Update:
The tank is getting along nicely. I'll do a series of commentary on anything I feel is significant:
Lights: I'm going to rate it as excellent! Why? Because when I put in my Seriatopora hystrix frags from my last tank, I didnt think much of what would happen to the colour of this coral. In my last tank under a 150w halide, the colour was a light brown, perhaps a tinge of pink in the appearance. With the lights off, the coral always appeared brown.
Within days of being placed in this tank, the 3 seperate frags started to colour up. Two are placed permanantly onto the rockwork and these two have coloured up BRIGHT pink. With the lights turned off, the coral is STILL PINK! The remaining frag, is on the sand bed at the extreme edge of the tank, but even this, to my surprise, has coloured up. Remember that my lights are 24inch long and the tank is 30inch long. So this demonstrates just how powerful this T5/LED Hybrid light is.
I have two other corals; a bright green milli and an uknown blue acro with which I gauged the effectiveness of the lights; the milli darkened after going in my tank, and lost a lot of the green. But in the past week it has coloured up sooo nicely and has numerous growth tips. The blue acro also lost colour, but has since coloured up. I am certain that those corals placed in my other tank with the 150w halide would hae lost most of thier colour and not gotten it back.
My tank is still new...although the rocks and most of the water came from an established tank, the sand is new, so consequently, the tank is still going through a smaller scale algae cycle. At the moment, there is some diatoms remaining, as well as dinoflagellates. Both are starting to reduce greatly now, but do remain on the sand. The rocks are completely clean - since they came from my last tank and have no phosphates leaching etc.
Skimmer: is still going strong. It is using about 50watts as measured by a watt meter and I was rather annoyed at this. Other than that, it is performing fine. I only have 6 small chromis, 2 tiny perc clowns and 1 small bangai cardinal, so in terms of bioload, there isnt that much. A single yellow tank that is about 6 inches will produce a lot more poop than all of these together.
Photos: sorry about this, but until my laptop is fixed, I cannot get photos off my Nikon DSLR. I have been taking weekly photos though. But I will say that it will be worth waiting for the photos...the SPS are loving my tank, and are colouring up nicely.
Water flow: So...I now have 2 MP10's on this tank woohooooo! Yes, for anyone thats noticed, MP10's are working fine in my tank with 12mm thick glass. I first tested with my old gen MP10, and after a month of it working fine, I decided to buy another MP10 as the MP20 is no longer available and I didnt want to fork out for an MP40 due to its price and larger size. With two MP10's and the return provide enough flow. I dont even run them at 100% anyway.
Backup Battery: I managed to buy a used Vortech Babckup Battery for almost half price and have it hooked up for emegencies. I tested the battery for over 14 hours and then decided that it would most likely go the full distance, and at the price paid, even 14 hours is good enough. In Central London, electricity cuts are only for a few hours at a time and are rare, so 14 hours or more is plenty. I just felt that with all the money that goes into the livestock a backup battery is worth the investment - more so when it is almost half price!
Ca+Alk: At the moment I am dosing C-balance at 5ml of each part and about 1 litre of kalkwasseur a day. I will up the kalk to about 1.5litres a day at the end of the week.
Hopefully next time I will have photos to show off my modest SPS tank.
