Jesse's Plasma 130 Cube
- Thread starter jestronix
- Start date
I'd say they are 1/3 or less heat than halide, you can hold you hand underneath and it gets warm, but nothing compared to halide. However the top of the light generates lots of room heat. I'd treat the heat build up around the same as a 150w halide above the light, so if you have a canopy u would need to think of this.
Long way from success yet
I remember my old tank when I put a 400w 10k XM bulb on, my corals loved that thing, but man the heat ! Chiller ran all day apart from a month or two in winter.Yep just when you expand your tank the gonis do the same! Like they knew what I was up to
I tried to move my Goni tonight without luck, in just a month it's grown onto the bottom which means I've now gotta move these guys onto their own rocks. Or tiles of some sort. It would be horrible to have to move tank and they can't be pried off! How big is too big ? , the guy I bought these from said he's had ones as big as huge beach balls that he used to drop onto concreat to split them up.
quick update , seeing colour pick up in all corals. Corals at the back of the tank are fairing well , a couple corals directly in the middle of the tank are colouring up but also pastelish in colour, so I'm thinking I may have to drop my insane midday to 3 hours from 4. A wild colony I place in three weeks ago has already grown onto its host rock, so growth is happening. All the wild colonies have held their original colour, one of them is more colourful than when I bought it, but I think too much light may be causing this. As a casting I'm heading for a 3 hour peak. Also moving my water temp down from a peak of 26.3 to 26. Will grab some photos with the SLR to start documenting growth and colour of each coral.
Yeh I never test n03 / 4 , I usually watch my cheato growth and glass as an indicator. if any other corals lighten up I'll up the feeding as u suggest.
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I do the same thing, if I don’t have to clean my glass for over 4/5 days I dose in my top off. I also took my skimmer offline a few months ago. The cheato and corals seems to just soak up all the nutrients and I rarely get a positive on my phosphate test. Right now you have a small load and are blasting the light. I always compare it to a car, if you stomp the accelator and the fuel volume is low you’ll just stall, or bleach in this case.
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Quick video update,
Have upped the feeding and the reef roids and added the big growlight to the fuge. Hoping to push high nutrient , high light and high export. Currently feeding one cube of artima shrimp and reef roids half teaspoonevery other. Acropower cap once a week. The grow light in the sump has done exactly what I want and to move the brown dust algae and some short brown algae out of the display tank. all with zero phosphate readings.
The tank last week out of nowhere got real aggressive on alk and cal , meaning my corals just woke up
The plasma is back to 4 hours a day and the two Ai primes for 11.
Aiming to be a very low water change tank, like my old tank I'll be dosing Himalayan rock salts, which contain 90 trace elements , my experiment for no fuss dose all approach. I aim to dose low amounts, but hopefully replenish a lot of what's taken out, it's just a hundred million years old trace I'll see how we go.
Overall impressed with plasma so far, wild colonies as I add them are holding their colour, my old corals are colouring up more and more. I sense the full spectrum is helping out along with some serious punch.
Quick vid https://youtu.be/0S0z1sx4pHY
Have upped the feeding and the reef roids and added the big growlight to the fuge. Hoping to push high nutrient , high light and high export. Currently feeding one cube of artima shrimp and reef roids half teaspoonevery other. Acropower cap once a week. The grow light in the sump has done exactly what I want and to move the brown dust algae and some short brown algae out of the display tank. all with zero phosphate readings.
The tank last week out of nowhere got real aggressive on alk and cal , meaning my corals just woke up
The plasma is back to 4 hours a day and the two Ai primes for 11.
Aiming to be a very low water change tank, like my old tank I'll be dosing Himalayan rock salts, which contain 90 trace elements , my experiment for no fuss dose all approach. I aim to dose low amounts, but hopefully replenish a lot of what's taken out, it's just a hundred million years old trace
I'll see how we go. Overall impressed with plasma so far, wild colonies as I add them are holding their colour, my old corals are colouring up more and more. I sense the full spectrum is helping out along with some serious punch.
Quick vid https://youtu.be/0S0z1sx4pHY
Thanks, things are going as planned for now ......
Yes the rock salt idea has some downsides, build up is a worry, but I'm not sure I'll be dosing enough to get things too out of whack, with the yearly or 6 month big water change. Realistically they said don't add things you can't test and well as a tinkerer I can't help myself. Last tank when ever I dosed Himalayan salt, corals seemed to react well. Be interesting to send it off to triton.
Grrr alk use is through the roof, was on 80ml a day, alk dropped to 7, set to 120ml, alk dropped to 6 in in 4 days !!! So have set to 200ml !! Crazy
Calcium has also had similar issues just not as drastic.
It's insane just how quick a tank can say im hungry, this took a month or two before coming alive. When it does u have about a week max to catch it. Pretty much I'll have to do daily tests until I can work out just how much it wants.
I suspect I will pay the price for being unable to catch a drop from 8 to 6 over two weeks,
Calcium has also had similar issues just not as drastic.
It's insane just how quick a tank can say im hungry, this took a month or two before coming alive. When it does u have about a week max to catch it. Pretty much I'll have to do daily tests until I can work out just how much it wants.
I suspect I will pay the price for being unable to catch a drop from 8 to 6 over two weeks,
It's so easy to miss the take off
I'm now getting through a 3L alk container every two weeks, going to upgrade to some 10L containers.January update, not a huge amount to report. Mag was a bit high so my random manual addition will now stop and I'll keep an eye on things.
The monster growlight in the fuge is producing all sorts of growth, cheato exploding but I can't get the sucker to tumble from just the overflow. Got some cyano and algae etc, all down in the fuge very little in the tank, if I see it, I remove it from the display. This was one of my concerns running a plasma grow, so far so good.
My blue and pinks are happy, however some of my corals are a little pale, I still can't get a phosphate reading above zero. 500 litres and 3 fish means I'm struggling to raise It, even lots of reef roids. So I'm thinking I'll setup a quarantine and get some extra fish , I can't do this till summer is over as I don't have a spare chiller.
coral growth is great, with all my new wild corals fusing their bases.
I'm still only running the plasma for 4 hours a day and my two tiny Ai run their 12 hours.
The plasma looks and shows similar results to my 400w 10k XM halide setup, but way less heat and a fuller spectrum. Early days yet.
The monster growlight in the fuge is producing all sorts of growth, cheato exploding but I can't get the sucker to tumble from just the overflow. Got some cyano and algae etc, all down in the fuge
very little in the tank, if I see it, I remove it from the display. This was one of my concerns running a plasma grow, so far so good. My blue and pinks are happy, however some of my corals are a little pale, I still can't get a phosphate reading above zero. 500 litres and 3 fish means I'm struggling to raise It, even lots of reef roids. So I'm thinking I'll setup a quarantine and get some extra fish , I can't do this till summer is over as I don't have a spare chiller.
coral growth is great, with all my new wild corals fusing their bases.
I'm still only running the plasma for 4 hours a day and my two tiny Ai run their 12 hours.
The plasma looks and shows similar results to my 400w 10k XM halide setup, but way less heat and a fuller spectrum. Early days yet.
January update, not a huge amount to report. Mag was a bit high so my random manual addition will now stop and I'll keep an eye on things.
The monster growlight in the fuge is producing all sorts of growth, cheato exploding but I can't get the sucker to tumble from just the overflow. Got some cyano and algae etc, all down in the fuge very little in the tank, if I see it, I remove it from the display. This was one of my concerns running a plasma grow, so far so good.
My blue and pinks are happy, however some of my corals are a little pale, I still can't get a phosphate reading above zero. 500 litres and 3 fish means I'm struggling to raise It, even lots of reef roids. So I'm thinking I'll setup a quarantine and get some extra fish , I can't do this till summer is over as I don't have a spare chiller.
coral growth is great, with all my new wild corals fusing their bases.
I'm still only running the plasma for 4 hours a day and my two tiny Ai run their 12 hours.
The plasma looks and shows similar results to my 400w 10k XM halide setup, but way less heat and a fuller spectrum. Early days yet.
The monster growlight in the fuge is producing all sorts of growth, cheato exploding but I can't get the sucker to tumble from just the overflow. Got some cyano and algae etc, all down in the fuge
very little in the tank, if I see it, I remove it from the display. This was one of my concerns running a plasma grow, so far so good. My blue and pinks are happy, however some of my corals are a little pale, I still can't get a phosphate reading above zero. 500 litres and 3 fish means I'm struggling to raise It, even lots of reef roids. So I'm thinking I'll setup a quarantine and get some extra fish , I can't do this till summer is over as I don't have a spare chiller.
coral growth is great, with all my new wild corals fusing their bases.
I'm still only running the plasma for 4 hours a day and my two tiny Ai run their 12 hours.
The plasma looks and shows similar results to my 400w 10k XM halide setup, but way less heat and a fuller spectrum. Early days yet.
