Update to my earlier post...
Update to my earlier post...
I've now been running LED's for 9 months. From the pic that was shown of my tank in my earlier posting, things have changed drastically, and for the better.
First, I tossed about 90% of my live rock. It was Pukani dry rock and was turning black and leaching ugly stuff into the water.
Second, I pulled my remaining large 3 pieces of live rock, soaked them in a muriatic acid bath to clean them, and replaced them into the tank.
Added ceramic rock from the Alternative Reef.
Set up my 3-part on a Reefdoser IV.
Got rid of the coarse substrate and put a fine layer of fine Fiji pink substrate down.
All of this activity allowed me to get my N03 and P04 to undetectable levels.
Next, I stopped using GFO and GAC. Moved to Brightwell pellets in a NextReef reactor. I only use the GFO/Carbon reactor if there's been a death in the "family".
Finally, tossed all of the hermit crabs except two scarlets, and I have 3 emerald mithrax's. Not the trash, donated them to an LFS.
Running the following parameters consistently:
P04/N03 - undetectable
Alk - 10-11 DKh
Ca - 460-480 ppm
Mg - 1400 ppm
pH - 8.25-8.4
Temp - 80 deg f
Feeding Rods Reef every 3 days, Coral Chili 3 every 3 nights, and silversides for the rhyzo, bubble tip, and long-tentacle rainbow bubble tip as necessary.
Changed my light cycle to 12 hrs on, ramping from 0930 at 0% to 90% white, 100% blue over 4 hours, running 4 hours of red at 30% output during my 4 hour "high noon", and then ramping down from 1630 to 2030 on the whites and from 1730 to 2130 on the blues.
Hint - I had little growth on anything until I added the red output.
Conditions now:
with the exception of a red chili coral and some very petite mushrooms that the wife loves, there are only LPS and SPS in the tank.
A frag will encrust a plug in 3-4 weeks. My montipora capricornus that I glued to some PVC has grown over 500% in 3 months. Ditto my Idaho Grape. My stylophora has moved from a 2" ball from the frag swap in March to a 6"+ monster - like melon sized. I have a wellsophyllia that has tripled in size in three months and is almost 8" in diameter from the 3" that it was in June.
Pagodas, bottlebrush acros, staghorns, chalices, lettuce coral, scroll coral, blastomussa, hammers, tyrees, are ALL growing steadily. I can take a #2 pencil eraser-sized monti frag or acro frag, and in a month or two it will be over an inch in dia.
So, for my first observation, LED's DO WORK for SPS, and work well. There's more to it than just a 50-50 mix of blue/white, and daylight photoperiod is critcal.
Now, the plan is to mimic the 4 spectral "bumps" that a high-end MH bulb puts out at 14K (blue, cyan, green, and red). My tank, BTW, is around 10-12K. I'm moving it to the 14-18K range.
The mods will be complete with 60 royal blues, 36 cool whites, 12 cyan, 8 reds, and 8 greens. This will give me the ability to drive to 600 PAR on the bottom of the tank, and hopefully the wider spectral output will be good for the corals. It'll take about a year to dial it in. No, I will not be driving to 600 PAR on the bottom. The max will run around 400.
I have an underwater HD camera and have taken some video, and when my dumb aXX figures out how to create a You Tube vid, I'll post it up here.
I am having fabulous results...:celeb1::beer:
Kev
