Anyone still prefer the 10K look, or even 6.5K? What's with all the windex colored tanks?

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A lot of words to describe how much someone you don't know on the internet bothers you. I suggest disconnecting for a while and enjoying life.
Lol. So because I disagree, I have issues and need to disconnect?

no thanks. I’ve seen what disengagement due to not being part of the in crowd results in. Y’all can keep the cult back-slapping going, but I’m not going to not argue against flawed logic or untrue statements
 

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Lol. So because I disagree, I have issues and need to disconnect?

no thanks. I’ve seen what disengagement due to not being part of the in crowd results in. Y’all can keep the cult back-slapping going, but I’m not going to not argue against flawed logic or untrue statements
And he doesn’t bother me on a personal level. I don’t know him. But I’ve spent 25 years fighting against bad science, and the parallels I’ve seen doing that, and the stuff that ROUTINELY comes up in his threads is astonishing.
 

Steve Erekson

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I actually had to dose nitrate and phosphate in my display. 5ppm and 0.15ppm. Redfield ratio.
I'm going to derail the derail for an opportunity to get an answer to something that's been bothering me. I knnow the normal touted Redfield ratio is 16:1 N : P but from what I've read Redfield was measuring in molar units not PPM like most hobbyists use. So with the numbers you just gave being a ratio of 33:1 N : P is this what the 16:1 ratio in molar units transfers to in PPM nitrate and PPM phosphate?
 

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I'm going to derail the derail for an opportunity to get an answer to something that's been bothering me. I knnow the normal touted Redfield ratio is 16:1 N : P but from what I've read Redfield was measuring in molar units not PPM like most hobbyists use. So with the numbers you just gave being a ratio of 33:1 N : P is this what the 16:1 ratio in molar units transfers to in PPM nitrate and PPM phosphate?
It’s hard to compute precisely, since there are other sources in the tank not being controlled

but consensus from a bunch of threads seem to put the range between 15:1 and 33:1. I just settled on those numbers because it made dosing easy and I was getting the effect I wanted
 

nereefpat

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Interstingly arguable.
Imo, a reef tank is a "balance" between, nutrients, fish, cleanup crew, lights,
maintenance, and stable parameters.
Some can do it some cannot.
I have ran all lighting on different tanks with very small algae issues.
3 lfs have constant ongoing algae issues and they all run leds.
Its due to lack of ongoing maintenance, imo.

I will say most tanks having algae issues that wont go away are from people who have not figured out the dynamics of reef keeping.
In other words they do not have a complete grasp of what it takes to properly maintain a dynamic reef system.
Many friends have the same thoughts as I.
I run 14K phoenix, and have a dynamic reef system with no algae.
Thougths?
20210304_163711.jpg
Looking at your tank: A big part of why you don't have any algae problems is because there is nowhere for it to grow. Your entire tank is either corals or coralline algae. That's a good thing, of course.
 

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niche competition.

now imagine what happens when someone pulls out a colonized sand bed and cleans it, then pops it back in while running ultra low nutrients...oo
 

Subsea

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ugly is in the eye of the beholder. I like my 10K LED color rendition. Sea Apple is bright red & yellow without being in washed out blue. To each his own.
 

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Scdell

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In my experience @brandon429 is 100% correct. My frag tank has always had a clean look with hardly any algae (minimal cleanup crew) with low nutrients (po4 0.01 and no2 1-2). I turned up whites on my reef breeders for 2 weeks and my god the algae that grew was insane. I am back two weeks into blues/violets/uv only (looks WAAAAAAY better too) and all the algae is practically gone again.

I have the same experience in my display but algae usually doesn't last if it grows anywhere as my tang army keeps it algae free no matter how much I attempt to let it grow.

White LEDs look like garbage IMO. The only time I have ever preferred the white look is on a softy tank and even then it has to be MH or bust with whites. When I see tanks with 10k below using T5 and LED to achieve that look it always just looks so dirty and ugly to me. I'm not sure what it is with those cool white LED lights (esp ecotechs) but they just seem to bring out the worst in tanks in my opinion. MH is the only lighting out there that looks like the sun shining through the water.
Just because you're "reading" phosphate and nitrate doesn't mean that's the total of what's in the tank.
 

Just John

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In smaller tanks where herbivores are more limited, too much white (which includes red) or red LEDs by themselves can contribute to algae growth. If I run my white and red channels at higher levels, I have to pay special attention to keeping nutrients on the lower side of 'typical' to prevent blooms.

I'd say this is somewhere in the 12k range in person, so a bit whiter than common these days:

12g FTS_022320.jpg
I know this is from a while back, but can you tell what the large colonies of zoas are? thanks!
 

X-37B

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ugly is in the eye of the beholder. I like my 10K LED color rendition. Sea Apple is bright red & yellow without being in washed out blue. To each his own.
Intersting. One lfs uses all radions with heavy blue.
I was aking about the radions and
lfs turned one to a 14k setting.
Colors changed a little but the look was very close to my Halides.
I think many are so used to the blue look that they think it is what you run.
It really is a personel preference though.
 

MartinM

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using LED's for that effect, the 10K effect, is fueling hundreds and hundreds of GHA challenge reefs, though 10K metal halides might not be as bad it was still common to see gha tufting under nonblue light

for running my kessils are 100% blue.

for pics, 10%

in every case of GHA rework we do, after killing algae and cleaning out detritus, last step is bluing the lights and lowering whites.
Happen to know what the PUR peaks are for GHA? I don’t know, but I’d bet there’s at least a 50% crossover with zooxanthellae.

I run whites at 100% for a ~14k temp, I’ve never liked anything more blue than that. Even 10k is whiter than the sun, or reefs (I’ve spent a lot of time on reefs). Tank also gets NSL a few hours per day.

Btw, I rarely even have to clean my glass and I feed massively. Definitely no gha here! However if you start from dry rock and sand the algae problems will be massive in comparison to rock and sand I use which isn’t out of the ocean more than a few days max before it’s in my tank
 

sarcophytonIndy

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Intersting. One lfs uses all radions with heavy blue.
I was aking about the radions and
lfs turned one to a 14k setting.
Colors changed a little but the look was very close to my Halides.
I think many are so used to the blue look that they think it is what you run.
It really is a personel preference though.
Agreed..., I heard someone say they were trying to recreate a view of the ocean, but if so, even that varies with depth. Are you trying to recreate the first 10 feet, or at a depth of 50 feet.
 

ca1ore

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Interstingly arguable.
Imo, a reef tank is a "balance" between, nutrients, fish, cleanup crew, lights,
maintenance, and stable parameters.
Some can do it some cannot.
I have ran all lighting on different tanks with very small algae issues.
3 lfs have constant ongoing algae issues and they all run leds.
Its due to lack of ongoing maintenance, imo.

I will say most tanks having algae issues that wont go away are from people who have not figured out the dynamics of reef keeping.
In other words they do not have a complete grasp of what it takes to properly maintain a dynamic reef system.
Many friends have the same thoughts as I.
I run 14K phoenix, and have a dynamic reef system with no algae.
Thougths?
20210304_163711.jpg
That looks fantastic (and you know I always appreciate your convict LOL). Although I put MH behind me a while back, there are times when I totally miss it.
 

Zeal

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I run radion XR15 Pro Gen 5 all blues with about 3% white from 12-4.

Personally i hate the white light
 

346700984

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With LEDs the Kelvin numbers are pretty irrelevant now IMO.
I’m using RedSea’s 90 watt ReefLED light in my tank with the blue set to 90% and the white on 70%.
What degree Kelvin is that? Who knows.

With LEDs you can do any color you want. When I first got my light I played around with the settings. The daylight look was definitely not for me. Everything looked washed out and too brown.

I found the custom color I like and went with it. One think I like about the RedSea light is that you can’t adjust the light to a point where it will hurt the corals.
We have the Red Sea ReefLED 50s (2), although will eventually upgrade to 90s. We recently upped our percentages from 80% blue to 100% blue and whites from 20% to 50%. Everyone at the store would say all blue and minimal white, but the coral seems to be growing and healthy. We also let the the light in from the window across the room and the corals seem to respond to and like that. Monitoring the coral/anemone to make sure it’s not too much white. I’ve heard you need white for growth but that too much will bleach. The blues are nice for making the coral pop, but there’s that sweet spot of blue/white blend.
 

jdiefenbaugh

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As an "old school" reefer, I've always hated the windex look, but that's also the fun part of the hobby - individuals keeping aquaria differently. In my public aquarium days, I appreciated a natural look a lot more, as that was the only way to light a reef tank that was several hundred to several thousand gallons in size. Couple of my favorites.

ahyacinthus.JPG


P1280447.JPG


P1280448.JPG
 

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