sturnmeyer

Thanks monkiboy, appreciate. Yes, I will be doing a full journal on this one and want to really pay attention to the scaping, have some ideas for something unique. Can you shoot me a pm on the fixtures? I'm interested. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hello all. Just joined back up here after a while away. I'm sure my question has been asked so apologize if I didn't find it in the search. I have a 120g 30x30x31 cube from glass cages that is FOWLR. I am debating on keeping it that way and getting a smaller tank to get back into doing a mixed reef again, or just migrating the 120g to a mixed reef. Previous reefs that I had ran successfully were lit with T5s and I had no issues, but this deep of a tank brings different questions into play. Now I know right now that MH will be what everyone says go with, and I agree. The problem is that on a budget MH don't help with the initial cost and the raised electric bill. (happy to see metrics disproving this!!!) With that said, I see my choices at T5 or LED. Anyone with a 30" deep tank running either of these? Thoughts? What are you using? Oh, I'd like to have the gamit of corals within, so I'm thinking of layering it up the water column with SPS near the top anyway. Thanks for any help. Scott

Thanks. I'm a professional photographer so I'm trying to get just the right settings. I'm actually not happy with them. It still doesn't give the real look, so I'm gonna keep working on it. Yes, he's a Humu Humu, but he's a good boy. He's been in my tank for about 6 years now and leaves everything alone, except for snails. The hermits and all have learned to stay hidden until night, even the peppermint shrimp have been in there a while without an issue. These are all 40 degree. I'd wanted the spotlight effect rather than the full box of light as zygote has mentioned before. Obviously the spread gets bigger the farther down you go. My tank is 31" deep so I'd say I have a spread of about 10 inches at the very bottom. But these things are certainly bright enough to grown SPS on the very bottom of the tank. I'm so eager to rework the rockscaping to be more attractive and then position these lights to get the full effect.

Yeah, it sure does...It is a new GlassCages cube...30x30x31....with Starphire on the front....thanks!!!

Yep ziptying today.

Yep ziptying today.

Okay, so I've been biting at the bit lately waiting for my Par38 LEDs from Nanotuners to come in and have been running my 120g Cube with just 18 strips of the Ecoxotic Stunners. But they came in TODAY!!!! Here is a pic of just the stunners... Here is a pic of the Stunners mounted to the canopy... Here are the Par38s in the standard track lighting system from Lowes....being able to adjust these things is amazing. And here is the tank this evening with Stunners and Par38s going strong. Little cloudy from some tank maintenance this afternoon so I'll get better ones. The look is amazing and it really is so close to the real thing. Photos can't do it justice, that's for sure. For anyone interested, I'm running the following for lighting: 4 403Nm Stunners 4 453Nm Stunners 6 453Nm/8000K Stunners 4 8000K Stunners 3 12000K Evil66 Par38s 3 20000K Evil 66 Par38s Next up is a full rework of the liverock with some bracing so I can utilize the Par38s and the track lighting to its fullest extent.

Its not so much the camera as it is the lens. Pretty much any SLR will do the shots you want, but you need a really good Macro lens to do the closeups. I have both Canon 50D and Canon 7D cameras, but I use the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM for my coral shots. This lens is probably one of the top three on the market for doing this type of photography. Hope that helps, Scott

I have one of the Honda generators and it is perfect. If the power goes out I simply run two extension cords to my two tanks and it will run everything, even lights but I cut them off to save the fuel. They are a bit pricy, but well worth every penny.

I've done the same thing and highly recommend it. You have control over how large you want them.

Cool...thanks everyone

Okay, I've heard feed these guys twice a day all the way up to four times a day. What do you all feed them and how often? Thanks, Scott

LOL

Okay, still sounds like a blown ballast, but I wouldn't worry for 2-3 days. I sometimes leave mine off intentionally for that period. Scott