mtraylor's 255

mtraylor · Aug 23, 2022

Ok. Just to get caught up. I took all the rock out of my main display and put in 25 gallon brute trash cans. Then removed all the sand and put the in brute trash cans as well. Once everything was removed. I filled the aquarium with fresh water and vinegar and rant for several hours. It took about a couple hours for it to get the calcium off the back glass. The overflow was bubbling with killy worms and the same thing for inlet into sump. Here is pic of tank with vinegar.

mtraylor · Aug 23, 2022

I removed my clowns and put them in them in the treated anemone in my qt 10 gallon. It was ok here in the pic, but the anemone has since moved an not sure that its happy in there. I think I'm going to move it to my frag tank in a basket. Then maybe take to LFS. I'm not sure I want to keep anemone that may be moving allot in the aquirium. I will play this one by ear.

mtraylor · Aug 24, 2022

I have all my other fish in a 150gallon tub. They are holding steady and seem to be doing well. I have the tank almost filled up today. Thats a good thing as I have fish coming in today as well. Big shout out to drreefsquarantinedfish as I had some delays in getting tank broken down and back into commission and they worked with me for scheduling delivery of fish.

Here is tank almost filled with the custom rock rock I made a long time ago.

mtraylor · Aug 24, 2022

I decided to go with Gyre due to the rock change formation. Everything will be on back wall so no wires on the side now. Will see how this works. When I put in the fish today I will dump this bacteria in. I think I have like 19 fish or something like that. They are all small. I will wait to put my big tangs and fish in.

mtraylor · Aug 24, 2022

Fish came in a big box and just in time for me to have all my water ready. I added the bacteria a couple hours before the fish. I got all 16 fish and 2 shrimp in the aquarium. One fish didn't make it. I'm really impressed with the fish from Dr QT. Its funny. 16 fish sounds like allot. But it looks like I dont even have any fish at the moment. LOL

When I get my tangs and original fish in the tank. It will be nice to see the big fish.

mtraylor · Aug 24, 2022

added some sand to the refugium and cloudied up the tank again. Everything running and I'm super excited to have rebooted the tank. Now i can start the clock to get some corals in here. Lots more work to do, but a good start.

mtraylor · Aug 30, 2022

All the parms (nitrite, ammonia) were at zero for 5 days so I decided to put my big fish in. Put the big boys in and now I have a presence minute of nitrite and ammonia. Big boys doing well for a couple days.

mtraylor · Aug 31, 2022

Through the years. I have never been able to get a good picture of this guy as he has always blended in the background and hid from me when he saw the camera. Now after moving him from display to the dark dungeen of the brute trough and back to the newly white rock. He stands out and actually let me take some pics of him. I think its because the new rock work does not have allot of hiding areas and seems to promote more swimming. Well here is the "White Whale". LOL

mtraylor · Sep 5, 2022

Tank has been up and running now for about 12 days. I'm getting a little diatoms in display. As I have spent so much time on redoing the display tank, my frag tank has now got a hair algae outbreak. Its out of control. I"m having to give it some attention now. I cleaned up some of the algae and made sure that some of my torches in there that will be going to the display are good to go. Here are a few in the corner of frag tank.

mtraylor · Sep 5, 2022

I have some nice frogspawns as well to go in display

mtraylor · Sep 5, 2022

The main display seems pretty stable so far. However. I have not nitrates. This is the same issue I had with my frag tank when I started it with dry rock. Since I have around 24 fish in main display....I'm hoping that the nitrates will come up and level off around 5-10ppm without having to dose. Will monitor this over the next week to see if it increases and where it lands. As soon as they come up. I will be putting a tester coral in the display.

Superlightman · Sep 6, 2022

You changed your mitras for orphek? Why?

mtraylor · Sep 6, 2022

I ran the Mitras for over 8 years. Great fixture and my favorite by far for any light fixture I have owned. It has the best programming for cloud features etc of any light on the market today IMO. I had great growth from the fixture as you can see in my build thread. No issues at all.

I decided I wanted more blue spectrum on my tank and more front to back converage so I went and bought the Orpheks V4 gen2. Hind site 20/20...I should have just bought some supplement LED bars and kept the mitras.

The Orphek v4 gen 2's had problems and the coverage was no better but I did get the bluer spectrum. I had to add led bars to get full coverage after all and the Orphek v4 gen 2 is not as reliable as the Mitras.

I'm now upgraded to Orphek ICON's with 4 OR3 bars and the color is amazing. So after resetting aquarium...I really want to see what corals look like under this combo. I"m only hoping they hold up.

mtraylor · Sep 10, 2022

My Blond Naso really likes the new rock work. Gives him more room to to swim around and caves to go through. Been trying to capture him swiming in and out of caves.

mtraylor · Sep 10, 2022

Superlightman · Sep 10, 2022

mtraylor said:
I ran the Mitras for over 8 years. Great fixture and my favorite by far for any light fixture I have owned. It has the best programming for cloud features etc of any light on the market today IMO. I had great growth from the fixture as you can see in my build thread. No issues at all.

I decided I wanted more blue spectrum on my tank and more front to back converage so I went and bought the Orpheks V4 gen2. Hind site 20/20...I should have just bought some supplement LED bars and kept the mitras.

The Orphek v4 gen 2's had problems and the coverage was no better but I did get the bluer spectrum. I had to add led bars to get full coverage after all and the Orphek v4 gen 2 is not as reliable as the Mitras.

I'm now upgraded to Orphek ICON's with 4 OR3 bars and the color is amazing. So after resetting aquarium...I really want to see what corals look like under this combo. I"m only hoping they hold up.

Ok thanks for the.information.the great colors come from the icon or the bars?
Sometime I thinking we just may need the bars instead of use them as a complement.

mtraylor · Sep 10, 2022

Well the great colors come from both. The ICON's and the OR3 blue plus I'm using share some of the same LED"s but the OR3's give you that 435nm & 457nm range that the ICON doesn't. My Fish's colors are amazing. I have no corals under them right now. The ICON's however with all channels the same looks more white it basically looks like a 20K Radium MH to me maybe a bit whiter. With the OR3's with it, its amazing. I truly like it allot. All except for the OR3 that burned out about 40 minutes ago. It started blinking and half the leds are now not working on the bar. I sent msg to Orphek for warranty. :rolleyes:

Superlightman · Sep 11, 2022

I have the or also ,they are good for fluorescence ,but for sps I found them bad, all the natural color and the nice pink and red are completely washed out

mtraylor · Sep 11, 2022

I learned long time ago when I used MH's. When I had 20K Radium bulb. My Pink stylo would turn purple. When I switched to 10K ushio or hamilton, it would turn pink. This was also with yellows. Heck I used 6k bulb at one time.

So yes. If you are using OR3 blue plus as your main source of lighting then you can forget about pinks and a few other colors. Its just too blue/actinic.

I use the OR3 blue plus's as actinic's to my ICON's. Its the perfect supplement to the more white setting I'm using for the ICON's. During peak hours I get true colors of everything. Great part about the ICON's is that you can run a more 6K-10K light during a couple hours of the day to get yellow, pinks, red's etc that you want. Best part about LED's.

If you are solely using or3's. Then I would suggest mixing them as others do for their sps tanks with led bar only setups.

mtraylor · Sep 11, 2022

Well my king of the tank has settled in. He is being a little camera shy, so its been hard to get some pictures of him. I guess after being ripped out of his aquarium and put in a tub for several weeks and back in a new layout has made him a little camera shy or lyre to objects pointed at him