Timidfish
New member
I have a 56 tall tank measures at roughly 30 inches long, 18 inches wide and about 25 inches tall, I was given a few birdsnest to try out in my tank and want to make sure I have the lighting for it, I have a 24 inch wave point t5 4 bulb unit that I am running all ati bulbs in. I have the light about 3-4 inches off the water surface and the sps is at the very top of the rock work maybe 4-5 inches off the water surface, Now according to the gent that gave them to me, he said if I keep them up high in the tank and as close to the main part of the lighting, I.E. not out to the edges, I should be just fine.
I believe I am seeing some growth but am not sure and google fu isn't working for me this morning. I have some little white nubs that show up when the lights are off and then when the lights come on they are almost not able to be seen. I do have one spot that had some tissue loss from being transferred and my stoopid self grabbing the actual branch when I knocked it off a rock, but other then that I don't see any loss. I don't expect over night growth by any means on this, just not wanting to kill it from lack of lighting.
I also run a reef octopus bh-2000 skimmer on the tank as of around a month ago, that has been pulling all sorts of junk out of the tank, that I thought was a fairly clean system. My alk usually hangs out around 9.5 Cal is around 450 and Mag is around 1400, I say usually because I test it every other day right now since I am starting to do some sps things, I have 3 birdsnest and a monti cap. I run a ato system on the tank to keep the water level constant as I can and manually dose every other day when needed, I don't let the 3 main ones swing much at all though, say it gets cal to 440 I bring it back up to 450 and the same on the others.
I should have mentioned the lighting is a 96 watt light, the tank is around 6-7 months old now and is mainly lps dominant and those are all doing quite well.
Now I know I said it was a light question and added the other stuff, but I wanted to give you everything I could for the answer to be as good of one as I could get.
If this matters I run 2 blue plus a coral and purple plus bulb. Thank you again. I was given the birdsnest to try out to see what happens, so hopefully I do have some growth happening as I believe I do.
I believe I am seeing some growth but am not sure and google fu isn't working for me this morning. I have some little white nubs that show up when the lights are off and then when the lights come on they are almost not able to be seen. I do have one spot that had some tissue loss from being transferred and my stoopid self grabbing the actual branch when I knocked it off a rock, but other then that I don't see any loss. I don't expect over night growth by any means on this, just not wanting to kill it from lack of lighting.
I also run a reef octopus bh-2000 skimmer on the tank as of around a month ago, that has been pulling all sorts of junk out of the tank, that I thought was a fairly clean system. My alk usually hangs out around 9.5 Cal is around 450 and Mag is around 1400, I say usually because I test it every other day right now since I am starting to do some sps things, I have 3 birdsnest and a monti cap. I run a ato system on the tank to keep the water level constant as I can and manually dose every other day when needed, I don't let the 3 main ones swing much at all though, say it gets cal to 440 I bring it back up to 450 and the same on the others.
I should have mentioned the lighting is a 96 watt light, the tank is around 6-7 months old now and is mainly lps dominant and those are all doing quite well.
Now I know I said it was a light question and added the other stuff, but I wanted to give you everything I could for the answer to be as good of one as I could get.
If this matters I run 2 blue plus a coral and purple plus bulb. Thank you again. I was given the birdsnest to try out to see what happens, so hopefully I do have some growth happening as I believe I do.
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