My 47G Rimless T5/LED Hybrid SPS Tank

awsome setup sashin! I have always been a skeptic on LED tanks however your combo of t-5 and LED is starting to make me see the Light! :D please keep us posted will be tagging along cant wait to see this tank in 6 months! Great job!
 
Very nice Sahin. The par numbers are very impressive. I just wish I had a par meter to check mine. Thanks for sharing. :wave:

Thanks. You know, if you are in the hobby for the long term, I believe a PAR meter is just as useful to have as many of the other items in the hobby.

As soon as I finished this mod, I knew my PAR numbers would be as high as if not better than 250w halide systems. But, without the PAR meter it was an estimate. My younger bro saw the light and thought it looked less powerful than the light output from my JBJ 28G 150watt halide setup! :wildone:

I told him that our eyes are deceiving and yellow/white light looks brighter to us than bluer light.

I'm so happy with this mod. I have PAR thats in the range of 400w 20K halide systems with less than 180watts in this unit. The light spread is excellent too. I got 175 PAR in the bottom corners of my tank!

awsome setup sashin! I have always been a skeptic on LED tanks however your combo of t-5 and LED is starting to make me see the Light! :D please keep us posted will be tagging along cant wait to see this tank in 6 months! Great job!

I am so looking forward to seeing this tank progress another 6 months.
Thanks! :D
 
Very nice Sahin

Did you change the aquascape ?

Best Regards

Thank you my friend for the compliment.

Yes, I changed the rockwork, infact added more rocks due to two reasons:

1. More rockwork = more places for fishy homes.

2. More area to add the SPS gems :spin1:

This rockwork is final though.
 
Looking great, Sahin! It looks like the algae problems are in the past. :thumbsup:

The new 'scape looks nice; this thing is going to be an absolute rocker!
 
Looking great, Sahin! It looks like the algae problems are in the past. :thumbsup:

The new 'scape looks nice; this thing is going to be an absolute rocker!

Thanks for the compliment Kasey. The algae problems on the sand bed was causing me so much headache :headwallblue: I just couldnt work out why it was so persistent etc. I never used bagged LiveSand before. And so I just took it all out and used plain Caribsea sand which I was thoroughly in RO water. Its been a few weeks and I dont have the algae issues on the sandbed.

I'll never use packaged LiveSand again.
 
I'm glad you're posting your experience with the bagged LS; I have an unopened bag that I bought recently for my tank. But, after reading this, I'm wondering if it would be better for me to take it back to my LFS and opt for the dry stuff.

Again, looking great and please continue keeping us up to date! :D
 
I'm glad you're posting your experience with the bagged LS; I have an unopened bag that I bought recently for my tank. But, after reading this, I'm wondering if it would be better for me to take it back to my LFS and opt for the dry stuff.

Again, looking great and please continue keeping us up to date! :D

If you read the Zeo forum, you'll find that they advise not to get bagged Livesand; they even go as far as to state that you will get algae problems.

It makes sense to me because you have no idea where the sand was collected and what debris/seaweed/tiny bits of abraded driftwood etc etc and other coastal material. I bet they dont rinse the sand out until its free of those things. They then probably add some form of bacterial culture and a source of food for the bacteria to keep the bacteria alive.

I used to retain stock bacterial cultures in small vials for my university biolab. Every 6 weeks we had to refresh the vials.

Imagine in a airtight bag, sand, water (and stuff I mentioned above), how long can the stuff really stay alive?

Also, temperature at the LFS probably kills off the bacteria in a matter of weeks...

I honestly should have known better. But, having said that I did make this thread and ask about how to get the cleanest sand:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1923300

If I were you, I'd do the following in ALL future tank setups:

1. SAND: Use dry sand. Wash the heck out of it with plenty of RO water. Once you are sure it is washed quite well, put all of it in a vat of RO/DI water. Test for phosphates. If its leaching anything higher than 0.03ppm just do a quick rinse and replace all the RO/DI water again. This will ensure the sand is more or less free of crap that can later cause problems.

2. ROCKS: Regardless of where the rocks come from ie completely fresh Liverock or cured Liverock etc, I'd store the rocks in a vat for two weeks. During those two weeks every 3 days I'd setup at least 3 buckets of saltwater. Scrub and inspect the rocks for pest. Then dunk/swish the rock in 1st bucket them 2nd and 3rd etc. You will be amazed at the amount of detritus that comes out.

3. TANK CYCLE: Once the rocks and sand have been cleaned as above, place both in tank as required. Test the water for nitrates and ESPECIALLY phosphates. Use aggressive Carbon dosing (ie Vodka etc) to drop Nitrate to less than 5ppm and Phosphate to less than 0.03ppm. If the vodka dosing system become nitrates limited and you cant get phosphates lower then use GFO aggressively.

With no corals in the tank, aggressive vodka/GFO dosing isnt going to cause RTN etc.

Once those parameters are good, then carry out a few large water changes, test alk, ca etc etc and add a fish or two and a few hardy SPS frags.

In any future tank setups I will follow something similar to above. Currently I am on my 4th reef setup and I wish I'd done this for this tank. But certainly I will never setup a future tank without doing the above.
 
Sounds like a good plan. Thanks for the advice, Sahin! :)

Here's my current plan:

-I'm using DIY rock from portland cement. It's cured for over 5 weeks now and will continue to cure for at least another week.

-I'm going to exchange my bag of 'LS' for dry sand that will be thoroughly rinsed, and allowed to cure for a week with a few RODI WC's.

-Lastly, once salt, rock and sand are in the system, I'll end up letting the system set for the greater part of the summer (around 6-8 weeks). During this time, I'll be dosing bacteria and carbon. After the initial 6-8 weeks, I'll add fish and start running my light for 4 hours and ramp up to 7 over a couple of weeks.

In the end, I expect a stable tank, free from pests and very little algae. Sorry to de-rail the thread. :p Thanks again for the advice. :thumbsup:
 
Sounds like a good plan. Thanks for the advice, Sahin! :)

Here's my current plan:

-I'm using DIY rock from portland cement. It's cured for over 5 weeks now and will continue to cure for at least another week.

-I'm going to exchange my bag of 'LS' for dry sand that will be thoroughly rinsed, and allowed to cure for a week with a few RODI WC's.

-Lastly, once salt, rock and sand are in the system, I'll end up letting the system set for the greater part of the summer (around 6-8 weeks). During this time, I'll be dosing bacteria and carbon. After the initial 6-8 weeks, I'll add fish and start running my light for 4 hours and ramp up to 7 over a couple of weeks.

In the end, I expect a stable tank, free from pests and very little algae. Sorry to de-rail the thread. :p Thanks again for the advice. :thumbsup:

Thats an awesome plan, and its more or less what I have in mind for any furture tanks; you got the right idea - LOL dont great minds think alike? :thumbsup:

When you dose the bacteria and carbon you can go super strength whilst there is no livestock. This will cause a massive milky bacterial bloom. Just ensure you have your skimmer ready and keep an eye on it several times a day. In six weeks if you follow your plan out fully I cannot see why you wont achieve a low nutrient level in that time frame.

PS you dont need to applogise about derailing my thread. I quite like build threads and enjoy participating.

Lastly, before you introduce stock just remember to do a few large water changes as the aggressive carbon dosing will have pulled out a lot of trace elements and other things from the water. Essentially get the water parameters to NSW values etc etc.
 
Lastly, before you introduce stock just remember to do a few large water changes as the aggressive carbon dosing will have pulled out a lot of trace elements and other things from the water. Essentially get the water parameters to NSW values etc etc.

That's a great point; thanks for the advice! :)
 
Hello Sahin!
I very liked the new position the rocks.
The lights are so Cool.
One I hug and congratulations!
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Just read the whole thread....can't believe I missed this one. Top notch job Sahin!
Wow, thats real nice coming from a top reefkeeper like you! Thanks :thumbsup:


Masha-Allah very nice setup. All the best and tagging along. Tahir
Thank you. I hope this tank will look something special in a years time.


Very nice. Came along quickly. Cool light setup. Not many would want to cut up a new ATI fixture.
Haha, yeah, it wasnt exactly new...was a faulty unit at less than half price...a repair job took less than 20 mins and I thought hmmm...now a LED's and T5 combined should go really nicely :crazy1:

Hello Sahin! I very liked the new position the rocks. The lights are so Cool. One I hug and congratulations!
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Thank you! Its nice to get all these compliments lol :dance:

Small update:

Tested parameters today, Phosphate is around 0.012ppm, Nitrate undetectable, Calcium 420, Alk 6 (!!!) and Mg 1230. Must sort those two out. At the moment I am still dosing C-Balance, but I think I will order Fauna Marin Balling lite by the end of the month. I still have one pack of C-Balance to go through.

Coral colours are returning slowly. Some corals have already coloured up, but a few still need some time. The maricultured Hyacinthus is a browny pink and is having a hard time colouring up. Greens and the blues are doing really well. I guess I just have to give the tank time to mature.
 
your tank is lovely.

Sahin, great looking sps! How often do you change your T5's?

Thank you both for the compliments.

THe tank is just under 6 months old and the T5 tubes are about 5 months old, so I am not looking to change them out until after the tubes are at least 10 months old. I will measure the PAR and see how much loss there is, and decide on that.
 
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