dandy7200

I have a extra nano culture disk if you want it. I am building one right now as well so it would be cool to compare notes. I am trying to work on a way to avoid splitting the culture in the traditional way. Basically I would take a little and feed a little on a daily basis. Just like sourdough . Dan

I could not agree with you more...........

Here are the pics of from when I slotted the tank and built mine. This last one is kind of crappy because the tank was cycling but, you get the idea....no stinkin overflow box in my tank Dan

I am, that's why I think this is a pretty cool idea.

Well your in the right hood. Have fun!

All the reefers are supposed to be going the other way for MACNA. Are you lost? To answer your question though: What kind of bars aren't in Adams Morgan?

Yeah Chris, I kind of want it all too. The blue+ is another option. Provides a little more PAR than the Actinic white. I do want the blue look but, I also want growth. All corals I have put in the tank are doing well, so I am thinking about adding some nicer pieces. I don't mind paying the $ for a LE frag but have a hard time coughing up the dough for an entire colony. I've got time to wait and watch the coral grow just not the heart to watch it sit and not grow under 20k at 150HQIw. While it may look better my goal is to bring up some nice colonies from frags in this tank so when I set up the biggun next year or so it won't cost me an arm and a leg to keep it from appearing bare. I do however need a little blue to get that warm and fuzzy feeling .

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OK, I have been thinking for several weeks about this and done enough research to make my head hurt. Heres where I am at: Currently run a Outer Orbit HQI 150w 10k bulb and 2ea 55w pc dual actinics. Tank is a 54 corner. Water conditions as of this evening: Sal: 1.025 Ph: 8.20 No3: 0 No2: 0 Po4: 0 - .01 (hard to tell) Nh3: 0 Alk: 10 dkh Ca: 400 Mg: 1280 Temp: 80.4 I can provide any additional tank info as needed. Currently I keep SPS in the middle, and LPS at the bottom. Everything has good growth. The PAR is right around 50ish PPFD according to input data but, I have not verified this with a real test. The first post I made about this I stated that I wanted more color in the corals. The reality of the situation is the color I get in my sps is nice. I have had a Purple tip staghorn that I picked up a little browned out from a recent mini crash recolor very nice. Also I recieved a bottlebrush acro that looked great in the sps tank it was in with 20k lighting color up and look even better in my tank. I have a Green polyp birdsnest growing like crazy and retain every bit of the color it had while under 400w lighting. Red cap, purple rim cap, yellow slimer, green polyp staghorn and green milli all have good colors as well as growth. 6 decent size LPS all look good and flourece nicely. I have a nice collection of brown and tan digitata . Ok so these digis are the only thing that has lost color rather than gained it in my system, oh and a tan milli as well. I attribute most of the color and growth to the water quality and just enough light to keep em happy. The problem is I WANT MORE . That 2 hour period after the main photo period of the tank when just the actinics are on is my favorite viewing time. I think it would be nice to have that 12 hours a day . The 20k tanks I have seen make everything look oh so special and I think I want more blue. The t-5 lit sps tanks I have seen makes the corals look unbelievablly colorful, in fact they can make the colors look so intense they seem not to be real. Shimmer is important to me so I will be using halides. Simply switching bulbs on this setup I believe will drop the par to a unacceptable level for growth. I was origanally thinking of switching to a single 400w bulb in 14 - 20k range. I have been discouraged by too many to believe that this is the right solution. This is the setup I am leaning towards right now: 24" PFO parallel reflector. 250w m58 or ARO electronic ballast 250w XM 20k se bulb. Triad Ballast 2ea 24" URI actinic white T-5 bulbs I have seen a couple examples of tanks lit with this combo and it looks really nice. Jumping to 250 watts for the halide even at 20k will slightly increase the PAR. The actinic white will add more PAR and the 12k will tone down the blue just a little. I would also cosider using the GE 6500k bulbs for the T-5 "suppliment". I have not seen a tank lit like that but, according to some "experts" the 20k 6500k combo hits all three color spectrums required for the differant zoox to thrive. This I will look into more. So wadda ya think WAMAS?

Thanks for the heads up! Anyone want to go plunder with me first thing Monday morning? Arrrrhhhh....

I think the main point of Danskims first post was missed. When are you going to start shipping so that the reefers that want to support someone locally but may be too far away for a drive or just would prefer to shop from their livingroom can do so. Your prices compete with Premium Aquatics from what I have seen. I'd pay shipping over gas anyday and twice on Mondays-Wednesdays. I mainly order drygoods from PA because my experiences with them have been really great and they have that LFS feel and attitude without the $markup$. Another example using livestock would be Pacific East Aquaculture, same attitude and kind-of-sort-of local. I buy some things locally and more than half of my stock have come from other members here but, when I want something special or generally expensive I almost always research and then buy from an online vendor. Example: I am currently considering a LuminArc A3mini or Stealth with a yet to be determined bulb ballast combo. BRK is a vendor that can get the reflectors I know from research on the WAMAS boards but, nowhere on the website does it list them. I also am pretty sure that they are not kept instock so they have to be delivered so why not have it drop shipped to my house? I have no idea what suppliers you use for ballast/bulbs and such so in order for me to even find out if I can buy the setup from you I need to figure that out. I can not even begin to imagine what all is involved when gettinginto the e-commerce field so I may be way out there but, I do know my time is valuable and while I like to hang out and look around a LFS my schedule rarely allows this luxury. Even if it was just possible to list every available product to you and your retail price and that way I could just put it all together on paper and order it by phone and have it drop shipped to my place instead of yours? I dunno just a thought. Dan

Thanks, thats why my first choice was going to be the xm 20k on m59 ballast. Hoping to find someone in the club that has this combo so I could possibly see it in person before making final decisions. Dan

Can I prepay for a tank and have you hold it for me so I can pickup Sunday night?

Thanks guys for the replies. traveller7, that is interesting that the par drop coresponds to a heat drop, I never connected the two. As far as saving electricity, I think it is pretty much a toss up at this point, while I will be spending a little more per month on the bill, I would only be replacing 1 bulb with changes so I think it is a wash. The point that Rascal made is where I am concrned with replacing my de with another de fixture. Right now I have the Outer Orbit (good guess man!) fixture at 8" off the water to spread the light out. I don't know how well the SLS RO3's spread the light (I know Sanjay has spec them but my brain is starting to hurt from spectral plotting data :wink: ) but that is not something I have ruled out at this point. If I were to go down that road I think the combo I would use would be the RO3 - PFO HQI ballast - Helios 20k (62PPFD) or Phoenix 14k (85PPFD). How do you guys feel about that one? This combo would raise par slightly from what I get with a 10k bulb on 150w and change the spectrum to something a little more color aggresive. Again though I am concerned with the ability of a de fixture to cover the tank completely. I guess I need to grab a espresso and go back to the reflector annalysis archives.........

I actually responded in the quote on my response but it didn't show up very well with the blue background. So I will list again witha little more details. Tank is 54 corner. Bulbs 10k xm de 150hqi on e-ballast, 2 55w dual actinics. All lights are 4 months old. Testing done with Salifert, Lab grade PH probe and Refractometer: Temp 79.9 Sal: 1.025 Ph: 8.12 No2: 0 No3: 0 Po4: .01 Nh3: 0 Mg: 1300 Ca: 410 Alk: 9.6dkh Additionally setup includes 28g refugia, 30g equipment sump/cryptic refugia containing a PCI3000 skimmer, running carbon 24/7, running phosban 24/7, Geo612 Ca reactor. Flow is Ehiem 1260 return on seaswirl at 500gph, Panworld 50px-x on CL with OM squirt at 1100gph. Top off is RO/Di. Waterchanges of 2quarts are done every single day. I do believe I am overskimming the tank a bit, but that is because I only have 1 fish right now and that was added 2 weeks ago and not alot of fish food or poop is going into the tank. I plan on setting my Neptune to turn off the skimmer for a few hours after I feed and hopefully that will bring up the nutrient levels a little. Don't get me wrong here I am happy this is my problem rather than the other way around. I do have good growth of all SPS in the system and the color is not aweful or anything like that, I just want a bluer look of 20k and more color in the coral themselves. I don't dose anything and don't really want to go down that road so I thought the 20k option would be best. I don't believe I could run a 20k xm bulb on my current lighting setup and get any substantial growth at all. My feeling right now is that if I jump to 250w then I am probably still looking at supplimental lighting of some sort. If I make the jump to 400 then I think I might accomplish more of my goals as far as growth and color go. Running the XM 20k on the Blueline ballast (Dr. Mac's Setup by the way) is more expensive in terms of setup and not the greatest yeild of par. The m59 ballast gets the most out of a xm bulb and the combo of bulb/ballast $ is so economical that I am really tempted to give it a shot. What were you growth/color experiences with the switch to 15k (lower par differant spectrum) vs. 20k and do you suppliment?

I am actually thinking that I might be overskimming my tank. The fixture is a Outer Orbit HQI, it runs on a e-ballast so unless I gut it and upgrade components then the best PPFD of 45 or so regardless of bulbs. It is my fault for not realizing how addicted I was to SPS so I bought the wrong fixture. The last time I set up a tank and gave SPS a shot I had bad luck (or skills). This tank I setup much differantly and SPS are thriving. I am really hopin to acheive a PPFD of around 130 or so on 20k bulbs so this setup seems like it will be a good fit?

Link doesn't work, but I use Sanjay's site for lighting stuff. Temp I am obviously concerned about, but I have a few things working in my favor. AC vent directly over tank and keep my house pretty cool 72 degrees, open canopy design and fans. I have thought of many alternitives for this lighting setup inculding the close following options: 1. Keep my current lighting, 150whqi/pc actinics with decent growth but, crappy color. 2. 250w se xm 10k on parallel reflector with uri vho actinic 3. 250w se phoenix 14k parallel reflector with 6700k vho I would like to accomplish a few things that lead me to the 20k 400w option: 1. One bulb 2. Can transfer lighting to future setup next year (wich I am almost positive will be running 400watters) 3. Stick to my sub $300 budget. If I have to buy a chiller that would really suck and blow my $300 budget by a lot......

I am thinking a lighting change is in my very near future. Right now I am leaning towards a 400w se xm 20k on a m59 ballast wich should give the same par as a 250w se xm 10k on a m58 and higher than a e-ballast. I want to switch to a single bulb setup, want better color, and keep good growth. This will go on a luminarc A3 mini if I can get the 400w bulb to fit inside. Just curious if anyone in the club runs something similar.

I tried em and it didn't work for me. I admit I didn't give it a TON of effort, but it took much less effort to silicone in place.

Geo 6x18

uh, yes I would say that is an extremely good deal!

I couldn't agree more with all points Craig made. Do you have a fixture that is limiting you to the setup you described or is it all retro? I am going to assume it is a fixture: Gut it! Spread your light out a little bit, and add another 150w hqi retro from hello lights for $180 (includes the bulb) An you will have plenty of light for all but the more demanding sps and even still you will be able to grow those high up in the tank. I guess the point here is that if you are thinking about youer light setup you really need to look at the livestock you plan to keep. Softies, palys, and LPS? You will have no problem with the setup as mentioned. If you want to go to T5 then by all means do so but, it is in no way required to accomplish your goals. Dan

haha don't get me started . To be honest though I keep every coral you mentioned above with the exception of hammer just fine in my 29 with NO flourecents. I think your lights are perfectly fine for what you want to accomplish with your system.

I don't know about WD40 but, I have used 3 in 1 100% silicone spray to fit stubborn flex tubiong in the past with no ill effects.

I've been watching that build and can't wait until it is complete. There is a great picture with 5 guys sitting in the tank with their legs stretched out, that really gives you a idea of size.