JCOLE's ACRO Dominant Build

JCOLE · Oct 7, 2020

Ummmm.....look at all these steps. This better be worth it.

uhupong · Oct 10, 2020

What mode and setting do you use in T6? Thx

dieselkeeper · Oct 10, 2020

You got some awesome SPS. Inspiration for sure.

JCOLE · Oct 10, 2020

uhupong said:
What mode and setting do you use in T6? Thx

I keep it in Aperture mode and use SuperMacro mostly.

JCOLE · Oct 10, 2020

dieselkeeper said:
You got some awesome SPS. Inspiration for sure.

Thank you! Hopefully I can give most of them a kick in the butt with the new T5's.

JCOLE · Oct 21, 2020

Replaced my (4) Black Box LED's last night with a 6 Bulb T5 Retrofit kit. Right now bulbs are a 50/50 mix of ATI Blue+ and Coral+. Going to take some time getting used to the whiter light. Might play with other bulb combos down the road. Loving the blanket of light across the whole tank. Hard to tell but there is very little shadowing with the T5's.

One thing I noticed is how brown my corals are. Probably from not getting the proper light and spectrum for so long. Looking forward to watching these color up to what they should be naturally.

Black Boxes

New T5's

Daniel@R2R · Oct 21, 2020

Looking good!

JCOLE · Oct 21, 2020

Daniel@R2R said:
Looking good!

Thank you!!

Daniel@R2R · Oct 23, 2020

JCOLE said:
Got the new Nitrate tester in today.

How are you liking this one?

Wrangy · Oct 25, 2020

I do love the way T5's look but I also love the way MH look, AND also LED's hahaha I'm one of those weirdo's that has no hate for any reef lighting hahaha

The tank looks really nice with the T5's!

JCOLE · Oct 26, 2020

Daniel@R2R said:
How are you liking this one?

It is a good bit of steps and takes about 15 or so minutes to complete. It reads up to 5ppm of NO3 I believe. Mine is always higher than 5ppm. For the first test, I followed directions and the mix was clumpy etc. For this reason, I don't think it tested accurately. For the second test, I diluted per instructions and that worked perfectly. Came out to 7.80 which is really nice to get within those ranges.

I will always dilute going forward. If it is indeed this accurate then honesty it isn't bad.

JCOLE · Oct 26, 2020

Wrangy said:
I do love the way T5's look but I also love the way MH look, AND also LED's hahaha I'm one of those weirdo's that has no hate for any reef lighting hahaha

The tank looks really nice with the T5's!

Thank you! I am right there with you because I like them all as well. I just think they all have a specific purpose. I wish I could incorporate all of them for my lighting but don't think that is feasible with my setup.

JCOLE · Oct 26, 2020

ALK consumption has increased since changing to the T5's. I will take that as a good sign.....hopefully.

ajjw0828 · Oct 26, 2020

JCOLE said:

What's the name of this one? Amazing!

JCOLE · Oct 26, 2020

ajjw0828 said:
What's the name of this one? Amazing!

It is an unknown piece I picked up from my LFS about a year ago. It was a turd for about 6 months and then turned into this. I agree it has become one of my favorites. Has at least 6 colors in it.

JCOLE · Oct 29, 2020

Received another pack from @BCSreef today. His pieces are amazing!!!

These pictures are not that great. Camera lens needs to be cleaned and the LED's were too blue. However, I had to snap a couple of pictures of these beauties though. Pictures were taken a couple of hours after delivery.

CB Flaming Unicorn

Oregon Tort - Hard to capture the blue

TSA Bill Murray

BC Bubblebath Unicorn

Peng's HOTO - Picture does not do the blue justice

TGC Cherrybomb

TSA Spiro the Dragon

CB Maleficent

JCOLE · Oct 31, 2020

Had an interesting week so far....

I took the day off on Thursday because I had corals coming in. Later that day I figured it would be a good time to permanently mount my T5 lights. I switched out my black box lights for a 6 bulb LET Retrofit kit. Lights were temp mounted 4" off surface for the past week. I wanted to move them to about 11" of the surface. I had to remove the unistrut originally mounted for the black boxes. I was in a hurry unscrewing the bolts and a washer dropped behind the back of a rock. It was in a worse possible spot. I ended up having to tear apart the whole right side of my aquascape to get out the washer. SMH! If I would have been patient then I could have saved an hour and alot of frustration.....

However, it turned out better than expected.

Loving the results of the T5's so I picked up the aquatic life fixture for my frag tank. I installed it today and it looks good. BRS was out of stock of the 54w Coral+ bulbs so I had to go with an aquablue special and a purple+ with 2 blue+ bulbs. Looks good but is a little too white.

Zoajohn · Nov 1, 2020

Amazing looking tank. How's the vibrant treatment coming along? I have an acro tank with some but on the fence regarding whether or not I want to dose it

dieselkeeper · Nov 1, 2020

I did that once with a screw. I went to the auto parts store and got magnetic pick up tool. It was cheap, didn't care if it rusted afterwards.

Tank looks awesome.

JCOLE · Nov 1, 2020

Zoajohn said:
Amazing looking tank. How's the vibrant treatment coming along? I have an acro tank with some but on the fence regarding whether or not I want to dose it

Thank you. I stopped the Vibrant a month ago. This was my second time and honestly, I probably won't touch it again. Both times it took care of the bubble algae but it comes back afterwards. What it does is it makes it too clean. I lost my Red Dragon colony and a couple frags this time using it. I plan on upping my CUC if bubble and other algae comes back.