BPB's Humble SPS Dominant 90 Gallon

[Bpb]

Funny story. Took down the metal halides and put leds up. Reduced wattage by half. Heater never runs because the pumps alone keep the tank at 79 degrees. Installed a new AC unit. Went from 8 seer to 16 seer. Ac runs less. Our KWH total and average went way down...but. Simultaneously the utility company raised our rates...so....despite all that, my $&^*%#+ bill went UP by $30

 

[JJ440]

Beautiful tank! Definitely like the simple approach. Thanks for sharing!

 

[blstravler]

Which LED’s did you go with?

 

[Bpb]

Which LED’s did you go with?

Right now I’m running a single reef breeders photon 59 v2+ along with the two sbreef blue strips. Following the “BRS recommended” settings for the fixture of 100:50:10 for blue/violet:white:red/green

slowing ramping up the intensity over time as to not shock anything. The color is close to what my 20k halides we’re putting out but with a bit more pronounced ambient violet look. I’m at about 300-350 max par at the top of the rocks right now with a 76:38:7 ratio of those colors. Going to keep increasing intensity little by little each day until I get to about 400-450 on the rock tops

 

[BantyRooster97]

Funny story. Took down the metal halides and put leds up. Reduced wattage by half. Heater never runs because the pumps alone keep the tank at 79 degrees. Installed a new AC unit. Went from 8 seer to 16 seer. Ac runs less. Our KWH total and average went way down...but. Simultaneously the utility company raised our rates...so....despite all that, my $&^*%#+ bill went UP by $30

Tha man gets ya every time! LOL

 

[Bpb]

Billing cycles have caught up now (I was actually a couple months behind, not late on payment, they just are behind on their billing). Now that we have caught up my utilities are down by $100 a month. The math isn’t universal across every single tank and household, but for me, I am seeing noticeable savings on electricity.

Growth and colors have held. Alkalinity consumption is measurably the same or slightly higher than before. I feel like they’d be doing even better had I picked a little more thoughtful program but I’m avoiding temptation to tinker so I’m leaving it.

Lights dimming down. Pandora picture since I showed the kids Avatar for the first time tonight.

 

[2Sunny]

Beautiful corals!

I'm super interested to see if you notice any changes in your corals after several months under LEDs.

 

[Bpb]

Beautiful corals!

I'm super interested to see if you notice any changes in your corals after several months under LEDs.

thank you sir. The tank has had some good and some bad. I’ll do a general system info update off this post!

Tank is slated to come down some time late January early feb. After saving and searching for about 3 years now, interviewing and trying out a few different builders we came to a decision and have finally designed something we can work with inside our budget. Our new house is in the very early part of the build. Slab should
Be poured at some point in the next couple weeks. No fish room unfortunately. Just not in the budget.

New tank will go up first thing so I can get to filling it ASAP. All the rock work has been curing for a year now at this point. I feed it HEAVILY and have an algae turf scrubber on it which is churning out about 2-3 cups worth of turf every week or two. Tons of feather dusters and sponges everywhere so it is good and mature. Bacteria levels should be plenty high enough to just
Transfer over all fish immediately. It MAY even be processing more nutrients than my current tank.

Regarding my current tank....I’ve been keeping up on husbandry. As much as I can. Water changes have been taken care of through frag shipping. So I change about 5% per week. Keeping alkalinity very stable through the calcium reactor and keeping phosphate under 0.1 ppm. Issue I’m having now is the tank is so happy that the annoyances are growing faster than the sps are. I’m pulling out slimy mats of blue cloves that coat the sandbed, and putting Kalk paste all around the sps so they don’t shade the bases to death. Lava lamp mushrooms are out of control as well and im having to nuke them constantly as well. From an overall tank health and “natural reef” perspective. It’s a roaring success. Almost zero bare rock is left visible. Every surface is covered by life. But my desire for an artificial looking “fruit stand” type aquascape of similarly sized acropora colonies is being significantly hindered through natural growth. It is what it is. I hope I am able to curtail these types of pest softies in my next tank.

Regarding the effect of leds on the corals compared to the metal halides. I would call it overall a net zero gain as far as tank health goes. Be it known. I’m a metal halide fan. I like them and will continue to encourage their use to those who are curious about trying them. I think the real magic in metal halides lies in the 6500k and 10,000k bulbs. You can get a similar spectrum and aesthetic of a 14000 or 20000k bulb easily with full spectrum leds. It’s tough to get that same blend of wavelengths a good 6500k or 10000k bulb puts out. I wouldn’t dare try to tune my leds to visually match a 6500k bulb. I don’t anticipate good things would result. Despite the fact that I love how that actually looks. But...there is a lot of hype going on with different lighting styles and much of it is just sunshine pumping. People love to justify their investments. I am an avid believer of @Dana Riddle ’s saying “there are no bad lights, just bad application” and I echo that constantly when helping people with lighting questions. More Important than nailing some specific par number, controllability, aesthetic appeal, or some immeasurable/undefinable “quality” to a lighting modality, is managing expectations. Once you have clear expectations, your lighting choices become much clearer. Or at least easier to guide.

Through using well established spectral programs and par levels/acclimation, I’ve been able to basically maintain the same alkalinity consumption as before the switch. It slowed briefly for a few weeks while I acclimated, but my calcium reactor setting is back to its original place. The reef breeders do a great job at eliminating hot spots from pucks. It’s a blanket style light that covers end to end so there isn’t any funky leaning of new growth or twisting of branches. 90% of my corals look basically identical to before under 20k metal halide lighting. Rendering and all. I don’t run a super blue setting outside of a brief dawn and dusk. Visually the overall ambient color temp is about the same as 20k metal halides. No weird morphing or color loss. No reduction in growth, with the exception of ONE coral. My RR Rainbow Loom has totally lost all of its color and has now gone dormant. Otherwise everything else looks exactly the same as before. No false fluorescence or goofy color lies like led haters swear will happen.

Now....I will admit most of my acros are on the easier side. I don’t keep any historically difficult species to my knowledge. I think the Most challenging coral I own is probably my acropora humilis which is easily one of the fastest growing and pleasantly colored corals in the tank. Especially under whites. I can only report what has been my own observation. On my next tank I intend to follow something closer to the WWC philosophy, just in reverse. They run a very high par and lower kelvin photoperiod before open and a lower par heavy blue setting during the lengthy business hours. I will run lower par heavy blues during my work hours when I am away from home, and tune them down to 10-14k bright white high par for the evening hours when I can be home to enjoy the tank.

Allow me to clear out some of the blue cloves this weekend and next week when I have a little free time, I’ll take some updated pictures of some things and post them to the profile.

 

[Bpb]

Photo bomb update. Best I can do with my iPhone. Spectrum set to

100% - 5500K
100% - Green
100% - Red
80%. - 450nm
80%. - 470nm
80%. - 420nm

I don’t operate at this color layout ever. While I DO find it most pleasing to the eye (if you’ve read my thread you know I love daylight full spectrum, the lower the kelvin the better), it is too much par and not blue balanced enough for growth. It makes for fantastic pictures though. iPhone X straight shots. Occasionally a little disco ball will muck with the rendering. Same old corals I always post. Just updates on them. If it appears they never grow, it is because I am constantly fragging them. Especially now since I’m trying to clear out the tank before I move.

Here are various shots of the frag racks. I’ve collected a handful of pieces I’ve been coveting for some time and cooking them. I’ll have a friend babysit them for me while the new tank stabilizes

 

[NY_Caveman]

Photo bomb update. Best I can do with my iPhone. Spectrum set to

100% - 5500K
100% - Green
100% - Red
80%. - 450nm
80%. - 470nm
80%. - 420nm

I don’t operate at this color layout ever. While I DO find it most pleasing to the eye (if you’ve read my thread you know I love daylight full spectrum, the lower the kelvin the better), it is too much par and not blue balanced enough for growth. It makes for fantastic pictures though. iPhone X straight shots. Occasionally a little disco ball will muck with the rendering. Same old corals I always post. Just updates on them. If it appears they never grow, it is because I am constantly fragging them. Especially now since I’m trying to clear out the tank before I move.

Here are various shots of the frag racks. I’ve collected a handful of pieces I’ve been coveting for some time and cooking them. I’ll have a friend babysit them for me while the new tank stabilizes

You are rockin’ brother.

 

[Bpb]

Playing around with the cheesy “macro” lens for the cell phone camera

BC Bonsai Humi!

Cornbred Blueberry Shortcake

RR USA Lady In pink

Battlecorals Bonfire Table

 

[Bpb]

Progress happ’nin!

 

[Bpb]

More progress

 

[blstravler]

Tank looks great! Can’t believe I missed all the updates on the house - congratulations! Looking forward to seeing the new tank!

 

[Bpb]

Side effect of letting things sit on the racks too long.

 

[Butcher333]

Amazing, amazing, AMAZING!

 

[Bpb]

We are now in the endgame. As the final chapter comes to a close, I share what remains. 90% of acros have gone on to other homes. All that remains are bits and pieces of encrusted base and a little stag that clings to the overflow.

 

[Butcher333]

Wait! What? Did I miss something?

 

[LBReefer]

Wait! What? Did I miss something?

Same question here. I was just catching up on this thread.

 

[Bpb]

New house is nearly complete. I didn’t want to endure the stress of moving and likely watching all my colonies die in the process. It’s going to be a stressful event as it is even if I didn’t have a reef tank. It was always the plan to liquidate my stock. I’ve been pushing frags pretty aggressively once the build process started but ultimately I couldn’t frag them all off. It’s a display not a propagation system so frag storage was limited. We will be closing in the next week or two.

Luckily I am able to set up and fill the new tank before messing with my current one, so I’ll get it full and circulating and then I’ll start pulling rocks and catching my fish in the old tank. Fortunately I have a friend locally who will be holding a single rack with a frag of my favorites to help get the new tank started. Rocks have been curing for nearly 2 years in the garage. Algae turf scrubber is churning out hair algae plentifully and predictably on schedule. I dump a bunch of pellet food in there every few days to keep the bacteria churning along. Hopefully this will allow me to bypass most the Dino, cyano, hair Alger, and bacterial imbalance that plagues new tanks. I’d like to get my acros I’ve kept back into the tank within a couple months. But I’ll assess nuisance stuff growth at that point. None of my existing 10+ year old rocks or sand will be brought over to the new tank. I’d like to be rid of the clove polyps, aiptasia, and discosoma mushrooms. New build thread will be made

Here’s some ridiculous smurf water orange filtered pictures of the keeper frags. Y’all know I prefer daylight