my new baby... AKA The Café

najer · Jul 28, 2021

elorablue said:
Is their a suitable wrasse? Peaceful and small?

Pink streak wrasse.

Jaden9933 · Jul 28, 2021

James_O said:
Also, should the lights slowly get brighter and brighter up until 12:00, and then ramp all the way back down? Or should there be hours of the same setting/high intensity?

You’ll get 1,000,000 answers to this that all oppose each other. As I said earlier, I run mine very differently than how most people would approach it. However, IME, most people agree on at least a 1 hour ramp up and down. 50% of people will tell you to leave the light at a steady intensity after ramp up, and the others will tell you to have the light ramp up and down a few times when at your highest settings in order to give coral strong light, while still giving them breaks in between the times of high intensity. I have it ramp up and down all throughout the day, but not too much to where the corals are closing at all during the breaks. This seems to be working great for me in terms of coloring up and growing my softies and LPS so far! This may not work well at all for SPS though. Trial and error is my method as you’ll never get one good solid answer when it comes to lighting.

Gernader · Jul 28, 2021

@James_O Honestly, black boxes are amazing for the price. It can literally grow anything. I have been using them for a while and I have no problems with it. I’m a high end collector, so that says something lol. Acros love it though.

I used to have 3 ViparSpectras 165W on my 75G but now I just upgraded to a 180G, so I have 6 of them to grow mostly SPS. I currently run them at 70% blues and 10% whites mounted in the canopy. I did a par reading with an Apogee MQ-510 par meter. I’m getting around 450 par at top of my aquascape and 300 par at bottom with flow on which is crazy considering my tank is 24” deep! My corals are happy though.

I run them 10 hours total. 1st hour - just blues, 8 hours - full spectrum, last hour - just blues.

Hope that helps a bit

Reefing_addiction · Jul 28, 2021

Jaden9933 said:
Y’all would be shocked by my lighting. I only have one sps (a monti) yet I run it at full intensity at four points throughout the day. I’m in Vegas so sadly can’t log into the app to take a screenshot but I will when I get back home. It seems like it should be too intense for softies and LPS, but they all look very happy and fully open. Ive never seen someone use the full intensity but it works for me

I just changed it to that saw looking thing. But prior I was at full intensity all day. I have zoas in areas as low as 50 and some at 125. My hammer garden is between 80-150. Goni/alve garden sit around 100-125.

Everything seems happy. I just did the saw thing to help reduce light intensity during hottest part of the day since I do not have central ac

Reefing_addiction · Jul 28, 2021

James_O said:
Also, should the lights slowly get brighter and brighter up until 12:00, and then ramp all the way back down? Or should there be hours of the same setting/high intensity?

I ramp my lights up till full intensity in 3 hours and ramp down for about 3 hours.

I believe you should have some ramp up time with full intensity lasting about 8hours

Reefing_addiction · Jul 28, 2021

James_O said:
Well, I’ve been working on it for a little over an hour.

I just don’t know how to get the algae off of the sand. If I try to vacuum it up, then it just sucks sand up along with it. I literally have bare spots in the tank now because of that.

I did take some frags out and cleaned the GHA/GBA off of them. And I also rearranged some of the frags.

So what if you suck up the sand?

Rinse sand well in some rodi/salt water and place back in tank.

James_O · Jul 28, 2021

Reefing_addiction said:
So what if you suck up the sand?

Rinse sand well in some rodi/salt water and place back in tank.

I am concerned that when I put the clean sand on top of the old sand, it will trap any algae that’s left on the surface, underneath. This could cause it to break down and cause issues?

Reefing_addiction · Jul 28, 2021

James_O said:
I am concerned that when I put the clean sand on top of the old sand, it will trap any algae that’s left on the surface, underneath. This could cause it to break down and cause issues?

I wouldn’t think so.

Reefing_addiction · Jul 28, 2021

James_O said:
I am concerned that when I put the clean sand on top of the old sand, it will trap any algae that’s left on the surface, underneath. This could cause it to break down and cause issues?

I’ve added sand before and that didn’t cause issues

Jaden9933 · Jul 28, 2021

Reefing_addiction said:
I just changed it to that saw looking thing. But prior I was at full intensity all day. I have zoas in areas as low as 50 and some at 125. My hammer garden is between 80-150. Goni/alve garden sit around 100-125.

Everything seems happy. I just did the saw thing to help reduce light intensity during hottest part of the day since I do not have central ac

I have no idea what my PAR levels are throughout my tank.

I did A LOT of research on the light so I have a decent understanding of it I think, I haven’t bleached any coral yet, though this is my new concern considering I put my jawbreaker in SPS land. I was saving my top rock for SPS, but decided to put my discos there for now. Out of all my mushrooms, Rhodactis seem to love the brightest spots in my tank. Second to that would be the Discosomas which took a day or two to adjust. My Florida Ricordeas definitely don’t like light. Three out of four of them walked when I switched to the AI Prime 16 HD. One hid in a hole, then melted from not getting any light in half of it. Another is hidden down in a hole still, but is growing like crazy down there and I really hope it comes out one day or grows out of it. The third one is sitting in a hole on the rock too but is VERY slowly coming out. My Yuma is new but seems to like the same range as the Florida’s.

That was my very long explanation of why I estimate the ricordeas sit at around 100-150 PAR. I judge the place rn if everything else based off of this estimate and it works well for me. One day I’ll rent or buy a PAR reader!

In conclusion, sorry for the essay. I hope I get an A+

najer · Jul 28, 2021

I will never clean a sandbed, if it is healthy it needs leaving alone.

Lost in the Sauce · Jul 28, 2021

najer said:
I will never clean a sandbed, if it is healthy it needs leaving alone.

Pretty much in the same boat.

Got a lot of sand bed cleaners. They do the work, I leave them to it.

DiefsReef · Jul 28, 2021

James_O said:
I am concerned that when I put the clean sand on top of the old sand, it will trap any algae that’s left on the surface, underneath. This could cause it to break down and cause issues?

get a conch!!

sp1187 · Jul 28, 2021

good morning.
took the day off.
bye.
(missed "post reply"

)

sp1187 · Jul 28, 2021

sure be glad when schools back in.

DiefsReef · Jul 28, 2021

sp1187 said:
sure be glad when schools back in.

I dont know man, TRAFFIC

LRT · Jul 28, 2021

I ran my Blackbox just like @Gernader does and all was good. Actually haven't been able to keep a bounce shroom alive since I upgraded to fancy led.
I've been running my v2+ set same way until recently when I hooked up a cpl AI hydra 32 and started running saxby setting. I do like how it clouds and dimms all day with more of natural reef look so I changed my settings on v2+ to try and mimmick the saxby settings on AI.
No real difference one way or the other besides the look.
Here's my v2+ settings now. It does give me opportunity to hit a little higher intensity for those that want it but still gives a break to my shrooms that don't need it.