in the sump. I don't plan to immediately set up the QT as I don't have equipment around to sustain it, and I'd also like to see how my dip treatment goes first. I just don't have the time or space to set up and maintain another fully operational system.

My treatment will be set-up as follows:

1) 5 gallon bucket of CoralRx
2) 5 gallon bucket of tank water (for rinse)
3) 2nd 5 gallon bucket of tank water (for final rinse)
4) Koralia 4 (in hand)
5) Turkey baster
6) Magnifying glass
7) Small pick

Steps to be repeated on suspect corals once per week until signs of AEFW subside:

1) Dip coral in CoralRx and blast with turkey baster from every possible direction to separate AEFW
2) Inspect and manually remove any residual eggs or AEFW
3) Rinse coral in tank water and blow off with K4
3) Rinse coral in 2nd tank and blow off with K4
4) Place coral back in DT

We will see how it goes, hopefully I detected these early enough to eradicate them before the become more severe.
 
Why not put the corals into the frag/qt tank after you're done rinsing them?

Sounds like a plan, though. I hope everything goes well for you!
 
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