The Garden -- Rakies shallow SPS cube

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Rakie

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My diffuser lands tomorrow, very excited to put this thing on!! After seeing one in person last month, I immediately could tell it's more then it's cracked up to be.

Looking good.
Do you notice already a colour shift due to the change to LED?

Actually yeah, I've noticed some major and minor changes in almost every coral. I was pretty surprised, but it's also only been 5 weeks. Not all good changes.

Being non-specific, almost every coral in the tank is picking up additional colors, or getting more pronounced color gradients going from a clear X color to a clear Y color. Even the corals that showed some negative results have all still picked up some positive traits, from faster growth to better denser growth patterns.

Additionally, the tank is starting to consume more alkalinity than it was before using T5 -- So the new light is sparking growth overall in the tank. This took at least 3 weeks to start turning around. At first my alk/cal/mag uptake was cut to 20% of my dosage. Just part of the change, takes some time, but at this rate I'm going to be dosing more than I had been before.

Good Changes
- Pinky the Bear: It's small, just a hair over 1/2" so I can't get a good pic of it with my current equipment.. BUT, it went from an overall gray-pink tone, to a pastel pink body with flaming neon pink rims on the coralites, and bright white polyps. It was probably the most immediate and significant change I noticed.

- Pink Floydish: My wild Aussie SPS table that looked very much like a pink floyd at first. This is the second largest positive change I've noticed. It basically doubled down on all of it's colors. It's light neon green tips are now a full blown toxic green color, it's light blue-ish body is now a deep sapphire blue, and it's polyps went from a beige-almost-orange color to a flame orange. It probably still is my favorite coral, and it's the 3rd image from top in my previous post.

- PC Superman Table: I've noticed it's growth picked up significantly, most notably in structure.. Now what I mean by this, is it's growth went from producing new long arms branching out, then up, it now started producing little arms on every branch as well. Basically it's begun growing more like a traditional table.

- FHC Arc Light: Began growing MUCH faster, and it's body went from a tan color to it's traditional deep blue with neon green tips. It's like an undead fox flame honestly, not the most expensive or valuable color but it looks good in the background making colors up front pop.

- Oregon Tort: Growing faster. That's about it, color is the same, it just picked up the pace a little. Nothing to squawk at.

Bad Changes
- Fox Flame: Started dying immediately. Full blown tissue loss even at low intensity and coral got a beige color from it's hot red color I had before.

After really wondering about this I did a bit of reading and found people who swear up and down it needs to be really high up, and others say it has to be really low.. After further investigation, people who keep it high and get it colorful run T5/MH, people who keep it low and colorful run LED. Jason Fox keeps his on the sand bed, several times he's alluded to Fox Flame being a low light coral, considering in his personal 180g he runs 4 Actinic LED's and 2 Reef Brite Tech Strips, and he keeps them on the sand bed... I'm inclined to agree with him now. So... For the good of the tank, the fox flame either has to die, or be chiseled off the rock as much as possible. We'll see what happens. If he dies, he dies. I can get others from people, but maybe he'll adjust to high LED light, who knows.

- Yellow Milli: Turned purple. Pretty simple, went from a straight up yellow with light green tint to deep purple in like 3 days. Kinda unexpected, but a few others did the same... Such as;

- Vivid Rainbow Delight: Turned deep purple. No clue why. Maybe it darkened up in response to increased light, as LED pierces much deeper than T5, but who knows.. A few others turned green, like the --

- PearlWrecker: Turned green. This was a phony homewrecker that turned out pretty amazing, and someone said it reminded them of pearlberry a little hence the name.. It's got a green encrusting base, and it transitions into a baby blue body, with hot purple tips, blue-fire colored coralites, and yellow rings around the coralite inner tips and white polyps -- That's 6 colors on one coral, pretty amazing. It wasn't what it was supposed to be, but it looks like the Rocky Mountain Frags "Psychoberry". My buddies colony looks stellar, mine turned green with a purple tip, lol... stupid hobby.

The PearlWrecker has a chance to be the most colorful coral in my tank, with the Pink Floydish behind it, and Pinky The Bear behind that. As far as contrasting colors go, the Pink Floydish is probably set to be the nicest coral in my tank by miles. But the fact that pearlwrecker
 
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GoVols

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My diffuser lands tomorrow, very excited to put this thing on!! After seeing one in person last month, I immediately could tell it's more then it's cracked up to be.

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This week i picked up a:
- Jawbreaker Shroom
- TGC Tropic Thunder monti (or w/e it's called)
- Leng Sy Cap
- Hot Pink Milli (Wild Aussie)

Here's my typical desk view
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The Questionable PC Superman which has been fragged and looks lopsided now
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And my little Diabolic Pacman, which I had fragged into a puddle, finally growing back an arm.
AaaAaaAAaaA1201654654351IMG_0009.jpg
 
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Rakie

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How are you liking the Radion Diffusers? Are you still running the WWC setup?

Absolutely loving it, I actually made a post in @Janci's build thread. I can't say enough good stuff about them. I saw them awhile ago at a friends house and immediately saw they brought a whole bunch more to the table than was originally advertised, I was sold immediately. As soon as I put the diffuser on it was immediately a WOW moment.

Here's the short list of Pro's vs Cons

The Pros:
- Balances spectrum, improving coral color immediately -- not on a biological level, on a straight up 'visual' level
- Diminishes Shadows looks like T5
- Gives the coral more light, reaching the sides and undersides of corals a little better
- Improves spread dramatically
- Gets rid of Hot Spots
- Easier on the eyes having the LED's covered physically if you're watching TV or sitting on a couch, etc etc
- Looks like T5 with some shimmer -- Less than a halide shimmer, but similar
- Removes discoball effect almost entirely. You can still see faint bits, but it went from what I would call "Extreme" to "hard to notice"
- Cheap. It's the only thing EcoTech ever made that is reasonably priced.

The Cons:
- Flimsy, because it's very thin plastic
- Doesn't fit as snug as I'd like

What I'm most blown away by is the cost. I mean, I almost fear saying this thinking EcoTech will jack up the price. But the difference this thing makes is greater than going from a G3 to a G4. In fact, I'm almost willing to wager this thing will bring a G3 up to a G4 caliber light. It's that much of a game changer.

It looks like T5 with just a faint shimmer, like you had a white LED strip just to add some shimmer. It's almost perfect.
 
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Rakie

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I love how you give nice detailed answers in your thread!

Thanks haha. I try to think of a thread like an Archive. I know when I'm digging for answers and I see a question like "How's ____ now that you've used it for <time>?" and the response is something like "It's good" -- not very helpful! So someday someone might be digging and find this, and hopefully my rambling is helpful to them :D
 

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Thanks haha. I try to think of a thread like an Archive. I know when I'm digging for answers and I see a question like "How's ____ now that you've used it for <time>?" and the response is something like "It's good" -- not very helpful! So someday someone might be digging and find this, and hopefully my rambling is helpful to them :D
Or they just check the last FTS and ask the same questions again... lol
Be careful of that green slimer... they grow huge.
 
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Or they just check the last FTS and ask the same questions again... lol
Be careful of that green slimer... they grow huge.

You know, I love the green slimer because it's the canary in the mineshaft -- As soon as something is wrong with my water, he turns purple immediately. I learned a lot a long time ago by watching that guy. My last one lived on the frag rack, he was getting so big I had to frag him into a fat stump. one morning I found him on the acan, so this is his successor.

My last one looked like a little log lol, gotta admit, it had an awkward ugly charm about it.
 

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I added a video to my thread of a friend's tank.
The slimer there was enourmous. When they took the tank down they managed to take it out as 1 piece. For years it was the coral that took all the Alk and calcium.
I find them to be one of the more forgiving corals in the tank. They slow down growth, but never turned colour so far.
 

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How are you thinking of dealing with the bryopsis? I have a sps dominated tank with a small amt of bryopsis. I have been trying brightwells hydrat mg and have my mg up to 1600 for 2 weeks and I can't tell if it's having an effect. Thought about trying flucanazole, but worried it might cause an issue w the sps. Read that some people have had bleaching when they dosed while others haven't.
 
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How are you thinking of dealing with the bryopsis? I have a sps dominated tank with a small amt of bryopsis. I have been trying brightwells hydrat mg and have my mg up to 1600 for 2 weeks and I can't tell if it's having an effect. Thought about trying flucanazole, but worried it might cause an issue w the sps. Read that some people have had bleaching when they dosed while others haven't.

magnesium doesn't work for Bryopsis -- What USED to work for Bryopsis was Kent Tech-M magnesium, it worked because of the LITHIUM. Now that kent has changed the formula, it no longer works, nor does any other MAG supplement -- Because it was never the mag that did the work ;)

So. I used Fluconazole and it worked great -- Until we had a really hot day, then it came back seemingly overnight. Tried Flucon again, worked, until the next hot day... So this time, I'm spot treating with h202, which I know kills bryopsis very well.
 

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magnesium doesn't work for Bryopsis -- What USED to work for Bryopsis was Kent Tech-M magnesium, it worked because of the LITHIUM. Now that kent has changed the formula, it no longer works, nor does any other MAG supplement -- Because it was never the mag that did the work ;)

So. I used Fluconazole and it worked great -- Until we had a really hot day, then it came back seemingly overnight. Tried Flucon again, worked, until the next hot day... So this time, I'm spot treating with h202, which I know kills bryopsis very well.
Rakie,
@jason2459 told me that Kent runs a sub-line of chemicals and the mag product is the same formula that we used to use for bryopsis in the old Tech-M.

(lol)
I forgot :confused: the product line name that Jason gave me on Randy's forum.
 
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Rakie,
@jason2459 told me that Kent runs a sub-line of chemicals and the mag product is the same formula that we used to use for bryopsis in the old Tech-M.

(lol)
I forgot :confused: the product line name that Jason gave me on Randy's forum.

Interesting!

I might have to look into that... So far I did the remainder of my Fluconazole which was a 1/2 dose, turned off the skimmer to make sure it's doing it's thing and nothing is removed, and I'm going to be spot treating with h202 which burns the stuff up like kindling.
 

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Interesting!

I might have to look into that... So far I did the remainder of my Fluconazole which was a 1/2 dose, turned off the skimmer to make sure it's doing it's thing and nothing is removed, and I'm going to be spot treating with h202 which burns the stuff up like kindling.
I'll try to dig it up.
 
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