My Aquaforest cube, just the way I like it!

[Piper27]

Hey Paul, those last fts of the cube are really nice. The tank is looking great.
Did you go back to higher k bulbs from the 10k you were using earlier?
What's your current situation with nitrates? Still 5 ish ppm?
Which AF products are you using now?

Hey thanks man I appreciate the compliment, it's taken a while but I think things are kicking in finally. I did go back to radium's. The 400w 10k xms were a little to much light for some of the corals. Plus it was so yellow and the LEDs were not even punching through. I added two more LED strips so I have over 300w of blue LED with no lenses and am running 250w radium's now. I am going to buy 400w bulbs next they are just the only house bulb I had lying around.
Nitrates have been zero on saliferts for a while now. I feed as much as I can and just started going back to a tablespoon of stump remover every few days. Only doing this because I am adding kalk to the tank now and alk is a little higher at 9. I don't want to burn tips, which I don't think would happen but could, so just to be safe I think that and the amount of food I have going into the tank should help. Phosphates are reading under .01 always now.

AF dosing

Aminos
Pro bio s
Bio s
Just started vitality again
Flourine
Iodine
Energy
Micro e

 

[Piper27]

Nice elevated scape and it's interesting to see a US based reefer collecting mostly wild and maricultured SPS corals instead of starting off with mostly frags. Keep us updated on your progress.

Thanks, the scape is great. The fish love it and everyone has their place. Yea I don't know anyone collecting wild and maricultured stuff. I love it. I am tired of buying frags, for one they always get knocked over and lost. Two it's impossible to get species you want since nothing is sold as what it is. Just a name and some blue LED lighting messing with the true color. I have found so many species I have not grown yet just by ordering a few boxes of coral. Everyone in the US is scared of pests on these corals but don't realize reefers have just as much and imo spread pests morere than wild and maricultured stuff does.

 

[biggles]

Everything is looking really good Paul, i love all those pics of what has been going on with all the tanks

I have sponges in the overflow and sump, i'll have to get a pic of them for you buddy - sponges are cool. I love all those crabs together, two were even having a bit of a biffo lol.

 

[Piper27]

Yea get a pic of some of your sponge, I would like to see it. The crabs were mostly bandits but there were a couple cool crabs in some pocci pieces. The small one fighting was one of the few other crabs that were on acros and we're not bandits, they had three tones of color on them and a slightly different shape, pretty cool.
After the storm in figi a few months back the order I got had sooooo many hairy bad crabs I was stunned! Maybe they come out more when more nutrients is in the water.

Here is some more sponge, a pink encrusting piece and the white branchy stuff that takes over stuff if you let it.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

[biggles]

You'll find your little guys on here mate

Crabs

Bottom one looks like Tetralia cinctipes

 

[codydemmel4]

very nice update, everything looks like it is doing great!

 

[honkit]

Thanks, the scape is great. The fish love it and everyone has their place. Yea I don't know anyone collecting wild and maricultured stuff. I love it. I am tired of buying frags, for one they always get knocked over and lost. Two it's impossible to get species you want since nothing is sold as what it is. Just a name and some blue LED lighting messing with the true color. I have found so many species I have not grown yet just by ordering a few boxes of coral. Everyone in the US is scared of pests on these corals but don't realize reefers have just as much and imo spread pests morere than wild and maricultured stuff does.

Great to see someone breaking the trend here in buying cultured and wild colonies instead of just frags.

I do the same myself except that I still do buy an occasional frag if it is a desired/rare species and colour that I must have. I have had great success with both wild and maricultured sps corals spread over 10 years of reefing experience. Never had major pest problems as long as you dip and examine everything that goes into your tank and dip them again if need be.

Out of curiosity, where do you order your boxes of coral from? Local LFS or from an online distributor?

 

[Piper27]

Yea I have 5 frags that are not wild or maricultured. Well one is not released yet from wwc but that means it was probably one of the two. I get them for the same reason, normally because they have at least to dominate colors that I don't have much of in the tank. I order coral boxes through a friend for now. Not the local fish stores. They are the reason I am buying boxes sometimes, they never get acros in and when they do it's mostly from the cheap leftover section of their distributor which they all use the same sources most of the time.