OneReef's 120g DreamReef
- Thread starter OneReef
- Start date
jlpropst00
New member
Jay, one of the first things I did when I got on this forum for the first time was read your thread all the way through. I have to say I learned a lot and you gave me a ton of ideas. I've never seen your tank in person but I feel like I know it pretty well (not to sound creepy or stalkerish). Anyway, keep up the good work and I hope everything pulls through.
cateyes
New member
OneReef
Reef Guru
Tonight I tossed a huge monti spongodes, 2 blue tort colonies, an ORA Verde, an ORA Purple Plasma, a tyree blue polyp monti, an green and pink monti, a Cali tort, and a Hawkins Echinata out into the woods behind my house. Some chalices may soon follow. Tanks starting to look bare. I may be starting over. On a positive note, an SPS coral I got from Richard today to test out the water seems to be doing good with good polyp extension, so my tank may be stable now, but the existing coral may just not be able to pull through whatever shock it took a few days ago.
OneReef
Reef Guru
The Great Tank Crash of 2012:
I feel fortunate to have made it 6-7 years in the reef hobby with no major incidents. I've never had a crash, I've never even had hair algae. I think the biggest issue I've ever had is diatom on the sand, or spots of cyano. But, as we are all human, we are going to err at some point. When I think of the things that I did leading up to the disaster, it could have been a number of things. I'll never know, it could have been a combination of these: I treated Flatworm Exit in my tank, did a big water change while changing salt brands (AquaVitro Salinity to Instant Ocean) I turned off my calcium reactor all week which dropped my alk by 4 points, I moved some rocks and stirred up some sand, took my carbon reactor offline, and I squirted Vitamin C into my tank. I don't think any one of theses within itself would have caused a crash, but maybe a combination of all of it..... I still am not sure what my error was, but nevertheless, I am starting over.
No more tears, I'm actually kinda excited to start my new reef, as this go round I am going to carefully select each SPS coral that I feel is unique or beautiful, and not just add a bunch of coral to fill up my tank. I'll add little by little. I am not going to keep as many chalices as I had last time, I think I just tossed out 25 of them. I will have a few, but I am going to focus more on all SPS this time. I'm sure Ill grab the LPS that catches my eye from time to time, and I'll always like colorful zoas. I had a few LPS survive the crash, a scoly, a bi-color war coral, my duncans, a big acan and a small pink hammer. The chalices and the SPS (which were the bulk of my tank) all were goners. All of my fish were fine and act as if nothing ever happened.
Here are a few parting shots to grieve and start the healing process. I think I went through all the stages: confusion, denial, anger, grief, and acceptance.
I feel fortunate to have made it 6-7 years in the reef hobby with no major incidents. I've never had a crash, I've never even had hair algae. I think the biggest issue I've ever had is diatom on the sand, or spots of cyano. But, as we are all human, we are going to err at some point. When I think of the things that I did leading up to the disaster, it could have been a number of things. I'll never know, it could have been a combination of these: I treated Flatworm Exit in my tank, did a big water change while changing salt brands (AquaVitro Salinity to Instant Ocean) I turned off my calcium reactor all week which dropped my alk by 4 points, I moved some rocks and stirred up some sand, took my carbon reactor offline, and I squirted Vitamin C into my tank. I don't think any one of theses within itself would have caused a crash, but maybe a combination of all of it..... I still am not sure what my error was, but nevertheless, I am starting over.
No more tears, I'm actually kinda excited to start my new reef, as this go round I am going to carefully select each SPS coral that I feel is unique or beautiful, and not just add a bunch of coral to fill up my tank. I'll add little by little. I am not going to keep as many chalices as I had last time, I think I just tossed out 25 of them. I will have a few, but I am going to focus more on all SPS this time. I'm sure Ill grab the LPS that catches my eye from time to time, and I'll always like colorful zoas. I had a few LPS survive the crash, a scoly, a bi-color war coral, my duncans, a big acan and a small pink hammer. The chalices and the SPS (which were the bulk of my tank) all were goners. All of my fish were fine and act as if nothing ever happened.
Here are a few parting shots to grieve and start the healing process. I think I went through all the stages: confusion, denial, anger, grief, and acceptance.
Last edited:
OneReef
Reef Guru
Reef Tank Redux Part II 2012:
I am starting my reef tank over again. I have changed out all the water, and vacuumed out alot of the sand to replace. I am going to leave my rockwork alone, as I really like it. My fish are all fine, so I will not be adding any fish. Going forward, I will probably just be adding SPS and maybe a few chalices. I'm going to little by little add SPS pieces that I think are unique and not add stuff just to fill in my tank. I hope to find some good pieces at our upcoming frag swap, and at MACNA.
I just added a couple of test pieces of SPS, (a birdsnest and a pink mille). Both are looking great and have full polyp extension. I think my tank is good and stable now, all parameters are normal. I'll watch them for a few weeks before I do anything else, just to be on the safe side.
Here is a picture of the beginning of my new SPS reef:
I am starting my reef tank over again. I have changed out all the water, and vacuumed out alot of the sand to replace. I am going to leave my rockwork alone, as I really like it. My fish are all fine, so I will not be adding any fish. Going forward, I will probably just be adding SPS and maybe a few chalices. I'm going to little by little add SPS pieces that I think are unique and not add stuff just to fill in my tank. I hope to find some good pieces at our upcoming frag swap, and at MACNA.
I just added a couple of test pieces of SPS, (a birdsnest and a pink mille). Both are looking great and have full polyp extension. I think my tank is good and stable now, all parameters are normal. I'll watch them for a few weeks before I do anything else, just to be on the safe side.
Here is a picture of the beginning of my new SPS reef:
OneReef
Reef Guru
While I am restarting my 120g after the crash, I have gone back and read my old build threads from my old tanks, just to see what I have changed over the years and also to give me some motivation. I look back at my 150g from a couple of years ago, and really wish I had kept it (got out of hobby for almost a year for a break)....
Here is a look back over the last 7 years.....
24g Nano Reef:
3g Pico Reef:
75g Reef:
150g Reef (Should have kept this one!):
120g Reef:
Here is a look back over the last 7 years.....
24g Nano Reef:
3g Pico Reef:
75g Reef:
150g Reef (Should have kept this one!):
120g Reef:
OneReef
Reef Guru
Looking back at the pictures of my old 75g and my old 150g, compared to my current 120g, all the coral look more colorful and had much faster growth in the old tanks under metal halides. I am seriously thinking of changing back, but I don't know yet....... While I have almost no coral after the crash, now would be the time to change so i wouldn't have to acclimate. If it weren't for the heat and humidity of the halides, I'd do it right now. But I like the cooler LEDs for evaporation and cooler temps. It's a quandry.....
OneReef
Reef Guru
New Lighting:
After much debate, looking back at old pictures of past tanks, and new pictures of my existing tank, researching threads and driving myself crazy, I have decided to go back to metal halides. After much thought, I know from past experience that I get excellent growth and color out of metal halide for SPS. LED's are great, and I may go back to them one day in the future, maybe even the near future, who knows, ha.
I love the adjustability of LEDs, the energy efficiency and the low heat. Low heat is my main love of them. Sometime I think too much adjustability can be a hindrance, because you never know if you settings for color or intensity or duration is evenly matched, or even close to being the optimal settings for best coloration or growth of your coral. And you may be changing the settings often, leading to inconsistency for your corals. With halides, duration (photoperiod) is your only concern (as far as settings). The downside of 2x250w halides in my canopy is heat buildup and water temperature. Fortunately, we are nearing the end of summer. But it is something I will have to keep an eye on. I have never liked my tank going higher than 82*, due to it not giving me much wiggle room if something went wrong. On the plus side, there is plenty of room in my canopy for fans, as well as me having a tall canopy (so the bulbs aren't right down on the water). I can also add a fan to my sump to cool its water. The last thing I want is for our living room to be humid or hot. That would lead me to going back to LEDs.
To be fair, I never did utilize my LEDs to their max potential. I never got above 60-65% intensity, which I am sure limited growth and possibly coloration. They are so strong that any sizable % increase can cause coral to lose color, or pale, which I saw when increasing 5-10% at a time. I decided that I probably needed to only go up about 1-2% per week to get up to 80-90% or more. I didn't I have the time nor patience for more experimenting. Since I lost all my SPS in my tank crash (which I now believe to be an alk issue), I wanted to get my lighting permanently set, before adding more SPS and coral, so that I wasn't constantly changing their lighting while experimenting.
I had some store credit at an online reef store, so I used that to buy my new halide equipment. I sold my AI Sol LEDs online and got a fair price I feel. I went with Lumatek adjustable wattage/dimmable ballasts, Reef Optix 2 reflectors, and Radium 250w 20K bulbs. The nice thing about the ballasts is that it has settings for 150w, 175w , 250w, and 250w HQI if I ever decide to use less intense bulbs. I am currently running the Radiums at 250w HQI.
Here are a few pictures:
In this picture, my fish are looking up at the lights saying "What the heck is that??":
After much debate, looking back at old pictures of past tanks, and new pictures of my existing tank, researching threads and driving myself crazy, I have decided to go back to metal halides. After much thought, I know from past experience that I get excellent growth and color out of metal halide for SPS. LED's are great, and I may go back to them one day in the future, maybe even the near future, who knows, ha.
I love the adjustability of LEDs, the energy efficiency and the low heat. Low heat is my main love of them. Sometime I think too much adjustability can be a hindrance, because you never know if you settings for color or intensity or duration is evenly matched, or even close to being the optimal settings for best coloration or growth of your coral. And you may be changing the settings often, leading to inconsistency for your corals. With halides, duration (photoperiod) is your only concern (as far as settings). The downside of 2x250w halides in my canopy is heat buildup and water temperature. Fortunately, we are nearing the end of summer. But it is something I will have to keep an eye on. I have never liked my tank going higher than 82*, due to it not giving me much wiggle room if something went wrong. On the plus side, there is plenty of room in my canopy for fans, as well as me having a tall canopy (so the bulbs aren't right down on the water). I can also add a fan to my sump to cool its water. The last thing I want is for our living room to be humid or hot. That would lead me to going back to LEDs.
To be fair, I never did utilize my LEDs to their max potential. I never got above 60-65% intensity, which I am sure limited growth and possibly coloration. They are so strong that any sizable % increase can cause coral to lose color, or pale, which I saw when increasing 5-10% at a time. I decided that I probably needed to only go up about 1-2% per week to get up to 80-90% or more. I didn't I have the time nor patience for more experimenting. Since I lost all my SPS in my tank crash (which I now believe to be an alk issue), I wanted to get my lighting permanently set, before adding more SPS and coral, so that I wasn't constantly changing their lighting while experimenting.
I had some store credit at an online reef store, so I used that to buy my new halide equipment. I sold my AI Sol LEDs online and got a fair price I feel. I went with Lumatek adjustable wattage/dimmable ballasts, Reef Optix 2 reflectors, and Radium 250w 20K bulbs. The nice thing about the ballasts is that it has settings for 150w, 175w , 250w, and 250w HQI if I ever decide to use less intense bulbs. I am currently running the Radiums at 250w HQI.
Here are a few pictures:
In this picture, my fish are looking up at the lights saying "What the heck is that??":
OneReef
Reef Guru
Besides adding fans to the canopy and sump, the back of my canopy is open, which will help ventilate it. While I had the canopy off of the tank replacing the lights, I took that time to use a hole saw to cut a 4" hole in the middle of the top of the canopy. I am going to mount a 4 3/4" computer fan with high cfm under the hole, blowing air out the top.
OneReef
Reef Guru
I might have to go back and revisit or revamp my shadowbox background. Proof that the light spread on the halide reflectors is much better than the LED spread: Under the LEDs, the background looked great (to me). Under the halides, it kind of gets washed out, due to more light shining on the back wall. I never saw that with the LEDs, even with them at 100%. I think that shows me that the LEDs are more concentrated and spotlight type, giving really high par directly under them, but you lose PAR as you move away from beneath the fixture. I confirmed that with the PAR meter when I has my LEDs.... Just more food for thought.....
Reef264
Where's The Reef?
Jay,
"Your best days come from your worst days" -Who knows
In all the bad, Im Glad to see your back going again.
I don't think you'll see too much of a heat issue with the Halides.My 250's above my tank don't really affect the temp too much, it raises about 1 degree in the day with no cooling.With my Sump fan running, I see no temperature change at all.Evaporation sucks...About a gallon or so a day.I see you went with Radiums, any particular reason for this?
"Your best days come from your worst days" -Who knows
In all the bad, Im Glad to see your back going again.
I don't think you'll see too much of a heat issue with the Halides.My 250's above my tank don't really affect the temp too much, it raises about 1 degree in the day with no cooling.With my Sump fan running, I see no temperature change at all.Evaporation sucks...About a gallon or so a day.I see you went with Radiums, any particular reason for this?
BassandReef
Member
Hey Jay. I'm no pro but my calc reactor froze for a week and my alk went from 8 to 5.6 during that time. I lost all but two SPS and even a hammer. That alk is dangerous when it changes so quickly. I brought the alk back up slowly using baked baking soda and RO. It fixed my ph and one of my SPS is recovering. My birdsnest are toast and I tossed them. I just got my first SPS order from Harry and they look good. I am concerned about my calc reactor but I setup email alerts on my Reef Angel controller to email me when the ph in the reactor reaches 7.0. I really need a better regulator on my CO2 tank as I can never get the bubble count right after the solenoid stops and starts again. Once the solenoid opens, I get fizzing bubbles instead of full bubbles. I have to lightly adjust the knob for bubbles to show. I have generally had low alk due to my reactor. I keep a milk carton with baking soda and RO water made up to maintain my alk if it drops. Low alk caused my ph to stay under 8.0. Now that my alk is better, my ph is between 8.0 and 8.1. My mg is high at 1500 but I never dosed it. I attribute that to the low alk. How was your reactor set when you got high alk? What regulator do you recommend?
