Rare To You Swap - coral suggestions

Here are a few that I have and have pics of (sorry the pics are a little old and not of great quality:

Steve Elias Stag
Acro.jpg


AOG Zoas
ArmorofGodZoas.jpg


Montipora Vietmensis

misc_1.jpg


Tubs Blue Zoas

Corals134.jpg


Purple and Green Encrusting Monti ( in process of coloring up)

misc.jpg


Cap green with Blue Polyps

misc_2.jpg
 
<I have GOT to get some higher kelvin lamps to bring out our LPS colors better !!!!... I am going to order one set tomorrow from MD (IC 400W ballast and Ushio/BLV Nepturion 14K bulb) :(


Tom- A 14k Bulb? I thought you were a 10K guy all the way;). I made the switch a month ago and have never looked back.
 
Norman,

Any chance you slipped some of that aequituberculata into the swap? The piece of "True Leng Sy" looks way more like it then any of the other Leng Sy's I have seen including the one I had from your colony.
 
Tom- The blv 14k are not going to give you any more pop that your 10k. They are white at best. You need to try the reeflux
 
Tom - The Ushio 14k went yellow on me after 6 months. It might have been because of my HQI ballast. Just wanted to let you know;)
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9706946#post9706946 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Marko9
Tom- A 14k Bulb? I thought you were a 10K guy all the way;). I made the switch a month ago and have never looked back.

Switched from what to what Mark ? I am still trying to decide the best way to go with our tank. Ever since we scored all of those blastos, micros and zoas I have been thinking of changing the lighting. Ever since we moved some of our zoas out to the prop tank (lit by a T5 setup with some actinics in there) and the wife saw how the zoas popped, I have been looking to add some more in the 420nm - 450nm range to our main tank.


<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9707708#post9707708 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by prodman
Tom- The blv 14k are not going to give you any more pop that your 10k. They are white at best. You need to try the reeflux

Paul, I read on the zeo forum where you had one of the BLV 14k bulbs.. was it 250W or 400W ? Were you running an HQI, mag or E ballast ? and from what you are saying here, you aparently didn't like it much ?

From what I have read, the Ushio/BLV Nepturion 14k has a significant amount more in the 420 - 450 nm range than the XM, or a few others I spot checked. I did a spectral plot comparison between the various bulbs and when the plots are overlaid over each other, it is really easy to see which ones have more potential to make the corals pop and which ones don't. But that is all just text book crap... real world results often tell a different story. I will let you know how our story turns out :). Or maybe if it all works out, some new pictures from our tank will help tell the tale (ok, so now I am just being overly optimistic :)).

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9707729#post9707729 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Unarce
Tom - The Ushio 14k went yellow on me after 6 months. It might have been because of my HQI ballast. Just wanted to let you know;)

Karl, was your Ushio 14K the 250W or 400W version ? I see you reported using an HQI ballast, that is still odd for it to go yellow like that. Where did you get your Ushio 14K from ? Was it branded BLV or Ushio ?





We are looking to go from 250W XM 10k on an HQI ballast to 400W Ushio 14K on an Electronic ballast. Our photo period is currently 9 hours, we will likely be moving to 10 hours within the next mont or so.

Here are the numbers of our current lighting setup :

XM 10k 250W on HQI Ballast
PPFD: 182
CCT: 9921
Amps: 3.27
approx $$ per bulb per month @9 hours: $38
approx $$ per bulb per month @10 hours: $42

And the one we are thinking of moving to :

Ushio 14k 400W on E Ballast (Same as the BLV Nepturion 14K)
PPFD: 152
CCT: 13648
Amps: 3.77
approx $$ per bulb per month @9 hours: $43
approx $$ per bulb per month @10 hours: $48


Other bulbs we are considering :


Giesemann Coral (14.5k) 400W on E Ballast
PPFD: 157
CCT: 11354
Amps: 3.53
approx $$ per bulb per month @9 hours: $41
approx $$ per bulb per month @10 hours: $45


Right now Sanjay is using the 400W Giesemann Coral lamps on IC E ballasts over his tank that is almost the exact same dimensions as our (ours is 6" shorter in length and height than his) and he ran tests with a meter and says that pretty much all of his tank gets more than enough light for SPS. He has a pink milli 4: above the sand bed that has kept it's color and grown nicely (that was one real world example he used to support his findings with the meter)

Since our tank is 24" tall, versus his 30" tall tank, we should be able to enjoy similar results. Both he and I use LA III reflectors that are approx 9 1/2" off the waterline to the bottom of the reflector.



I am not sure why your Ushio went yellow like that, but it did start out pretty close to that more yellow spectrum, but the PAR looks to have been off the chart (along with the power consumption :))

Ushio 14k 400W on HQI (Same as the BLV Nepturion 14K)
PPFD: 214
CCT: 10026
Amps: 5.24
 
I purchased the 400W Ushio 14k which is the US version.

Sanjay's report on the European version (BLV) was definitely off the charts:) However, I don't know if the transferred over to the Ushio bulb. According to Ushio, it's the same exact bulb, but with a different base.

To be honest, when I first put in the Ushio 6 months ago, it didn't seem brighter than the 6 month old Radium I had on just a few minutes before.

Eric (FragFarmer) talked me into giving the Helios 20k a try last week. It's by far the bluest bulb I've ever used. It's a lot bluer than the Radium (400W on HQI). Probably similar to how my old tank looked under the 250W Phoenix. The color of the corals are amazing, but I'm not yet used to the 'midnight bowling' look.

I also picked up the AquaConnect, but I'll wait 6 months before I plug that in.
 
I was considering the Aquaconnect, but wanted to try the Ushio on the E Ballast first...

EDIT : I am a little discouraged to hear that about your experience with the Ushio. The more I hear the more I think that maybe you had received a defective bulb ? I would have gone with the Giesmann bulbs, if I could have found the 400W Coral bulb anywhere reasonable. I only found it at one E-tailer, apparently out of New Jersey, and they wanted $180 each, plus shipping, for the bulbs (*gasp*).

We are trying to balance looks, coverage and power consumption, which was what drive us to the 10Ks initially (they put out a ton of PAR for alot less $$.. the 250W 10K XMs are more par than most 400W 12K or above). We only ordered 1 400W ballast and lamp, just to try it out before investing any more money in lighting, so at least for a while the tank will look "odd", with one half being 10K and the other closer to 14k :). It will also give us the opportunity though to move some of the corals from one side to the other to see how they look and react under the Ushios.
 
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<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9706590#post9706590 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by prodman
It looks like it starting to get the vertical growth I love that coral
Yah, I really like that coral too. One of my favorites :)

But what do I know? I still like Idaho Grape :)


<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9707265#post9707265 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by seminolecpa
Norman,

Any chance you slipped some of that aequituberculata into the swap? The piece of "True Leng Sy" looks way more like it then any of the other Leng Sy's I have seen including the one I had from your colony.
The True Leng Sy is a darker less neon green, with whitish rather than green polyps. The LS I put in were kinda nodule-y though.

I don't think I put in the aequituberculata this time. But maybe I did by accident!

I did put my frag of Psychedelic Chalice into the swap by accident :( I had the one piece, and I was packing up so much stuff, and spaced out from not sleeping, that I grabbed it by mistake.

So some lucky person out there has a Psychedlic Chalice that was labeled "Pink Chalice" or something like that :)

Hope they are good with LPS!
 
just for grins, heres a pic of my leng sy cap. kinda blurry :( but thankful it survived my monti nudi experience.

16917leng4107.jpg
 
That's amazing, Tim! The frag I got from you displays none of that nodular growth. I don't have enough flow:(
 
mr. ugly, although the frag swap sounds enticing, i'm gonna pass this time around.

karl, you gotta blast just above it if you want the nodules :D
 
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