Mhucasey's SPS obsession

[mhucasey]

A little bit of progression...This is an AquaSD Ultimate shortcake. The first pic is from December 3 2014, just after I got the frag:

And Here it is as of yesterday! Im very excited about growing this coral out big!

The pink and green are actually more vivid in real life than the photo.

 

[ksr.aaron]

sps heaven, Looks awesome!

 

[cnewsome]

Great looking tank and lots of great information! Thanks for the par readings, thinking about converting to ati sun power myself.

 

[JB NY]

Great tank, I love the Stuber coral in your tank, shows what progress has been made in this hobby over the years. :thumbsup:

I too remember your thread about settling tanks, I still have a 55 gallon tank plumbed into my system specifically for stuff to settle into.

 

[reefmutt]

That shortcake is awesome! Crazy colors.

 

[mhucasey]

Thanks everyone! I hope that something that I post can help another reef keeper out!

Great looking tank and lots of great information! Thanks for the par readings, thinking about converting to ati sun power myself.

I came really close to buying a par meter but then was lucky to find that my local fish store had one. I have a very good relationship with the owner and he rented it to me.

I was not surprised at the numbers being high in the center and top, but I was surprised at how high and how constant the PAR was throughout the tank. When you have 8 bulbs throwing light from all different angles there is very little drop off of PAR between the top of the rock work and the sand, which gives me a lot of flexibility for positioning. The local fish store is an all-radion lit store, and we looked at numbers on his display tank for reference. The drop-off for intensity was very fast as we went from the top to the bottom, at the sand directly below the Radion Pros he was around 100. It is an unexpected benefit of T5s that I didn't know about

On my attached naughty tank I have a 70watt DE metal halide(Ushio 20K) and I found the same thing. At the top of the rocks, center of the tank, par is around 360. on the bottom, 6 inches below that the par is only 150. I highly recommend getting your hands on a meter, ask around - someone local to you may have one for rent.

 

[sahin]

A very nice system with lovely SPS colours. Thanks for sharing with us. :thumbsup:

 

[tdb320reef]

Tank is looking great! Nice Job.

 

[shih87]

I'm kind of interested in what a Triton Test would show but Id be worried that the test would lead me to make changes. if it ain't broke, don't fix it

My routine with the tank is pretty simple now, I have an auto top off system attached to a 5 stage RO/DI system, and dowers for the Randy's 2-part. I add the magnesium additive of the two part manually from time to time and top off the containers every couple of days, and clean the skimmer once a week. I add the colors additives every two to three days, about 5 ml each of the blue/purple and red/purple additive.

The plumbing is crazy but the pipes on the outside of the house are heat exchangers. I had to insulate the whole thing:

The heater runs a lot, especially now during wintertime. During summer it adds some heat but a fan over the sump keeps the temperatures from rising above 80.

Very cool!!!... Above pictures remind me when I lived in California.... We reefers just made the whole house about reef... Hahaha

 

[mhucasey]

A very nice system with lovely SPS colours. Thanks for sharing with us. :thumbsup:

Thanks Sahin, you know a big part of the reason I started a tank thread was because you asked for one. I just procrastinated like crazy on getting it going!:lolspin:

 

[mhucasey]

Tank is looking great! Nice Job.

Thanks Very much! I'll be carefully following your rebuild, keep up the good work!

 

[mhucasey]

Very cool!!!... Above pictures remind me when I lived in California.... We reefers just made the whole house about reef... Hahaha

Hee hee!

"Ok baby, there is going to be some drilling...please don't worry about it"

 

[reefmutt]

Before my wife and I had kids, we lived in an old small rowhouse. I put a 220 in the living room and took over an entire room in the basement below the tank for filtration. I drilled 3 holes through the hardwood floors for drainage and return. And the basement sump room was like a mad scientist lab with pipes and wires and tanks all over the place. Was awesome!!
The tank was part of the house..

 

[JB NY]

Before my wife and I had kids, we lived in an old small rowhouse. I put a 220 in the living room and took over an entire room in the basement below the tank for filtration. I drilled 3 holes through the hardwood floors for drainage and return. And the basement sump room was like a mad scientist lab with pipes and wires and tanks all over the place. Was awesome!!
The tank was part of the house..

haha, that's my house!

 

[mhucasey]

Some coral shots:
Blue Tenuis coloring up nicely, this had almost no blue in it when i got it:

And a new acro, maybe a horrida. Its light blue with electric green polyps and its a pain to get a good photo of it:

 

[mhucasey]

Before my wife and I had kids, we lived in an old small rowhouse. I put a 220 in the living room and took over an entire room in the basement below the tank for filtration. I drilled 3 holes through the hardwood floors for drainage and return. And the basement sump room was like a mad scientist lab with pipes and wires and tanks all over the place. Was awesome!!
The tank was part of the house..

I would love to have a basement for just that reason! I remember my ex wives face when she came home one day and i had been cutting pipe for my first tank on the dining room carpet in my apartment. There were tools and pipe and stuff strewn all over the floor and she was not a happy woman!

 

[tripdad]

I love looking at the set-ups from warm weather reefer's. If I ran a pipe outside, or kept my filtration in the garage it would be so cold in my tank right now I would have to keep only polar bears in it.

 

[mhucasey]

New bulbs time! I have been experimenting with using an actinic bulb to increase the amount of 420nm light and feel like its been very successful. So I doubled down on it. The actinic bulb I was using was an ATI actinic, and it was pretty old, so I bought some replacements, going with Giesemann super actinic. Since Marine Depot charges extra to ship less than 4 bulbs, I went ahead and got one of the Aquablue Azures, an Actinic blue, and two super actinics. The Actinic blues have an even mix of actinic and blue, I thought I'd try that out. I expected the azure and one of the actinics would end up as spares.

I tried each of them out and I am very impressed with them. The Azure's spectral graph looks very much like the lagoon blue I was already running, but side by side the azure is a clean, crisp blue-white while the Lagoon blue was a bit yellow and significantly dimmer.

I started mixing and matching and ended up with the following bulbs, front to back:
KZ New Gen
Aquablue Azure
Super Actinic
KZ Fiji Purple
Super Actinic
Actinic Blue
KZ New Gen
ATI Blue Plus

The colors are off the chart good, the tank doesn't look overly blue, and its nice and bright.
I'm pretty fickle with combinations so I may tweak some more but right now I'm very happy. The Fiji Purple bulb is almost 11 months old so I have a replacement for that coming tomorrow and after that all the bulbs will be new or very close to it.

Post correcting the blue on the pics is pretty hard with the amount of violet light that is being generated, so keep in mind the blue is way less but the glow is pretty much right on, and its brighter in person:

 

[glaukos]

Tank looks awesome mchusaey and corals have amazing colors:beer:
You really made me rethink my bulb brand and combo:rollface:
In the pic where you show the tenuis(which is beautiful btw),what's the coral down on the left side?Loripes or something else?

 

[mhucasey]

Thanks glaukos! I think that the coral you are talking about is a granulosa, but I can't be sure. It could possibly be a loripes as well.