My 220 Gallon SPS Dominate Build Thread

[dvanacker]

growth is looking great for sure as is the tank! I saw it in person recently and it is really coming along.

 

[davesolo29]

Tank is looking great Bill.
Any particular reason for taking the wavebox offline?

Which LEDs were you experimenting with? What was the difference in PAR readings?

 

[clowndude]

Tank looks really good Bill. I see a future TOTM in the makings here. Keep up the great work. BTW can u send me some of that Canadian water? Now I'm convinced there is something magical in that water.

 

[sahin]

Wow wow wow! This looks so nice! For sure this is a TOTM candidate.

 

[Bill@IA]

I'm doing a 210 build, out of curiosity, what Skimmer are you using?

I am using a Marine Sources Red Devil RDC1600.

WoW Its looking real nice

Thank you.

 

[Bill@IA]

Stuff looks great! You're getting some amazing growth.

Thank you.

Here are a couple of progression shots I took of some of the frags I started with. The growth was recorded between Feb. 4 and Oct. 20th.

 

[Bill@IA]

growth is looking great for sure as is the tank! I saw it in person recently and it is really coming along.

Thank you Darryl. It really has come a long way hasn't it??

I remember taking all of the rock out and cutting off the Pom Pom Xenia...

and starting with a clean slate end of March 2011.

 

[Bill@IA]

Tank is looking great Bill.
Any particular reason for taking the wavebox offline?

Which LEDs were you experimenting with? What was the difference in PAR readings?

I loved my TUNZE Wavebox but I wanted more direct water flow coming in from each side of the tank to create more vigorous random movement.

Starting with the Giesemann 24" infiniti the most PAR I could get was 540 AWL. I took it off and tried a few different LED modules. I got the PAR but I couldn't get the coverage I wanted from just one module so I decided just to get the longer ATI fixture.

Tank looks really good Bill. I see a future TOTM in the makings here. Keep up the great work. BTW can u send me some of that Canadian water? Now I'm convinced there is something magical in that water.

WOW Thank you for that.

Wow wow wow! This looks so nice! For sure this is a TOTM candidate.

Thank you

 

[rowdy29can]

Awesome Bill! Looks fantastic! But I think you know that already! Just drooling over those rare SPS's you have in your collection! One day??? Cheers!

 

[jroovers]

Looking awesome Bill! You've really turned the corner in the last couple months with growth and colour.

 

[doosiec]

Nice clean tank and full of colors given the age.

 

[Bill@IA]

In an ideal world I would like my SPS coral to grow evenly but that doesn't seem to happen. As I mentioned earlier, the right side of my system was getting more quality light than the left. Now I have three coral that need a serious trimming while others have a ways to go.
The problem is the biggest coral have really grown into the live rock. Before I attempt removal, what trimming techniques have worked for others who were faced with the same problem? When trimming large Acros did you just trim the edges or remove whole branches from the bottom of the base, working your way up? (I wish I could just get my Inland in there and plug away, especially the plate.)
Looking forward to constructive pointers here.

Large Red Polyp Monti

Large Acro taking up a lot of real estate in the top middle slightly to the right.

Large Chalice

 

[davesolo29]

When my tank gets up and running with all the new improvements i will come give you a hand cleaning out the ones you dont want or need pruned.

 

[Bill@IA]

Happy New Year!!

I can finally park the Point and Shoot I used for wide angle and FTS, and start with my DSLR. Using the DSLR seems to be a whole new learning process. Depth of Field (DOF), Aperture Priority etc. etc.

Here are some of my first shots taken with my new rig.

Birdsnest

CJs Pinky

Blue Cali Tort

My WB was set at 10,000k and very little post processing needed through iPhoto.
(Later I will try post processing RAW files.)

 

[Bill@IA]

A few close ups

Season Greetings Monti

Blue Hologram Monti

CJs Pillow Monti

 

[Bill@IA]

Green Slimer

Red Diablo

Pink Floyd

My Yellow Acopora caroliniana (Here is where I need to try processing as this piece is bright yellow)

My Acropora suharsonoi

 

[sahin]

Is there better colouration on either the MH or T5 sections of the tank? Or is the same?

Beautiful colours on those corals in any event.

 

[rowdy29can]

Amazing pics! Congrats on the DSLR! Your rare pieces look like they acclimated well and the colours are coming out nicely!

 

[Bill@IA]

Is there better colouration on either the MH or T5 sections of the tank? Or is the same?

Beautiful colours on those corals in any event.

Hello sahin

I can't say there were any real colour differences between the two sides, my MH also had ATI BluePlus and most of the corals were different, but there was definitely a difference in growth. My right side 4' is still larger than the first two feet starting from the left.

 

[Bill@IA]

Amazing pics! Congrats on the DSLR! Your rare pieces look like they acclimated well and the colours are coming out nicely!

Hello Patrick,

Thank you x 2. Give me a little more time to figure out how to dial in my pics for colour accuracy but in the meantime I am pretty happy that all my Reef Raft LEs have held their colour or better. My Pink Floyd started to look like a glow stick at one point but with the new growth it seems to have mellowed out to a more mellow yellow. The Red Diablo has also started to grow so this should be a beauty, colour is as good or better since I got it Oct. 9th 2012.

Check out the Kandari....the tips went really pink while keeping that army green base.