TDB's 320 SPS Rebuild

When one of you guys shouts me the airfare to the US i am going to add your display to Greg's on my dive in and roll over the acros self fragging attacks - anything that sticks to my naked body is mine............ i'll be an acro porcupine when i get out of your tank Tom :dance:

tdb320reef said:
As far as posting some of my other ideas I am very careful. I have received no less than 10 PMs from PPL complaining that they went with leds because of me and were disappointed that I went with MH. Another guy lost his tank to BPs and told me he followed one of my writings. For a while and time to time I dose sodium nitrate. I am careful to say that is the secret recipe but we know if over done one can lose their tank.
Click to expand...

Tell them to go jump, what a joke trying to blame you or anyone else for their own lack of reef keeping abilities. Never ceases to amaze me how many people want to shortcut the long years of trial and error that results in a display such as yours. Feel free to direct any future whiners to my PM box for a dose of brutal truth........:hammer:
 
tdb320reef said:
As far as posting some of my other ideas I am very careful. I have received no less than 10 PMs from PPL complaining that they went with leds because of me and were disappointed that I went with MH. Another guy lost his tank to BPs and told me he followed one of my writings. For a while and time to time I dose sodium nitrate. I am careful to say that is the secret recipe but we know if over done one can lose their tank.
Click to expand...

I know where you are coming from! I see so many people basically asking not for advice but for someone to make decisions for them. There is also an element of wanting a guarantee that if they do one thing, they will get a specific result.

Don't let that stop you from posting you're experiences. The combination of all the various threads and their anecdotes can eventually lead to some truth. For example, I think its very interesting that your blue lighting approach recently is coloring up things the way that they are. Someday hopefully there will be a good handle on which lights have which effects. From what I can tell from your thread and many others, all blue does not seem to harm the corals in any way and certainly seems to have improved color.

One thing I'm curious about is regarding blue colored Acros under this lighting. Would you hazard an opinion on whether their color is a better or more intense blue under the blue lighting or under the whiter mix when the halides were on? I have heard anecdotally that a whiter mix results in better blues for example. Thanks for posting, and keep it up!
 
Have to agree with Andrew and Matt...

Thanks for the detailed response! Lightroom seems to be a very useful photo tool.. I have it but haven't used it to edit reef shots yet.. Gotta give it a try.
Unfortunately, there will always be people with a limited grasp of the complexities of a reef who will latch onto one thing as the savior of their tank. Heck, I am guilty of being that person on occasion (actually, hopefully HAVE BEEN guilty but no longer will be..)
But regardless of what you do in your reef to make it so damn nice, it's your prerogative as to wether you want to post your husbandry practices or not but your decision shouldn't be affected by how someone may take that advice and use it..
We all have to be responsible adults and reef keepers and take responsibility for the actions we take in our reefs.
If I decide to add milk and honey to my tank and my tank crashes, I can't blame the person who is having success doing it, for my failure.. That's crazy..
Anyways.. Sorry for the rant!
Love your tank!
Question.. Do you find blue plus to be more effective at colour production/enhancement than true actinic?
By the way, don't let that biggles near your tank! Those crazy Aussies ALWAYS have a koala in their suitcase and everybody knows that koalas simply can NOT handle themselves around a super nice reef. And everybody knows that Andrew has no control over Kevin...
 
reefmutt said:
Have to agree with Andrew and Matt...

Thanks for the detailed response! Lightroom seems to be a very useful photo tool.. I have it but haven't used it to edit reef shots yet.. Gotta give it a try.
Unfortunately, there will always be people with a limited grasp of the complexities of a reef who will latch onto one thing as the savior of their tank. Heck, I am guilty of being that person on occasion (actually, hopefully HAVE BEEN guilty but no longer will be..)
But regardless of what you do in your reef to make it so damn nice, it's your prerogative as to weather you want to post your husbandry practices or not but your decision shouldn't be affected by how someone may take that advice and use it..
We all have to be responsible adults and reef keepers and take responsibility for the actions we take in our reefs.
If I decide to add milk and honey to my tank and my tank crashes, I can't blame the person who is having success doing it, for my failure.. That's crazy..
Anyways.. Sorry for the rant!
Love your tank!
Question.. Do you find blue plus to be more effective at colour production/enhancement than true actinic?
By the way, don't let that biggles near your tank! Those crazy Aussies ALWAYS have a koala in their suitcase and everybody knows that koalas simply can NOT handle themselves around a super nice reef. And everybody knows that Andrew has no control over Kevin...
Click to expand...

Getting back into T5’s is kind of a new experience as I haven’t used them since 2010 and that with a mixed reef with mostly softies.
I went on a bulb buying spree trying coral plus, actinic, Aqua special and purple plus. Also running T5’s with Leds is a new concept for me. With all of the combos that I have tried I keep going back to T5 blue +.

It takes some time to get use to all of the blue but the corals are responding better than expected. Previous I would run 4 250 W MH for 8 hours which along with the chiller draws about 16 amps.

With T5 and Led my chiller will only pop on a couple times. These two only draw 10 amps together. To keep the corals happy I extended the photo period to 10 to 12 hours.

The corals responded very positively, the colors got a tad lighter enhancing the neon yellow and reds, yellow, green, and orange look great. What doesn’t look great are purples and blues. With that said even though the corals don’t reflect their colors they are still extremely healthy and growing well.

Another thing that I think that is beneficial is the spread and how I have the t’5 situated on the edges of the light rack with the reflectors pointing to the center of the tank. The coral is enveloped front and back with quality light vs the Very bright MH directly above.

So in conclusion, what I am seeing are very healthy corals responding and showing phenomenal colors under T5/LED combo with Blue + and Royal Blue. Some Millie’s that looked bleached under the MH are getting color back on top and the coral flesh looks very healthy under a microscope. I think this is a very straight forward configuration that you cannot grow wrong with to grow and color coral. The only downfall is getting full spectrum when you’re right in front of the tank enjoying it on your downtime. For this reason you need some kind of Coral Plus + bulb or 14-20K MH bulb.
 
There was a recent set of articles on Advanced Aquarist on coral colors, this one discusses red fluorescent in millis.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/12/corals

I find it fascinating that even with all blue+ lighting the pinks and reds in this tank are so vivid. Blue+ has a very narrow peak around 550-560 and a smaller peak just below 600.That must be just enough to do it, plus there's no white light to mask the colors from our eyes.

It will be very interesting to see how the colors change when the halides are on for a few hours.
 
tdb320reef said:
As far as posting some of my other ideas I am very careful. I have received no less than 10 PMs from PPL complaining that they went with leds because of me and were disappointed that I went with MH. Another guy lost his tank to BPs and told me he followed one of my writings. For a while and time to time I dose sodium nitrate. I am careful to say that is the secret recipe but we know if over done one can lose their tank.
Click to expand...
What??? That is just downright silly. If I choose to follow what another reefkeeper is doing and lose my corals it is my own damn fault.

tdb320reef said:
I have a more formal write up of everything I am keeping notes on and finding success and will send them to you after I dig it up.
Click to expand...

Please share with us. There is no magic potion...but there are ways to achieve success. Its good to share our successes; thats the only way the hobby will progress.

If someone chooses to follow something and messes up their tank they cant blame anyone other than themself.
 
Blues & Purples are naturally going to look more washed out/muted under higher Kelvin lighting ...

If anyone has dived below the 60ft-90ft recreational limit, they can attest to this change in lighting results.

It's a naturally accusing phenomenon, which is why many of the coral species/specimens are still developing/responding well; despite the decrease in "some" aquarists visual preferences ... Unfortunately, many choose their taste in coloration over the health and productivity of the amazing species we keep.
 
Tdb 320 reef

Tdb 320 reef

Amazing tank. I am also going with led and a t5 combo two 80 watt ati blue + running ten hours a day with my LEDs


I have seen encrusting of cord and doubling in size in a little over a month.

I use reef crystals what do you consider to be a high quality ?
 
RxMike said:
Amazing tank. I am also going with led and a t5 combo two 80 watt ati blue + running ten hours a day with my LEDs





I have seen encrusting of cord and doubling in size in a little over a month.



I use reef crystals what do you consider to be a high quality ?
Click to expand...


I like red sea blue bucket
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

cilyjr
Cilyjr 320 gallon on the central coast
Replies
12
Views
524
rogerwilco357
rogerwilco357
Easygoing1
PFO Aquatics SOLARIS Rebuild And Questions
Replies
8
Views
400
oreo57
oreo57
NancyT3
Help with Snail Anxiety
Replies
8
Views
393
CharleyDavis
C
NancyT3
Display tank - algae bloom - (19 wk old 140 gal)
Replies
12
Views
441
CharleyDavis
C
D
T5 light order
Replies
5
Views
373
griss
griss
Back
Top