Anyone Thinking of Dumping LEDS and going back to Halides

my tanks run at 82 all the time, but I actually want it at that for my spawning clowns, however if I turned the heater off and just ran the MH's my temp would drop to 76 and this is during the summer times.
 
Acroporaddict that is a beautiful tank. On the temp subject I think too that warmer is somewhat better. I lost my largest and oldest two colonies this winter and after reading the above posts I believe it was due to low temp. I think I had a week of prolonged temp below 74 deg. during one of the polar vortex outbreaks. I noticed the tank temp at 74 and bought 2 more heaters. Its been 78 and now closer to 80 with the MH experiment going on.
 
AcroporAddict said:
Agreed, but i definitely do not consider the upper 70s to be cool. 78.5 or so as an average is fine, with some upper and lower seasonal variation
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That's basically what I was trying to say.
I try to keep mine around 79 but I don't sweat it if it goes into the 80's and don't get cold feet if it drops down a little lower.
 
I go with the light heat flow. When I was running MH/T5 (a few weeks ago) my temp would be 79-83 range, but mainly 80-82. Basically I would run my heater no less than 79, so it would kick on 79-80) & try to maintain the higher temp as best as possible.

Now my temp goes lower with LED's & I try to readjust for stability & to try to save more on electricity.

My older tank (some 6 years back) ran as high as 84-85 & I always had trouble when the temps got higher. More algae & cyano...etc. When temps are lower my tanks look healthier. I never ran them this low, but I have seen so many TOTM report at 76-78 & I have always been jealous not to be able to keep my reef at those temps.

AcroporAddic, damn that tank is to die for. You are making me want to put my MH's back on :)
Do you have any pics with just the MH's on? It looks like the MH & highly lit by T5's tanks have that blue look too, not just LED's.
 
Dave, that tank has grown quite a lot in the past 6 months. Keep doing what you are doing. :thumbsup:
 
Mmiller40gt said:
FWIW my current tank has been up less than 3 months. Not super clean, but close. I need to get the 2 wires straight. The desk on the side no longer has 2 part as I replaced with a calcium reactor.
There are some brown frags. I bought a guys LED frag tank complete with 60 frags. I moved them all under the halides and within a week they started chaning color and growing. They were growing under his setup by slowly and brown. Then I flipped the tank, pumps, and DIY led setup for what I paid for it. My lady had ordered a nice led fixture but after seeing the color change of the frags in the first week called and canceled. She is keeping the halides on her tank.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFjGtckvpvc&hd=1
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WOW that picture was of your tank in less than 4 month? How did you get a clam that would live in a new tank? I am about to start a new tank soon and I was thinking it will. Be years before I can get a clam:( how did you start up your tank and have all of that. Can you please send me the link where you learned and what I need to do too. Thank you. By the way I am thinking about getting the RADION GEN 3 Pro. But I am so lost in deciding if it is good enough. I have MH in my 72 g now and the heat is really bad. I bout my tank used and now I will do all from the beginning with my 240g set up. I am reading a lot about everything to do it right. Thank you
 
From another RC member:

so I asked liveaquaria.com why they recommend 72-78 deg F for practically all

the coral and fish they sell, here is their response:

"We recommend keeping corals at a temperature of 72-78 degrees because it is difficult to maintain proper oxygen levels in a closed system with dense stocking levels at higher temperatures. The higher temperature can also contribute to a host of other problems such as certain fish diseases."
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LA is usually an excellent resource, but they sometimes operate on old and incorrect information. They do correct things as they can, they used to recommend a 20 gallon tank for a Lionfish, but IIRC working with a list generated here at RC and perhaps another place they did revamp their tank size suggestions. Fortunately we have someone in the hobby who studies this for a living.

greenbean36191 said:
There's a whole lot of bad info out there about the effects of temperature.

It is true that higher temps decrease the margin of error in the event of an emergency, but the difference is insignificant over the range of temps we're talking about.

The difference in O2 saturation of seawater at 78 degrees vs 86 is only about 7%. To put that in perspective, a strong thunderstorm passing through can reduce the saturation in a tank by about 5% compared to a sunny day. That's also about the same amount of oxygen that a single clownfish uses in about a minute and a half. It's not a lot. Most reef fish can tolerate saturations of around 20% or lower without issue, and even at 86 degrees a typical reef tank will rarely get below about twice that value, so the margin of error is still pretty wide even at higher temps.

Also, the idea that higher temps increase metabolism is a cartoonish version of reality. There's some truth to it, but just a grain. On the biochemical level, it's true that as temp increases, metabolic reactions proceed more quickly. However, that assumes that on the organismal level there is no way for animals to compensate and maintain constant net metabolism. That's a bad assumption. In reality, the metabolic rate of many (most?) fish is independent of temp over their acclimatized range. They essentially have a plateau over a range of several degrees where there is little or no change of metabolic rate. It only increases once you get outside that acclimatized range. They don't eat more, use more oxygen, or live shorter lives. Similarly, many corals also maintain metabolic rates independent of temperature.

If you were to have nothing (including LR or sand) but a pair of clownfish in a 55 gallon tank, at 78 degrees you would have less than 5 extra minutes to fix an emergency than in the same tank at 84 degrees, before the oxygen was used up. If you assume there is LR, sand, and other fish in the tank, then that extra time diminishes even further. The extra margin of error is hardly worth mentioning.

When it comes to preventing coral bleaching, cooler temps don't offer a larger margin of error because the bleaching threshold is set by acclimatization. As a rule of thumb the margin of error is 2-4 degrees above the average local maximum temperature, whether that's 80 or 86.

To give you an idea, the average coral reef sees a yearly range of 76-86 with an average temp of 82. The yearly average is a degree or so warmer in the center of reef diversity. There is nothing preventing them from thriving at these temps in home aquaria other than hobbyists acclimatizing them to cooler temperatures.
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greenbean36191 said:
If temperature causes you oxygenation problems, you've got much bigger issues than just the temperature. Throughout the range of natural reef temperatures (76-86) oxygen saturation is many times the critical [O2] for any reef fish. The effect of temperature on saturation throughout that range is minimal. All else being equal, in your 60 gallon tank, the difference in available oxygen at 86 compared to 78 is equivalent to the amount of oxygen used by a single clownfish in about 90 seconds.

Temperature can increase metabolism as well, but in eurythermal animals like the ones we keep, the difference tends to be small to non-existent over the range they're acclimatized. That is precisely what's seen in the few corals that have been tested and what I'm finding in my work with clownfish. Although there is little other work specifically with reef fish, temp independent respiration rates are common if not dominant among other subtropical/ tropical eurythermal species. In the cases where respiration is temp dependent, the increase tends to be about ~15% or so across the range of acclimatization.

For all intents and purposes hobbyists can ignore the effects of temperature on oxygenation.

Also, while there is a grain of truth to algae growing slight faster at higher temperatures, again the effect is minimal across the range of reef temp. You would be hard pressed to find anybody who has seen a measurable difference in algal growth rates. Over the course of 8 years, algae was certainly never any more of a problem in my tank during the summer when the temp regularly hit 86 than it was when the tank maxed out at 80 during the winter. Regardless of the temperature, algae still won't grow without excess nutrients anyway, so if you fix the actual nutrient issue there will be no problem regardless of the temperature.
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greenbean36191 said:
I test O2 for a living, but I don't test in my tanks (other than a few times just for curiosity sake).

To get meaningful readings in a reef tank you need an oxygen probe, which are extremely expensive. Titrations are fine for things like ponds and FO, but don't give you metabolically relevant information in a complex environment like a reef tank where oxygen saturation is very heterogeneous.

The guidelines hobbyist test kits use to determine what a "good" reading is also aren't based on O2 values for reefs. What is dangerous for many temperate saltwater fish is very normal and safe for most reef fish. As a result, the cutoff of what constitutes a "good" reading for most tests is VERY conservative for reef animals.

Basically, there are very few cases in a reef tank that an oxygen test kit will provide you with useful information so it's not something I would recommend most hobbyists waste their time and money on.
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And another excellent thread that shows where some of the O2 myth came from.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=17143313
 
The best looking tank I ever laid eyes on was kept at 74 degrees.
It had a batch de-nitrator and had not had a WC in 10 years.
The center piece was a geen carpet nem that was like 30" across.
 
I just bought the Hamilton Technology Cebu MH/T5 light- (2) 250w Radium and (4) Geismann T5. Anyone else have this light fixture? I'm pretty excited about this light after running an old fixture that had 250w DE Phoenix and PC bulbs.
 
i used to run that fixture. with 3-radium 400's. i liked it but produced too much heat. my chiller ran constantly in the summer and the a/c could not keep up. the room would get to 80.
 
i have not figured out how to take a good picture with the leds. everything turns out much to blue.

imo it is very difficult to improve on the color of a 400 radium. that said i am happy with the colors of my corals for the most part. here is what ive noticed. greens seem to have better pop under the leds. growth is about the same. purples appear dull and washed out. my purple nana is blah looking and wasnt before. i have 4 large red/green bubble anemones, the red is not as rich, they look good but just not that deep red. they do love the leds, one just split.
 
Sounds pretty typical.
LEDs love greens. Blues not so much.
In fact, they love green so much, they will turn blues to green! lol
 
i forgot to mention that my blue/red and purple acans look great. the purples are lighter then before but look great
 
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