A few coral pictures

Upgrading Biopellet Reactor

I have been running the Ecoback Biopellets for about two months now. It has been able to keep my phosphates about where they were when I ran GFO, but now dropped it down any less. With the GFO, I was at .03-.04, and that is where I am at now on the Hanna meter. The directions on the biopellets say for a tank my size, I need 750ml or more. I have about 180g total water volume, and it states 250ml per 50g. I started with 500ml as not to overdo it, but have realized if I want to drop my phophates even further, I will need to bump up to the recommended dosing. With that being said, I was running the pellets in a Phosban 150 reactor, and it would not hold another 250ml and still be able to tumble. So I got a NextReef SMR1, made specifically for biopellets. It is nice. It has blue clear acrylic to keep algae and coralline from growing in it from light exposure. It also has 5/8" tubing and fittings for more flow to better tumble the pellets. No sponges to get clogged, already equipped with plastic mesh plates to keep the pellets in. I hooked it up lasts night and it seems to work great. Will check back in a few weeks and see what my PO4 is after the bacteria has had time to develop from the new media being added.

I am trying my 250w's again since I already have all the equipment and liked the growth under them. To solve the heat and airflow issues, the spider type reflectors open things up a bit, and the bulbs aren't as close to the water as when in the Lumenarcs. I also added a big fan to the sump that moves alot of air. I have read that the best way to mount retro halide reflectors is perpendicular to the front glass, but I mounted them parallel to get more airflow down along through them. My tank is 2' front to back, so I doubt it matters on my dimensions anyways. (click on pictures for closer view)

Lights as is now: (Radium 250w SE, in Reef Optix 2 reflectors)

 

 The new fan:

 

Newest Front Tank Shot:

Coral can be resilient

A SPS coral fell over onto my scoly a few weeks ago and damaged the flesh down to the skeleton. It stayed shrunken up for days. A few weeks later, it was fuller and bigger than it had ever been. Click on the pictures for a larger view:

Zoster (Pyramid) Butterfly

A few days ago I added a Pyramid Butterfly to my reef. He is in the center of the picture. Click on the picture for a larger view:

Going back to my old lighting

Well, I have decided to go back to my 150w Hamilton Reefstar pendants. I did get more growth with the 250w bulbs and LumenArc reflectors, but the negatives were not worth it to me. I have a short canopy and short tank, so the 250w's were really heating up the water, even with fans blowing in and air blowing out into the attic. I ended up staggering my lighting to keep the water cooled down, and that was even with the A/C running at 72* in that room. I did not like my lighting being staggering on/off, and my tank getting up towards 82*. With the 150w's, I could keep the tank around 79*, without having to keep the ambient room temp cooled down. Plus the LumenArcs took up so much room in the canopy, there was no room for VHOs to run before and after my halides were on. So I basically had light in my tank for 6-8 hours, then it was dark the rest of the day. With the 150's, I could run then for 8+ hours and have supplemental lighting to let me see the tank when the halides were off. All in all, the cons outweighed the pros of my experiment going the higher lighting for my SPS tank. I did well with 150w MH before, so there should be no problem now. My tank is only 18" deep so there is no need for blasting light. I can lower my pendants closer to the water if I want a little more par, as I have them on a chain system as shown below. i have now lower them down about 4-6" closer than they were before.

3rd and last LumenArc pendant installed

About a week or so ago, I got my last Lumenarc pendant installed, and Radium bulb added. I have been acclimating the tnak to the new lighting with eggcrate light diffuser and screen. Every week I take a piece of screen off, to let more and more light in each week, so as not to bleach the coral with the new higher lighting. Its been going well so far. An update on my biopellets. They have been running for about 4 weeks now. I am having to scrape algae off my glass alot less now, from every 2 days,down to about once a week. Also my phosphates are down to .03 wiht no refugium and no GFO running.

I may redo my 'Aquascape'

Seeing some recent pictures of people tanks on the Reef Central website, I am inspired to redo my aquascape. Its not that I don't like mine, but I think it could be much better. I have alot of room in my tank, so I could make a much better structure than rock stacked along the back wall of the tank. I would like to break up the 'wall' into sections.  Here are a couple of examples that I think look great: (you can click on the pictures for a larger view)

Tank Build Thread

If anyone would like to see my tank as it started from scratch, here is a link to the thread on Reef Central.

OneReef's 150g Tank Build

2nd LumenArc reflector installed

I now have my second LumenArc reflector installed. I am now just waiting on getting a Radium bulb to put the third reflector in.

I have added a 2nd Lumenarc, I still have to add the 3rd reflector and bulb. Everything is much brighter! I have a few sheets of screen and eggcrate up right now to acclimate. Par has drastically changed.
Here two Par Meter readings, one a 250w SE Radium 20K bulb in a Lumenarc reflector, on 250w Hamilton magnetic M80 ballast. The other is a 150w DE Phoenix 14K in a Hamilton Reefstar pendant (hammertone finish), on a IceCap 150w electronic ballast. Both were taken at the same distance, at the waters surface. Can you guess which is which?? LOL

Adding a filter sock

I used to run filter socks all the time on the drain line into my sump when I first started this hobby on my old smaller tanks. For about the last year I have been going without them. There are pros and cons to both. Running with them, it cleans the water column more which gives you that crystal clear water look, and catches a lot of debris and junk that would land elsewhere in your sump or tank. It helps keep everything clean. The cons to running it that you have to change them every few days, and they also can catch copepods and amphipods that live within the tank that feed your fish and ecosystem. But, if you have a lot of live rock in your tank, having pods should be no problem. Today I decided to start running one again just to see if I noticed any positive changes by running it. Wow, I could not believe how crystal clear the water got in about 2 minutes. No particles floating around, no micro bubbles, it looks just like pure crystal clear water...... Nice to see that again...... Will keep you updated if there are any changes within the tank of the corals coloration or growth rate.

Upgrading canopy fans

With me upgrading from 150w halides to 250w, I wanted to cool off my interior canopy a bit more. I just switched out my old SilenX fans for a little more airflow. I was using the 72cfm @ 14db, and just changed them out to 90cfm @ 18db. I can feel more air being pulled, and can't even tell an increase in noise.
Below are pictures, one is a fan on the back of my canopy, venting the canopy air into the attic through the wall.

Changing to a new salt brand

I have decided to abandon the Oceanic Salt that I have been using since my 150g tank has been set up. I have found that the calcium levels are just too high for my tastes. It is staying up at around 460-470ppm, even with my calcium reactor turned down to bare minimum drip and bubble count. Oceanic is known to have high calcium levels, so to bring it down I am switching to a new salt that has come onto the market in the last year. It is Seachems AquaVitro Salinity. The unique thing about their salt is that they test the parameters of every batch and print them right on the back label of the bucket. You can see the label in the pictures. I will report back after I do my first water change with  the new salt.

Frag Swap

We had our yearly coral frag swap in Memphis today, which went really well. I sold alot of my corals and old equipment, and made enough money to install a whole new lighting system on my tank. Stay tuned for pictures and updates of my lighting changes!

Trying to go ULNS

ULNS stands for Ultra Low Nutrient System. Phosphates and Nitrates are around 0, and allow the sensitive SPS coral to thrive and get beautiful coloration. The tricky part of achieving this is adding a carbon source and for bacteria to thrive and consume all of these nutrients. It can leave you tank starved for food/supplement, so additive are necessary. There are several ways of achieving this. One  is the Zeovit system, which is far more complicated than I want to delve into. It involves daily additives and multiple steps and procedure that consumer mucho time IMO. Another way that has become popular is to add vodka to your tank. Yes, that's right, vodka. The vodka is a carbon source to fuel the bacteria in the tank to take it down the ULNS. But this must be dosed carefully as not to overdose, and also must be done daily. A proficient protein skimmer is needed to skim out all the excess waste from doing all of these systems. The newest way, and the way I have currently chosen to test out, is with Biopellets. I chose Warner Marine EcoBak pellets. The beauty of this way, is that you simply add the pellets to a fluidized reactor and hand it on your sump, and leave it alone. The pellets last about 6 months. The pellets with help the bacteria to colonize and feed them. You have to do nothing except make sure your skimmer is working properly.

Here are some pictures of my setup:

 Mesh screen that I cut to keep pellets in:

 Rinsing the pellets first in freshwater:

 The Product:

 Here is a representative picture of what I am trying to achieve. This picture was taken from Reef Central from member "sanababit":

Are you curious what powers my reef?

New SPS Frag

I was finally able to get a frag of an SPS coral that I have been wanting for awhile. It is a Pink Lemonade. It is a yellow/lime coral with pink polyps. Very nice when it grows out into a colony.



















Here is a nice little colony this is in someone elses tank:

Lighting Change

I made a change in my lighting today. I have been using 3x150w halides with Phoenix 14k bulbs. Since I am progressing my tank to be exclusively SPS, I am starting to upgrade my lighting. I started with the center light first. I added a Lumenarc Mini pendant, and am using a Radium 20K 250w bulb.


Here are a few pictures. In the front tank shot, you can see how much brighter it is in the middle where I made the change.