My tank is rocking!! =) need some growth tips

[shaneh]

I've been noticing great growth and even coralline in my reactors and places I have never seen it before. I got so excited I bought 40!! FRAGS =) my tank is stocked and I hope to have a lot of frags to share in the near future. Got some good ones! lots of chalices and SPS few acans. Superman, watermelon, cotton candy, alien eye, rainbow acan….=)

Took over 3 hours to drip them and place them still not done.

I was thinking of try to tweak it a bit more to get more growth. Give me your opinion please on the following.

-Thinking of extending the MH light cycle slowly from 8 hrs to 12. over a 2 month period I'll increase it 15 min.

-Thinking of upping the coral feeding to every other day.

-Changing from the old Radium 20K to ham 15K this weekend.

-Going to change my t5's slowly to almost all 12-15K bulbs will start to replace the old t5 bulbs. I still have my 72" super atinic. Just think the 12-15K will give better growth.

I keep my alk at 10, cal at 440...is this the best for growth?

Any other recommendation?

Plan to clean all my reflectors as I change the bulbs.

PS: Anyone have Tequila Sunrise Millepora and Tequila Sunrise Acans ? I'd love a frag....trade...

 

[northbay-reefer]

Shane, I am happy for your success and excitment ... but you just shocked your system with too many frags LOL ... you should pack up 20 of those frags and bring them over to my house ... ... LOL

 

[Grant W]

Wowowoh, slow down bud. Where did you get all the frags? Lets see some pics. You might want to keep an eye on your parameters with that much going in the tank at once. Id like to see your list. With the fish load you like to keep I would keep the reef nutrition prods to maybe twice a week and not too much. The lighting changes sound good but again go slow and I wouldnt increase the lighting cycle much at all. You do run your actinics and halides at the same time with staggered start and stop times dont you? Thats all I can add for now.

 

[Reef Bass]

Yeah buddy! Go Shane! Love the enthusiasm.

I echo the sentiment of others to go slow with your well intended changes.

I had some of the best color when I was running my MHs 10 hrs / day. I don't think 12 would be necessary.

You could run your alk at 10. I prefer 8-9.

I like 20,000K Radiums.

Personally, I think feeding corals twice a week is dandy. As I know from experience, too much more and water quality issues and gobs of algae are likely.

 

[shaneh]

thanks guys for the tips. This last weekend i changed my MH and 4 of the 10 T5's.

Everything still looks good except.....
I have never had good luck with acans for some reason....2 of them are a bit bleached. They are on the sand bed under the MH (I have 5 t5's on the side of the tank). I moved them to the side of the tank with a bit less flow and light. Do you think it is a shipping issue? Any other tips for acans. It's a 31 inch deep tank and my MH is a good 10-12 inch above the water

Can I do much to stop the bleaching?

my PH is PH 8.0-8.2, i know this is still acceptable but do you think I should slowly buffer up to 8.3-8.4? I never had PH issues until my PH probe went bad and used recipe 2 for 2 part to make the PH go down.


The 15K Hamilton is a lot different then the radium.....hope for more growth.


CAl 440 Alk 10

 

[santarosasalt]

Shane I had to completly shade my acans when I went mh and then slowly move them out to full light. It took about three weeks to do this.

 

[northbay-reefer]

IMO Acan doesn't like high Alk, I think if you gradually dial back cal to 420 and alk to 7-8 your tank will hit the sweet spot and will grow faster. Think of it like seasoning your food with salt, adding too little the food will taste bland, adding too much your food will taste too salty, adding just the right amount and it's delicious ... so having higher number on your cal and alk doesn't mean your corals will grow faster.

BTW, thanks a lot for the awesome seafood you left on my front door last night, they are getting cooked tonight :beer:

 

[shaneh]

Thanks, wish i knew that before....crap i'll moved them in the shade when i get home.

10-4 I’ll drop the cal and alk down…..I thought the more to use the more to grow. I like the salt analogy.

Welcome Tom, I forgot to pop the abalone out the shell for you. If you need me to explain how to do it give me a call, it can be a bit tricky. Check the gut sack for pearls. A guy in SR just found a 200CT+ worth a few thousand!!! I wasn't sure if you said you like urchins so I just gave you 2. I got 14. Another buddy at work took the others. The fish are blacks, capazoni and i think a greenling was in there. I recorded it all on my go-pro. payback for all the help you have given me over my reefing years. I'm going to do a tank video soon and post!

PS: check the blacks for worms...they have been known to carry parasites. they die if you cook them...you may not want to make sushi out of them. The others are fine raw. Fish taco are my fav.

 

[northbay-reefer]

The fishes will be fully cook so the worms will be protiens ...lol ... hope I don't see any lol ... I will bake them and top them with saute green onion and chopped peanuts, and then pick the meat out and wrap them in rice paper, lecture, cucumber, mint, basil and then dipp it in a fish sauce/vinegar/sugar/peper mix yummmm.

As for the abs, since I am going to eat it raw, I like to freeze it first, and then I can pop it open with my bare hand because after freezing it, the muscle will relax. If you see me wearing a big necklace with a huge pearl on it ... tackle me and make me sell it so we can split the money ...lol

 

[shaneh]

just FYI- If you put an abb in fresh water it will relax and then you can do the same without having to wait for it to freeze and thaw.

I use my pry bar to make it a quick humane death...but every part is eaten except the guts....I only eat it fresh.

Sounds like you are a great chef...let me know how the fish come out.

 

[northbay-reefer]

Those black cods are very tasty, but I will let you know.

Did you know that the japanese use the guts to make a sauce and they swear by it, only the most expensive sushi uses that sauce.

 

[shaneh]

If you would like the guts or someone who wants it i can save all the guts for you. I use them sometimes to "chum" for fish.....i just hope i do not attract a great white.....it's always in the back of my mind when I'm in the water. Especially when my wet suite makes me look like a seal.

Also do you use the cuttlings to make the soup? I trim all the black off the abb before I slice and eat. But i know some people make a soup out of the cuttlings. If you want them I can save the cuts and give them to you next time.

I burned the crap out of 3 acans.....I do not know if they will recover...=( when I got home they only had about 3/4 flesh on them. Hard lesson learned. They were on the bottom under the MH in a 31 inch deep tank. a few others were more to the side and they still looked a bit burned but not as bad so i moved them to shaded spot under rocks.

 

[santarosasalt]

Don't worry about the acans. They will come back. Just remember low light and low flow for a while.

 

[Grant W]

How are the rest of your recent aquisitions doing? When are you going to tell us some of the names and post some pics??

 

[northbay-reefer]

Shane, I've tried the guts b4 and its not that great you can slowly boil it ... but the cuttings you can use to make a nice saute in butter and garlic with a pinch of salt. The acan will come back, do you have an angel in your tank? some of them like LPS like acans.

Either he post pictures or we will have to do a tank tour meeting in september

 

[shaneh]

everything else is doing good so far.

I got a white SPS and I thought it was dead when I opened the bag but I still put it in the tank. good thing I did. last night I looked and the SPS tips were out in the moon light. I think it has light pink tips. either it is bleached or it is just white....

only a dwarf fire angle in the tank, never seen him pick on an acan.

I know a few names:
SUPERMAN MONTI
SUPERMAN chalice
COTTON CANDY
RAINBOW YUMA
STRAWBERRY PIE
RAINBOW MONTI
AUSSIE PLATE
captain America chalice
alien eye moti
hot pink monti, and i mean hot pink, it's pretty cool my new fav.
blue moti
superman monti
blue chalice
sunrise milli
blue eye favia
green favia
green slimer
sun coarl
min carpet anom
another non photo coral- looks like cross of sun and Duncan
about 5 different acans...burned 3 of them
white SPS..it's not dead...maybe bleached or just white. the tips are out at night so i do not think it is bleached.

I can't tell you guys all the names. I am working on doing a video, making the video is easy but getting it loaded is another story....I'm working on it.

 

[Grant W]

Tom the tank tour is a great idea, we can treat it like a pub crawl lol, plus it will make us lazy b@&$)$&s to clean our tanks

Thx for tha post shane. What did you win the lottery? The sunrise milli sounds interesting as well as several others, nice score.

 

[northbay-reefer]

Hmmm the superman and captain america chalice sound nice, keep them shaded and they will do just fine. I had the surise milli twice but for some reason I can't keep the damn thing alive, it is a beautiful milli though. Put the sunrise right next to the hot pink milli and you got a nice contrast.

 

[shaneh]

i have the sunrise at the top and it is looking good so far it is only about 1/2 inch frag.

2 acans did not make it, all the flesh was gone. the other had sand on it. my tangs are driving me nuts...if i walk pass the tank too fast they get scared and shoot sand everywhere when the go hide. I like the look of sugar fine but i'm tired of blowing sand off the coarls.

 

[GiantBen]

Sump setup

Sump setup

mispost