Downsizing??? Really???

[Ron Reefman]

its got to be so much fun to be able to go out and collect on the beach. i want to go down one day and do that myslef one day.

I don't mean to rub it in, but yes, it really is fun and so is being able to go snorkeling in the Keys 4 or 5 long weekends a year! But look at the bright side, I lived 30 years in SE Michigan and then 20 years in Columbus Ohio and I made it here to have fun, so can you!

 

[dimasv]

you have 2 amazing tanks, love them. Your sand looks so white, what sand is that ?

 

[Ron Reefman]

you have 2 amazing tanks, love them. Your sand looks so white, what sand is that ?

Thanks, I love them as well. It's kind of funny for me that after 12 years I find keeping aquariums even more fun now than I did when I started!

The sand is just old Caribe Sea sugar sand. And it was in my old 180g tank for 6 years before I washed it out with a 7g bucket and a garden hose. It's really not as white as it looks... I thing it's part the leds and part the camera white balance that makes it look better than it really is. And I do a a CUC that do a pretty good job of keeping the sand clean including an 8" to 10" long yellow sea cucumber that I collected in the Florida Keys and have had for about 4 years now. It was only 1" to 2" when I collected it!

 

[SFish]

Reading your post makes me want to get certified to dive. There is so much cool stuff to see.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Here is a small start to photos from the beach collection day.

First is a guy we did NOT collect but actually released back into the Gulf. We found 2 of them, one inside a pin shell and the other in a small branchy sponge. As I understand it, this is about full size for these guys and the only live 18 to 24 months. Some day I may do a screen cover for my 65g shallow/local reef and then try keeping one of these!




This is a purple gorgonian and they do manage to survive on the beach for a while out of the water. Snowbird and vacationing shell collectors often pick these up as souvenirs. But we managed to find 10+ of them that were smaller and yet still nice full fan shaped. This one has something attached to it. I didn't know what it was so I passed on a couple but my friend took one. In his tank they opened up and at first he/we thought they were feather dusters. But on closer examination we think they are some thing else... but what?




Here is a decorator crab I thought might go in my 65g shallow reef tank which I'm making into a Gulf and Keys only local tank. But I decided to put it in my display refugium instead. There is only the Hawaiian Red Reef Lobster in the tank along with some macro algae and a couple simple gorgonians and leather corals. The big white thing with orange spots on it's back is a tunicate. It's 'attached' to the back legs by hooks. It moves pretty quickly and jumps from spot to spot looking like an astronaut doing a space walk on the moon... it's hysterical. It can also jump off tall things (there is a 16" tall gorgonian) and the front of the tunicate opens up slightly because it's attached at the back, and works like a parachute so the crab floats down rather slowly.

The good news is I have a bit of a hairy algae issue in this tank because the lobster won't eat it, but will eat any fish or small snails I put in the tank to eat it. The decorator crab has been ripping the hair algae off things and eating it like it hasn't had food in a week! We'll see how it does long term.

 

[Ssteve]

What is your light schedule currently? I'm about to get the same fixture for my 120g and am trying to get a consensus on what people are running them at. Over are you happy with the lights?

 

[Ron Reefman]

Hi Steve,

Yes, I'm happy with the Photon V2 fixtures. The 50" version works well over a 5' tank end to end. I do a 4 hour sunrise, 4 hour of midday at 80 or 90% blue and 40% white and then a 5 hour sunset.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Well I finally got around to getting my Bubble Magnus dosing pumps back online after 6 months of manual dosing.

Next is the auto top off and then maybe the Apex???

And I also got a couple of new led fixtures. One is a brand new start up called ReeFi-Labs. They aren't really in production yet but he is selling fixtures that are made with a 3D printer. I'm using it over my frag tank and I had a small issue with 2 parts of the case coming unscrewed. I explained it to them and they made a design change and are sending me a new case. The other fixture is a prototype beta test for a different company and it's currently over my 65g shallow reef. Wish I could tell you more...
and I will when I'm allowed to.

 

[SFish]

Ron got connections ; ?


Probably mafia

 

[Ron Reefman]

Ron got connections ; ?

Probably mafia

Ha!!! I did some prototype work, some beta testing work and some customer support work for an led supplier a few years back. That and being a fairly regular attendee at MACNA and being fairly active in my local club have put me in contact with some people. And most of them aren't Mafia! LOL!

 

[SFish]

Sure

LOL

: )

 

[youcallmenny]

Thank you for the great build thread Ron! I've been using Photon V2's on both of my tanks for a while now but am still unhappy with the overall light schedules so I'm going to emulate yours. My tanks are a tiny bit shallower than yours so I capped the CH3 at 85 instead of 90.

Your schedule was VERY different than what I had mine on. Just cycling through the day, I have to say the overall ratio and color balance looks much better. My only concern is most of my levels were capping out at ~70 so this is a bit more intense but I'll keep an eye out for fading.

I just had a question for you about the schedule. Why no CH1/CH2? I have been using them in small amounts on previous schedules but have no idea why I would or would not need them. Upon casual inspection, the color balance does indeed look better without them. Thanks again for the wonderful thread and any advice you may have.

 

[Ron Reefman]

You are very welcome and thank you for letting me know.

Very soon there will be updates in the thread for some changes to the lighting. I'm looking to add a t5 Sun Blaster Nano fixture to the front of the V2, but it came with a 6500K bulb which is WAY too yellow (warm white). So I'll be getting a 10,000K or 20,000K bulb to try. And Reef Breeders is adding to their product line in a few weeks, a 2' led strips (only blue for now) that will clip onto the V2. I intend to get 2 and add them to the back of the 40"fixture.

So I'll have very white up front, V2 mixed color in the middle and very blue leds in the back. The idea is to have the same effect in the tank that I see when I'm snorkeling. Things are normal looking up close and getting more and more blue off in the distance. I don't know if it will work, but I'm going for it anyway!

The reason I don't use the red and green is to eliminate the disco effect I get in my shimmer. I have quite a bit of surface water agitation and therefore fairly good shimmer, even though the V2 is an led array and not a point light source like a Kessil. But the red and green don't mix in well. I also get red and green edges in some of the shadows in the tank and I don't care for them either. The white leds are made up of Red, Green & Blue, so I figure I have more than enough red and green spectrum in the tank just from 5 watt white Cree leds.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Well, I went to Petco and got a Coralife 10,000K t5 and put it in my Nano fixture and to my eye's it's still way to warm of a white. Not as bad as the 6500K, but if I can't get it better I probably won't use it at all. I see if I can find an ATI Coral Plus or a Blue Plus. My last hope is Sun Blaster has a 20,000K bulb.

 

[Chicagoreef2016]

I don't mean to rub it in, but yes, it really is fun and so is being able to go snorkeling in the Keys 4 or 5 long weekends a year! But look at the bright side, I lived 30 years in SE Michigan and then 20 years in Columbus Ohio and I made it here to have fun, so can you!

Let's go Buckeyes!!!!

 

[Ron Reefman]

OK, I wasn't happy with the Coralife 10,000K t5 addition to my lighting. So I ordered a Giesemann Aquablue+ and a Bio Tek Marine 20,000K & UV led retro fit bulb. The Giesemann Aquablue+ is a little bit more cool white than the Coralife 10,000K bulb. It looks better to my eye, but still not what I was looking for. The Bio Tek 20,000K & UV is little more blue than I would like, but I can live with it. One additional point about the Bio Tek bulb. The back half of the bulb has a heat sink that runs the entire length of the bulb and after it's been on for more than a couple of minutes, it gets very hot!

This has now become quite frustrating. For all the people I've listened to talking about led/t5 hybrids, so far I'm less than impressed. I don't consider myself a tank light color snob. I don't play a lot with color combinations to get my led fixture just exactly the way I want it. For me, 90% blue and 40% white looks about the same as 90% blue and 10% white. But the t5 bulbs just don't satisfy me and at $20 each ($70 for the Bio Tek Marine) the costs can add up pretty quickly.

I have 3 t5 bulbs and one led/t5 retro fit bulb and I've spent over $200 in a fixture and bulbs. I'm not happy with the improvement in the look of the tank, and the shadow reduction has been far less than I had hoped for. At the rate I'm going, I might have been better off to have bought a 2nd Reef Breeders Photon V2 and put it over the tank. At least then I could have complete control of the color and intensity.

Today I'll see about trying to move the t5 fixture with the Bio Tek bulb to the back of the tank and slide the Photo V2 a bit forward of center. I'll do some PAR testing on the t5 and Bio Tek bulbs as well.

 

[SFish]

So you would recommend going all LED?

 

[Ron Reefman]

Short answer: Yes, I would much rather have leds than t5 or MH. For a whole host of reasons listed below.

Long answer: I like leds for many reasons that are way more about advantages for me than for my coral. No bulbs to replace, most of them run super cool, I don't need a chiller (I'm in SW Florida), I can ramp up sunrise and ramp down sunset, I can mix 6 different colors of light without buying or changing and bulbs and I can completely change the look of the tank at the push of a button (sunny, cloudy, all blue, moonlight, all red for night watching plus my custom sunrise/sunset/moonlight mode). The additions of t5's or leds I'm making now, or trying to make now, are for the corals at the back of my tank and to try and improve the overall look of the tank (more white up front and more blue toward the back).

If I had a canopy and was doing a new lighting system from scratch I'd do some combo of leds and t5's. I know a lot of people say that t5 'bounces' more light around so it gets into shadows and under coral better than leds do. There is no question that leds produce very parallel light from the top down and makes for serious shadows. But now I'm less than convinced that t5's really do that much better. Plus they need to be replaced annually, they reduce or eliminate shimmer and to my eye that make the coral colors look flatter or more pastel? I'd probably create a system where I could run either t5 or led completely alone and have enough light. Then I could run any combo I want.

But I don't have a canopy and I don't want one. I had one for 7 years and I like the clean modern look with my Reef Breeders Photon V2 much better. So adding anything is difficult because it starts to look diy clunky.

Currently I'm using the t5 fixture with the Bio Tek retro fit led 20,000K & UV at the back of the tank to light the corals on the back glass and I've moved the V2 more toward the front. Once Logan at Reef Breeders gets in the new blue led strips made to mount on the V2 I will get them and move stuff around again. Probably the blue led strips to the back and either the Bio Tek or the Giesemann aquablue+ to the front.

 

[SFish]

Yeah I mainly want to go the all LED route but people talking about hybrids kinda got me wondering if they are a better option.

 

[Ron Reefman]

To me, and this is strictly my personal opinion, I think the only real advantages to t5's are smoother transitions between spectrum or color and slightly less shadows which could mean better growth under branching corals.

I don't see the slightly better spectrum spread as a serious issue for the coral, they grow just fine with mostly blue leds, so adding other spectrum by using t5's seems a fairly pointless pursuit. That just leaves the shadow issue and I can deal with that by coral and live rock placement.