Michael's Reefer 170

293482398 · Aug 13, 2017

GoVols said:
Has your GHL's came out of acclimation mode?

They have.

The GHL SW is interesting because you can pick a Kelvin temperature (16.1k for me) and a percent power (83% for me), but see how that output compares to the total maximum power (~55%?). Since I'm running so little red + green at 16k, no where near max output.

I immediately started another acclimation mode to increase the power from 83 to 93%, over a few months, roughly a 1% change weekly. Once I'm totally done with flow (the Torch makes things difficult), I'll pull out the Seneye again. The pectina should be in 120-140 and the SPS 180-240 now. Should is operative word.

It's a 90 minute warm up, 7 hours full, 90 minute cool down (switching to mostly actinic).

justingraham · Aug 13, 2017

MrMichael said:
They have.

The GHL SW is interesting because you can pick a Kelvin temperature (16.1k for me) and a percent power (83% for me), but see how that output compares to the total maximum power (~55%?). Since I'm running so little red + green at 16k, no where near max output.

I immediately started another acclimation mode to increase the power from 83 to 93%, over a few months, roughly a 1% change weekly. Once I'm totally done with flow (the Torch makes things difficult), I'll pull out the Seneye again. The pectina should be in 120-140 and the SPS 180-240 now. Should is operative word.

It's a 90 minute warm up, 7 hours full, 90 minute cool down (switching to mostly actinic).

So I get acclimation mode but everytime u add a new coral would u have to acclimate again?

293482398 · Aug 13, 2017

justingraham said:
So I get acclimation mode but everytime u add a new coral would u have to acclimate again?

Oh, no. I used acclimation mode when I swapped my AIO to the Reefer. That's done now. I'd like to try ramping the lights up slowly, so I just reused acclimation mode to keep increasing them 1% a week. I want to go as high as the acans will allow, but I'm not sure the acans will let me go much higher.

justingraham · Aug 13, 2017

So u only acclimated the corals u had to the light?

So why wouldn't u want to acclimate new frags to ur system? If they are not coming from the same light source I mean

293482398 · Aug 14, 2017

justingraham said:
So why wouldn't u want to acclimate new frags to ur system? If they are not coming from the same light source I mean

For new frags, I put them on a magnetic frag rack mid-low down and move the the rack up. In this case, for the ones that broke off the frag plug, I decided to just mount them immediately in their final position, which happened to be the highest point on my rocks, and go with it. I was a bit surprised when those guys were the happiest with full PE.

I'm pretty sure WWC runs higher PAR than I'm currently getting, their tanks are the ones described in Ecotech's Coral Lab studies. Acclimate always makes sense, yet I'm pretty sure I'm under-lighting WWC frags, and their frags have been quarantined for six months, so I figure they are pretty used to WWC's radions.

293482398 · Oct 29, 2017

Tank Update

With no update, people probably think something disastrous happened. In reality, no update because very little has happened. No deaths*, yet my growth rate is nonexistent or anemic. In the last few weeks, the favias have grown quite a bit + noticed some nice sps encrusting. Coraline increasing. My experience:

PO4 dropped to zero multiple times. I didn't expect it the first time, notice white spot on setosa coral. Dosed brightwell PO4 + increased feeding. Setosa grew back + new growth. Then it happened again (white spot, PO4 0), rinse + repeat <sigh>

I moved to premaking icecubes of foods. Hopefully with this, I'll be more consistent with food amounts and hopefully dial in my PO4. Testing PO4 is a pain compared to Alk.

Half my SPS look beautiful, half don't look good. However, all the ones that arrived looking great, still look great. The ones that looked like cr*p, still look like crap. Basically no change. Hopefully more consistent PO4 + chemistry with help.

WWC mail order was mostly a bust in hindsight. 2 frags were broken, 2 seemed out of the water. They are all kicking, but I'm really only happy with the WWC Silver Surfer + Green Slimer. I ordered a few corals from Cherry Corals and all 3 of those SPS looked stunning and 3x-4x the size of WWC. The Space Invader Pectina I got from WWC at Reefaplooza is still my favorite, so I think it's just bad luck of mail order during one of their HUGE holiday sales. I don't have any room, but I'd buy from Cherry Corals mail-order or WWC in person. That WWC Silver Surfer is one of my better growers and one of my favorites

I realized my PAR was quite a bit less than expected about 10 weeks in. The Mitras are not a pick a color temperature then power, that doesn't work. You HAVE to manually adjust the sliders + adjust energy settings. The lighting has been ramping up, maybe the reason for growth in last month.

The tank dialed in to 4gr of ABC+ plus 5ml of Alk daily, pretty quickly + stayed there.

Gear Notes

Aqamai powerheads #MajorFail. The app does not work. Do not buy
GHL Doser 2.1, after four months I didn't want to manually dose Red Sea ABC+ every night. Of the various balling products (ATI, AF, Fauna Marin, Triton), I picked Triton. If Red Sea had a 3/4 part balling, would have done that. That switch happened last Thursday :eek:
Macro-reactor needs to be cleaned weekly, yet I'm only cleaning it bi-weekly. Glass gets covered, algae starts to die + breakdown. Growth is less than expected, but I'm dealing with low PO4 already.
Mitras - Light programming is a pain, but it's a good light. Slight envious of Coral AB+ program for Radions (fire + forget)
Profilux - The SW is a major challenge, it can be frustrating. But it's all working. I finally got email alerts. It's so nice to have confidence in low + high sump alerts emails
Probably buy Gyre XF230 and hope that works, don't expect to run it more than 20% power
NYOS is probably the reason 0 PO4, no regrets
Very happy with Reef Octopus Return

* Death: A snail knocked over a echinata coral on top of a dragon soul favia. While the favia looked great a few days before, within 24h it looked bad and was dying. That echinata seems capable of instant kill. The echinata does seem to be growing however :)

jmp21677 · Oct 29, 2017

I added a NYOS about 6 weeks ago and by far the best skimmer I've ever owned. I also just added a xr30 gen4 pro. Little overkill for sure but every successful sps tank I see lit by Leds has multiple lights. Really happy so far.. and running ab+ dialed back quite a bit

293482398 · Oct 29, 2017

jmp21677 said:
but every successful sps tank I see lit by Leds has multiple lights

Agreed, that is the reason I got the Mitras. A single fixture makes sense on the 170 and the 6 different pucks on the Mitras really helps with coverage. If I was buying two or more fixtures, would seriously have considered those radions. Congratulations! They now have that diffuser lens for the radions, that makes them even more appealing

jmp21677 · Oct 29, 2017

I tried one xr15 previously and didn't like it at all. This is one xr30 but the two pucks really help

293482398 · Nov 12, 2017

@GoVols all is healthy and quiet. FTS of mostly frags looks a little sad,but it really does look better in person. 3 fish are hiding. coralline almost a solid line on the overflow, lots on the bottom glass. The two older rocks on the right are quite purple, the large one on the left has just little patches. Once all the rocks go purple, it will look nicer

jsker · Nov 12, 2017

First time stopping in. Love the build and I agree with @GoVols the GHL light was the right choice.

293482398 · Nov 12, 2017

jsker said:
First time stopping in. Love the build and I agree with @GoVols the GHL light was the right choice.

Thanks. @GoVols guided me to GHL and he's right, the blending is wonderful. If doing LED only, I recommend it.

Mattres · Nov 13, 2017

Love the FTS mate, things look like there traveling along nicely.

GoVols · Nov 18, 2017

Micheal,
Your 170 is coming along great.

How much coralline growth do you have on the bare bottom and how's the Gyre working out?

Freddie

293482398 · Nov 18, 2017

GoVols said:
How much coralline growth do you have on the bare bottom and how's the Gyre working out?

The bottom is mostly covered in corralline, I'd guess 70%. It's in random patches likely tied to snail movement. I hope it gets to 100% covered, it looks better covered.

The Gyre was obnoxiously loud on the first day (like annoying in the next room), much quieter after 72hours but still louder than skimmer, and now is basically silent. I run it at 20%/-10% in alternating gyre mode. I'm very very happy with it, wish I would have got it from the beginning. The whole linear gyre flow feels so superior to Vortech like flow.

I still need to open up my doser to figure out what's busted with that first dosing head. The smart-butt part of me is tempted to just buy another doser and sell this one and let the next person deal with GHL support in replacing the doser head. Another part of me wanted to reverse engineer their protocol and write my own doser app since I'd do a significantly better job.

justingraham · Nov 18, 2017

This is the first instance I have ever head about ghl not being good

I hope u get it figured out

GoVols · Nov 18, 2017

justingraham said:
I hope u get it figured out

+1

293482398 · Nov 18, 2017

justingraham said:
This is the first instance I have ever head about ghl not being good
I hope u get it figured out

To be fair, their support replied promptly. However, I need buy a torx wrench, disassemble the bad dosing head and mail them pictures. Don't feel like dealing with it now.

Their iOS app disappoints me. For example, if you use the auto dosing program and have it set to 0.5ml ten times a day, go ahead and change it to 11 and hit save. Less than 50% chance it works. It probably resets the dosing amount to 10ml ( giving you a heart attack) or it completely loses the program and you have to re-enter all the data. So lame. The app is full of things like this. I sort of hit my limit on GHL software problems last week and just don't want to deal.