Reef nutrition

EnderTurtle's 40 gallon breeder LPS

Why kessils to radions?

Mainly based on subjective speculations I have regarding kessils. I want control over the intensity of individual LED colors. With the kessils all I could control was the intensity and the blend between their preset range of "white and blue (and everything in between)".

But I'm currently in a dilemma. 80% of my tank are LPS corals with 20% consisting of acropora frags on top. Hopefully I can find the sweet spot with these lights. The kessils always turned my acropora green.....PC rainbow? More like PC Greenbow. Strawberry Shortcake? More like strawberry greencake. Red planet? Nah Green Planet. But then if I crank the color spectrum to be white, my zoas melt and my ricordea bleach out.

Yeah 2 XR30 Pros over a 40 gallon breeder is overkill, but I'm looking towards the future. I will probably keep one in storage and use one over my tank (but the edges will be shaded :() Ideally, the best set up would have been 2 XR15s instead of 2 XR30s for this tank.

WXM vs Reef Link
Mainly chose the Reef Link over the WXM because it was cheaper. Also I don't see myself owning other ecotech products like the Vortech or their Return Pump. I'll stick with jebaos for water movement.
 
Lol, I'm going the other way, sorta. I'll be switching from AI Hydra 52s to Kessil AP700s.

With the AI I had full control over the individual LEDs but I never used them. I just used their spectral control and setup the light using Kelvins and intensity.

I've seen the AP700s in person and they definitely are strong and have tons of coverage.

I'm not sure Kessils are the issue your Acropora are turning green. Have you tested/supplement for trace yet?


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Oh I mean to say it doesnt turn all of them green. But it does turn the multicolored ones with some green......to mostly green.

The PC Rainbow is 100% green. The strawberry shortcake is 90% green with only the coralites remaining Red.

My blue acro is blue. My purple acro is purple.

But all the ones I mentioned have turned mostly green with only some non green colors left.

Maybe Ill take some pictures later to explain.

But I guess I just want more control over my light spectrum/intensities. And looking torward the future of a bigger tank.
 
Part of the mixed reef challenge.
Enderturtle said:
Yeah the dilema of mixed reef tanks.

How to keep the acropora colored and happy by giving them the right amount of light, without overblasting and bleaching out your LPS/Soft corals...

We will see what happens! :)
Click to expand...

Change the lighting and/or flow to make one coral happy and then others show distress. The smaller the tank, the harder it seems to be to find that 'perfect' balance.

Part of the great mixed reef challenge :)
 
Enderturtle said:
Yeah the dilema of mixed reef tanks.

How to keep the acropora colored and happy by giving them the right amount of light, without overblasting and bleaching out your LPS/Soft corals...

We will see what happens! :)
Click to expand...

I feel having a taller tank will help with that. That will allow you to have the light hungry acros up top and the LPS lower down where the lighting is not so strong.

I'm having this issue right now as my tank is only 18" tall. If I provide enough lights for acros, even sitting way at the top, my LPS shrivel up and bail out or just melt. That's why my sand bed is so full, had to move a bunch of LPS to the sand. I'm slowly reducing the light intensity hoping to train the acros to accept lower light so I can move the LPS back up higher.

Though this may all be moot as I'll be moving tanks soon.


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Vhuang168 said:
I feel having a taller tank will help with that. That will allow you to have the light hungry acros up top and the LPS lower down where the lighting is not so strong.

I'm having this issue right now as my tank is only 18" tall. If I provide enough lights for acros, even sitting way at the top, my LPS shrivel up and bail out or just melt. That's why my sand bed is so full, had to move a bunch of LPS to the sand. I'm slowly reducing the light intensity hoping to train the acros to accept lower light so I can move the LPS back up higher.

Though this may all be moot as I'll be moving tanks soon.


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Click to expand...
Bigger tank ftw.
 
I think the deeper your tank is, the more difficult is can be to match both light and flow to LPS and SPS both.

In our nano 29gal tank with cheaper gear and worse nutrient export, I had very colorful SPS and LPS living in harmony - but our rockwork was only 12" high and SPS were 3-4" below water surface - much easier to light brightly with two A350s over a 36x12x18 with a deep sandbed.

Our LPS due wonderfully in our 90gal tank, but our SPS are more like 6-8" under the surface and LPS on the sandbed. It's been a challenge to get enough flow and light for the SPS without beating up the LPS. We've also been running much lower nutrients now that we have a sump/refugium, which I also worry has been causing less coloration and stress on the SPS. I was trying to experiment with higher nutrient levels, but with one of our MP40s dieing I fear there was too much change in flow over the last few months until I got it repaired/re-installed last week.

I'm very curious to see how your Radion experience turns out, @Enderturtle.
 
I think the Radions have an acclimation mode. Start slow, corals take to lower light better than too much. Worse case is they brown over, much better than bleaching out.


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Definitely acclimate slowly - start on 15% and increase 1% every other day or so until you reach your target. It is very easy to fry corals under the great lights we have available to us now!
 
3/1/2016

Magnesium 1440
Calcium 390
Alkalinity 5.8

3/2/2016

Did a 20 gallon water change.

Total tank volume is 20+40 gallons.

Actual water volume (minus rock and skimmer) probably 55 gallons of water in my system.

Will test Friday to see what my alkalinity is.
 
Not sure Vincent!

I haven't been dosing or doing sufficient water changes :/ The thing is, I haven't been noticing much stony coral growth, coralline algae growth, or alkalinity precipitation. So where the hell is my alkalinity going.

All acro and LPS in my tank are fine. My finicky zoas are not happy, shribbled polyps. Lost some of them.

Plan is to do water changes to bring my parameters back to normal and then start dosing.



Did a 36% water change today based on actual water volume (wonder how much my alkalinity will increase, and how the acro/touchy zoas will respond)

Tested D&D water at 1.026 using Milwaukee refracteometer.
Tested D&D water at 8.5 dKH using Salifert Alkalinity test kit. (test kit results match standard)
 
That's crazy. When was the last time you tested before you noticed the drop? Could this have been a trend over a week or two or was this a sudden overnight kind of thing? You said you had been behind on water changes so I think I already know the answer.

I was just kidding about the Kessils by the way.
 
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