JBNY's 270 Ver2.0

[bradleyj]

It's so nice to see you back and once again enjoying the hobby. As you, I went through a couple of tank failures and had to re-boot twice in the last 4 years. The last one being very devestating. But I am so glad I stuck with it . I have always enjoyed your threads and hope to enjoy many more years of it. Best of luck my friend.

 

[stonecold]

This pic is a good representation of how far our hobby is evolved; hence, the MJ for internal flow.

 

[JB NY]

Joe, good luck with the re-boot. It will only be a matter of time before you have another masterpiece.

Thanks for the words of encouragement Keith! I'm sure it will eventually get there. Right now I am my own worst enemy, adding so many little frags I am constantly adjusting the lighting schedule to try not to fry any new ones with my lighting and invariably end up doing damage to another frag someplace else in the tank.

If you ever find yourself back on long island for some reason, please get in touch.

It's so nice to see you back and once again enjoying the hobby. As you, I went through a couple of tank failures and had to re-boot twice in the last 4 years. The last one being very devestating. But I am so glad I stuck with it . I have always enjoyed your threads and hope to enjoy many more years of it. Best of luck my friend.

Many thanks Bradley, your current tank is one of my favorites, truly an excellent job you have done with it. Yeah the bad times were rough for me and some times maddening, as I was unsure what the problem actually was. In the end it just took some determination and some patience, now I can only hope it starts to all come together finally.

This pic is a good representation of how far our hobby is evolved; hence, the MJ for internal flow.

You know, until you wrote that I had sort of forgotten about it, but you are right. I had two sea swirls on the main returns that moved the water around, and a good strong pump to make sure that enough water was being pushed through the sea swirls. The MJ pumps were added to get even more flow, but there was nothing at that time to truly get some hard core flow going in the tank. I remember how excited I was when Tunze first came out with those stream pumps, the amount of water they moved was truly revolutionary at the time. Now I don't even think of how difficult it used to be to get good strong flow in tanks back then.

 

[Flatlander]

Wow Joe. So you figure air born contaminants hurt your tank. Thats interesting
Hope you don't mind but I seen your TOTM in your signature, and thought it was a good idea, so did mine.
Love following this thread, as I did the others.

 

[JB NY]

Wow Joe. So you figure air born contaminants hurt your tank. Thats interesting
Hope you don't mind but I seen your TOTM in your signature, and thought it was a good idea, so did mine.
Love following this thread, as I did the others.

Really it's the only thing I can think of. I went from having a tank that I literally could do no wrong with, everything colored up and grew like weeds, to not being able to keep anything worthwhile for any length of time. The only real changes were the the two incidents that airborne contaminants easily could have made their way into the tank.

Put that TOTM in the sig, people forget and it shows you have been doing this a long time with good results.

 

[JB NY]

So I made some big changes to my lighting schedule yesterday. For the past few months I have been struggling with the risk of burning my corals if I made the slightest change in my lights. Things such as trying a new T5 bulb seemed to cause the frags at the top of the tank to get burned a bit and they take another month or so to recover. Last month I put a whole slew of frags in the tank and was acclimating them to the new light, with what I thought was good success. So I finally put the lighting schedule back to normal and for the first 4-5 days everything looked great. I came home from being away for 3 days and found to tops of some of the higher placed frags burned, alk was also slightly higher at 8.2. So I lowered the alk and went back to the acclimation lighting so I could think about things for a few days.

This seems to keep happening, the only thing I can think of is that I have too much light in the tank now, I am really not sure why this is the case, the only think I can think of is the addition of the two reefbrite strips. I have always thought of them as just simple supplemental lighting, but I think maybe they add more to the corals then I thought. So I have flipped the lighting schedule from

T5 ON 07:30AM OFF 8:00PM
MH ON 12:00PM OFF 8:25PM
LED ON 12:00PM OFF 9:15PM

To the new schedule of

T5 ON 11:30AM OFF 8:00PM
MH ON 01:00PM OFF 8:25PM
LED ON 07:30AM OFF 9:15PM

I am hoping the 1 hour less of MH and 3.5 hours less of T5, more than offset the extra time for the reefbrite LED strips and allows me to not live on the edge with my lighting.

Hopefully this works out, it is the first time I have changed up my lighting schedule in more than 12 years.

 

[Myka]

Hi Joe. That's awfully rough having to restart the tank because of that sponge. I'm curious though, you didn't replace the sand bed. Are you not concerned about a tiny piece of sponge being lost in/on the sand and reinfecting the new rock?

Also, my plan from the beginning has been to add 2x ReefBrite strips to my ATI T5 fixture, but I can't decide between the Tech and the XHO. If you think your Tech strips are adding that much light to push you over the edge; do you see a visual difference? Is there significant blue addition using the Techs?

 

[JB NY]

Hi Joe. That's awfully rough having to restart the tank because of that sponge. I'm curious though, you didn't replace the sand bed. Are you not concerned about a tiny piece of sponge being lost in/on the sand and reinfecting the new rock?

Also, my plan from the beginning has been to add 2x ReefBrite strips to my ATI T5 fixture, but I can't decide between the Tech and the XHO. If you think your Tech strips are adding that much light to push you over the edge; do you see a visual difference? Is there significant blue addition using the Techs?

I was very worried about that, it is one of the reasons I dd not put anything in the tank for about 2 months after I changed out the rock. I found a small piece or two over that time and removed it. At this point I haven;t seen any of the sponge for about two years so I am hopeful it is gone.

I have the Tech strips, they are very bright. For my purposes I do not need more than they can put out. They absolutely make a pretty strong visual difference, they add a nice deep blue as well as make corals fluoresce like crazy.

 

[Myka]

I didn't realize this restart was 2 years ago - I thought it was much more recent. Why did you choose to leave the sandbed? I would have been bleaching the whole system! [emoji38]

Thanks for your input on the strips.

 

[biggles]

I was using a 3ft long 27 x 3W RB and 410nm light bar until i worked out that it was actually irritating a few acros with too much light. The brighter the pop you see the more punch those LED's are hitting the fluoro pigments with.
I love the effect you get from them but unless i get a dimmer i'll be leaving that thing off for now. Just wanted you to be aware of the sneaky nature of LED's........

 

[Big E]

I was using a 3ft long 27 x 3W RB and 410nm light bar until i worked out that it was actually irritating a few acros with too much light. The brighter the pop you see the more punch those LED's are hitting the fluoro pigments with.
I love the effect you get from them but unless i get a dimmer i'll be leaving that thing off for now. Just wanted you to be aware of the sneaky nature of LED's........

Yep, I've seen Reefbrites wreak some havoc on Sps when run for too long of a duration on a couple of friend's tanks.

Long durations also tended to create orange & green being dominant on corals like chalices, leptos, acans, porites also.

I've been looking to add some pop, and thinking more in the lines of a mixed strip of 400-470 leds..........only using them for viewing 4 or so hours a day.

 

[markalot]

Interesting about the LED's. I've been running some BML all blue most of the day not really thinking they put out enough light to be harmful, but they do add some nice pop. My Orange and Greens are fantastic (well, for me anyway) but nothing else. Glad you two discussed it.

 

[JB NY]

I didn't realize this restart was 2 years ago - I thought it was much more recent. Why did you choose to leave the sandbed? I would have been bleaching the whole system! [emoji38]

Thanks for your input on the strips.

The system has been up for 7 years, 2 years ago I replaced the rock and then through a series of bad events there has been no coral till about 6 months ago. So for me this is a restart as I really wasn't doing anything with the tank for the last two years.

I chose to leave the sand bed mostly because at the time I thought it would be a quick turnaround for the tank with the new rock already being cured I could hit the ground running, and be back in a few months. Pulling the sand bed would have been extra hassle and time lost. In hind site, I could have pulled it and it would not have made any difference.

But now it doesn't really matter the sand bed is in great shape, I have not had any issues with that sponge in a few years. But I have had many people tell me to take everything out and bleach the whole system and start again. If This time the tank doesn't meet with success I think I will do just that.

I was using a 3ft long 27 x 3W RB and 410nm light bar until i worked out that it was actually irritating a few acros with too much light. The brighter the pop you see the more punch those LED's are hitting the fluoro pigments with.
I love the effect you get from them but unless i get a dimmer i'll be leaving that thing off for now. Just wanted you to be aware of the sneaky nature of LED's........

So that is very interesting you say that. I have had a sneaking suspicion of the same thing for some time. I put these LED strips on around the same time that I restarted everything and I have been having issues with some acros, tips bleaching, polyps closing up, general signs of too much light. I just redid my lighting schedule because I think they are getting too much light. But the funny thing is MH/T5 wise this is no where near as much light as I have had on the tank in the past, and I have not had the kinds of light issues I have been having. Now you have me really thinking I should take off the LED strips or at least turn them down (I have a dimmer) and see what happens.

Yep, I've seen Reefbrites wreak some havoc on Sps when run for too long of a duration on a couple of friend's tanks.

Long durations also tended to create orange & green being dominant on corals like chalices, leptos, acans, porites also.

I've been looking to add some pop, and thinking more in the lines of a mixed strip of 400-470 leds..........only using them for viewing 4 or so hours a day.

Hmm, now I am really thinking that these strips might be the cause of my problems.

 

[Myka]

The system has been up for 7 years, 2 years ago I replaced the rock and then through a series of bad events there has been no coral till about 6 months ago. So for me this is a restart as I really wasn't doing anything with the tank for the last two years.[...]But I have had many people tell me to take everything out and bleach the whole system and start again. If This time the tank doesn't meet with success I think I will do just that.

Oh I see. I do hope the tank continues to run with no more sponge issues.

Hmm, now I am really thinking that these strips might be the cause of my problems.

...and I'm really thinking I don't need the XHO!

 

[MSHUR]

Guys,
I had this problem with RB in my Previous Elos tank few years back and i end up buying small dimmers from RB.. right now i have them on about 75% and run them in the morning for 3 hours and 3 hours in the evening.. So far no issues..

 

[cugly]

This pic is a good representation of how far our hobby is evolved; hence, the MJ for internal flow.

I agree..still stunning to look at.

 

[JB NY]

I pulled the LED off the main lighting schedule, I'll just use them for a dusk effect 40% down to 1% for the last hour and see if my acros like this more.

 

[MSHUR]

Joe , how do you dim them from 40% to 1%? Do you use special controller ?

 

[JB NY]

The RB dimmers hooks into an apex controller. From there I just program the apex to turn on the RB at 40% at 8pm and dim it to 1% by 8:30, then shut off at 9:15pm

 

[MSHUR]

Ahh, to bad i dont have this option with Profilux...Wonder if i can use 1-10v option