Advice regarding bleaching, polyp extension, lighting, and coral placement

[saltyunderground]

I have a 6ft. tank that is just under 20" from the top of the sand to the top of the water. The light is a 6ft. unit from Aquactinics that has three 250W MH lights and four 36W T5 actinic bulbs with dual fans. We had to take out one of the end MH bulbs because it was just too much for the frogspawn and a few other soft corals. So they get the less intense 10K light from the center MH bulb and the actinic light. That has worked fine.

The SPS are close to the top of the tank and the light is about 6-8 inches from the top of the water.

Here's the link (not a great site):
http://www.aquactinics.com/Products/MH_T5_Systems.htm

Here's a picture of the tank when I first put everything in it in June. I have moved things around a lot since but you can see the light on the tank. My hard corals have doubled in size since then.

 

[Shooter7]

Nice tank, Lisa.

Now, I'll just reattach my lower jaw that fell to the floor after seeing a few prices. :lol:

Right now the frontrunner for me is one of those PFO reflectors if I can figure out the mounting of the flourescent lights on it with my overlap. I already have mogul bases I can stick in there so don't need those. I could order the two 24" reflectors, but I want to get the other stuff at the same time so I get it all at once. That means I have to figure out this endcap mounting question. Any of you DIY'ers out there have anything to add? Should I just get the two reflectors, overlap them as needed, then simply drill endcap mounting holes wherever I need them and go from there?

 

[DrBDC]

I used 2 T5HO actinics on mine and it didn't have the holes quite right for the standoff/endcaps anyway. No big deal though. I'm not sure the overall length of the 48" bulbs with end caps on them but if someone has them and could measure it may help your planning. On VHO's I think they have some that are 1-1 1/2 inches shorter for cases just like yours. Whether that drives price up or not I'm not sure since I never priced them.

 

[saltyunderground]

"Now, I'll just reattach my lower jaw that fell to the floor after seeing a few prices."

We call this tank our "no regrets" tank. We wanted to do everything right and not have wished for something later.

 

[dphins]

That's the way it should be Lisa.

 

[Shooter7]

I hope some day to have a "no regrets tank". :smokin:


But right now I have to settle for the "I hope I can rig-job some actinics onto these overlapped reflectors and get these little frags to grow" tank. :lol:

I'm not sure the overall length of the 48" bulbs with end caps on them but if someone has them and could measure it may help your planning.

That would be great if anyone has them, measurements would be appreciated. Otherwise I might have to go 36" and just put them in the middle.

btw, still wondering on XM's or Ushios on the 10k's?

 

[trottman]

it mostly has to do with poor water quality and flow.



this is with dectable po4 and water changes every so often.
(look at the "orange" monti in the top left)

here it is with 20% water changes weekly. using 50/50 coralife IO salt, feeding oyster eggs DT's cyclopseeze freezer bar every other day.
i have also more than doubled my flow. i now have 2 x seio 1100's, about 1100gph from the return, and 2 x MJ 1200.

here is it now (note this is like 5 min after water change that is why polyps are not fully out)

 

[Shooter7]

I've got undetectable nitrates and phosphates, I feed lightly (maybe too lightly), skim heavy, and I'm increasing the frequency of my water changes. I run carbon and phosphate remover constantly. I keep my RO/DI TDS at 0 - 1. I've got a remote fuge with LR and chaeto. So, not sure exactly what else I can do except increasing the frequency of my water changes.

Flow is slightly more than 30x tank volume and it keeps things moving. When that foxface of mine cuts loose in there, I seldom see any of it hit the sandbed. It gets pushed up and disintegrated in the flow and judging by the disgusting stuff that shows up in my skimmer, that's where it goes. I'm looking at the idea of using a modded MJ or two to increase things even further, I'll have to see. I wouldn't mind doing up a closed loop at some point, but not for now.

And my monti looks pretty darn good too, it's the acros giving me problems.

 

[rottielover]

Hey Shooter...

Unfortunatly the only thing I can tell you is that in my experiance so far, I've had some frags "bleach out" or RTN for no apparent reason... Additionally, I've placed an acro frag in one specific spot in the tank, and the frag died.. I removed it, and put in the exact same coral frag in the exact same spot and 1 year later is more than 4x the size it started as....

Unfortunatly, I'd have to say that sometimes there is a def. cause as to why the frag died, and in other cases, you may never know why.

Anymore, when I buy stuff for my tanks, I pretty much cross my fingers and hope it will live (even though I really haven't had that much stuff die on me). My humble and personal opinion, is that sometimes we get too caught up in water params, flow, lighting, etc. etc. etc. trying to figure out why something died... and sometimes it's just "because".

Wish I could be more helpful, I'm not trying to say it should be a crap shoot every time you bring home a new frag, I'm just saying that every now and then something is going to die on you for no apparent reason, and/or the reason will never become apparent.

Hopefully I'm saying this the right way to get the idea across, I'm bad with trying to get concepts on "paper" sometimes.

 

[Shooter7]

I gotcha...still, if there is that "something" out there that you could do to help something not die, I'm going to look for it before giving up. I'm trying to whittle away at the possible causes and appreciating having you fine folks to bounce stuff off of. I've done a lot of work to try and make this system happy and I want to see these frags that I've picked up grow up and be happy as well.

There's something going on in there, though. When I can take out zoanthid frags that are looking very unhappy in the larger tank, place them in my 10g, and the very next day they look better than they have in weeks in the larger tank, something is amiss. In going along in this thread, the two major things that have occurred is the changing of the salt being used in the 120g and the aging of the lights. In testing the water, there hasn't been anything glaringly wrong. So, I'm starting to lean more and more towards the lights. When the weird, nasty algae stuff started popping up and irritating my zoanthids it was right around the 6 - 7 month age mark for the lights. Just happened to coincide with my salt change. I did some moving things around and I moved my orange monti cap to a lower position in the tank. It is now showing considerable signs of fading when it was going like gangbusters before. Matter of fact, all of my zoanthids took off under these lights when they were new and I had no algae problems. The zoanthids I move to the 10g are placed in a shallow tank directly under 96w PC's and they open up right away. I figure it's time to change out my lights now anyway, so I'm trying to put together something better for my corals and am eager to see the results once I can get it done. If it doesn't end up helping the problem areas, well, then I guess I can mark off the lights as not being the problem.

Thanks for the input, Scott.

 

[rottielover]

No problemo

It seems like a lot of your time with reef tanks seems to be spent playing "Sherlock" instead of enjoying your tank though doesn't it?

Sorry I have to admit that I didn't fully read the whole thread before responding, I tried to "speed read" through it, I didn't realize you had more that one coral showing signs of distress. When it comes to changing light bulbs I"ve adopted DrBDC's method of changing one bulb at a time over the course of a few months (depending on the number of bulbs in your setup)... The last time I had to change bulbs, everything in the tank appeard to hate my guts for a good week or two afterwords.

I'm comming up on my next bulb change and this time I'm going to do 1 MH bulb a month for 3 months, and then change the PC's both at once the next month... This way my bulb changes will be spread over a 4 month period. I expect this will help not only my tank inhabitants but also my budget, as I can buy the bulbs when needed insead of laying out all the cash all at one time.

 

[Shooter7]

Unfortunately, my change is going to require a complete overhaul of the way I have things currently. Fact is, I'm not quite sure just yet how I'm going to do it. I'll need all the parts together first to be able to mess with things. See, my canopy is open on top and my current lighting setup is suspended by chains from hooks in the lower basement ceiling. I would like to keep this general setup with the suspended lighting for my future setup, however, there are some things that I think are going to give me a headache once I try to put the new stuff in. Without seeing it, it's hard to explain. But you're right...I've spent the last 9 months scrambling around and trying to make things right on a shoestring budget. If I can just get these last few things right, maybe I can finally sit back and say, "aahhhh, now that looks nice".

 

[caesura]

Have you ruled out pests (red bug, nudi, etc.)?

 

[Shooter7]

Thus far, yes. It was suggested to me that I had nudis in my zoanthids. Well, I immediately pulled multiple frags and large rocks of zoas and dipped them and closely examined everything. I stuck them under a very bright white light and inspected them with a large magnifying glass. The result...I didn't find one nudi or eggs anywhere on any of them. And like I said, once they are placed in my 10g, they perk right up and look great. As for the acros, I have checked many of them under the same magnifying glass and found no RB's, AEFW's or their eggs. I am ever vigilant for them though.

 

[Shooter7]

Looking at maybe going with two Ushio 10k 250w SE's in the PFO parallel reflectors. I would, for sure, be wanting to add some supplemental lighting to this and am looking at adding a couple of 36 inch T-5's to the sides of this reflector. Any advice on particular bulb brand/color to use for this? I'm much more preferential to a white to blue color in the tank over yellowish color. Appreciate the input.

 

[dphins]

I ran the 10k ushios with t-5 blue plus bulbs. It worked great for me.

 

[Shooter7]

Thanks Mike. How many did you run with them? I think i can only squeeze 2 on there. Is there a particular brand that's better?

 

[dphins]

2

 

[Shooter7]

Ugh...well, after talking to PA about what all I need, this is adding up to a little over $400. :rolleye1:

 

[MayoBoy]

Your sump is in your laundry room isn't it? Any chance that bleach, fabric softener or something else is getting into the tank in very small (atomized) quantities? Any chance you could cover your sump?