IM 50 Lagoon SPS dominant build

TheWB · Jan 26, 2022

How’s the tank doing?

tnw50cal · Jan 26, 2022

Good , other than it took over a year to get some GHA growing in it. And I tried so hard not to get it. Funny it's growing in the shadows, not out in the light.

tnw50cal · Jan 27, 2022

picture from today,still wouldn't know there are 5 fish in the tank.

tnw50cal · Oct 23, 2023

And now

TruRacr314x · Oct 23, 2023

@tnw50cal What’s the in between story?? Glad to see the tank is still up and running…

tnw50cal · Oct 23, 2023

I've had a lot of ups but mostly downs with this tank. One of the biggest was I could never get good color out of the coral. On the radion XR15 gen 5 blues I have over it I had the point intensity set to 100% and used the schedule intensity to adjust overall intensity(brightness). i kept lowering it and lowering it and still bleached no color corals. Then one day I turned the schedule intensity to 0, meaning for the whole schedule no light should be on but it was and very bright. So from then on I ran my schedule intensity at 100 % and used my point intensity to adjust overall brightness. This worked great and now I have colors to my corals(SPS), to bad it took me almost 3 years to figure this out. Another thing i would NEVER do again is use nothing but CaribSea Life rock. It just not very porous, no place for good bacteria to live. I got rid of most of it and put some rock from one of my other long running tanks into the 50 and that did wonders.

dangles · Oct 23, 2023

tnw50cal said:
picture from today,still wouldn't know there are 5 fish in the tank.

My coral ID skills are still pretty rough... what's that in the lower left corner? Micro lord?

tnw50cal · Oct 23, 2023

tnw50cal said:

In this picture the rocks are covered in some kind of fluffy black I don't know. If you touched it it would like suck itself in and turn brown. It would over grow the corals and kill them. Snails would not eat it, nor would a yellow tang. I bought a pincushion urchin to eat it but it died within in 2 days but not before giving the tank flatworms. I tried a blue tuxedo urchin next it made it and ate all the black stuff in less than a month. Four doses of Flatworm Exit over 3 weeks killed the flatworms

williamCreery · Oct 23, 2023

tnw50cal said:
I've had a lot of ups but mostly downs with this tank. One of the biggest was I could never get good color out of the coral. On the radion XR15 gen 5 blues I have over it I had the point intensity set to 100% and used the schedule intensity to adjust overall intensity(brightness). i kept lowering it and lowering it and still bleached no color corals. Then one day I turned the schedule intensity to 0, meaning for the whole schedule no light should be on but it was and very bright. So from then on I ran my schedule intensity at 100 % and used my point intensity to adjust overall brightness. This worked great and now I have colors to my corals(SPS), to bad it took me almost 3 years to figure this out. Another thing i would NEVER do again is use nothing but CaribSea Life rock. It just not very porous, no place for good bacteria to live. I got rid of most of it and put some rock from one of my other long running tanks into the 50 and that did wonders.

If you really have bad coloration. Go with Redsea 90. People seriously doubt these lights. But mark my words. Give them a shot. Best bang for the buck in my opinion on growth and coloration for the past 4yrs

tnw50cal · Oct 23, 2023

dangles said:
My coral ID skills are still pretty rough... what's that in the lower left corner? Micro lord?

Yes, and it got twice as big so I sold it to a LFS.

tnw50cal · Oct 23, 2023

Some of the ups. I put a small black bivalve(mussel) in the tank in the very beginning. it's still alive. I've had a Ora Maxima clam in there for about a year. The Orchid Dottyback is still kicking it. The little piece of green humilis is now a large colony.