Beautiful corals!
I'm super interested to see if you notice any changes in your corals after several months under LEDs.
thank you sir. The tank has had some good and some bad. I’ll do a general system info update off this post!
Tank is slated to come down some time late January early feb. After saving and searching for about 3 years now, interviewing and trying out a few different builders we came to a decision and have finally designed something we can work with inside our budget. Our new house is in the very early part of the build. Slab should
Be poured at some point in the next couple weeks. No fish room unfortunately. Just not in the budget.
New tank will go up first thing so I can get to filling it ASAP. All the rock work has been curing for a year now at this point. I feed it HEAVILY and have an algae turf scrubber on it which is churning out about 2-3 cups worth of turf every week or two. Tons of feather dusters and sponges everywhere so it is good and mature. Bacteria levels should be plenty high enough to just
Transfer over all fish immediately. It MAY even be processing more nutrients than my current tank.
Regarding my current tank....I’ve been keeping up on husbandry. As much as I can. Water changes have been taken care of through frag shipping. So I change about 5% per week. Keeping alkalinity very stable through the calcium reactor and keeping phosphate under 0.1 ppm. Issue I’m having now is the tank is so happy that the annoyances are growing faster than the sps are. I’m pulling out slimy mats of blue cloves that coat the sandbed, and putting Kalk paste all around the sps so they don’t shade the bases to death. Lava lamp mushrooms are out of control as well and im having to nuke them constantly as well. From an overall tank health and “natural reef” perspective. It’s a roaring success. Almost zero bare rock is left visible. Every surface is covered by life. But my desire for an artificial looking “fruit stand” type aquascape of similarly sized acropora colonies is being significantly hindered through natural growth. It is what it is. I hope I am able to curtail these types of pest softies in my next tank.
Regarding the effect of leds on the corals compared to the metal halides. I would call it overall a net zero gain as far as tank health goes. Be it known. I’m a metal halide fan. I like them and will continue to encourage their use to those who are curious about trying them. I think the real magic in metal halides lies in the 6500k and 10,000k bulbs. You can get a similar spectrum and aesthetic of a 14000 or 20000k bulb easily with full spectrum leds. It’s tough to get that same blend of wavelengths a good 6500k or 10000k bulb puts out. I wouldn’t dare try to tune my leds to visually match a 6500k bulb. I don’t anticipate good things would result. Despite the fact that I love how that actually looks. But...there is a lot of hype going on with different lighting styles and much of it is just sunshine pumping. People love to justify their investments. I am an avid believer of
@Dana Riddle ’s saying “there are no bad lights, just bad application” and I echo that constantly when helping people with lighting questions. More Important than nailing some specific par number, controllability, aesthetic appeal, or some immeasurable/undefinable “quality” to a lighting modality, is managing expectations. Once you have clear expectations, your lighting choices become much clearer. Or at least easier to guide.
Through using well established spectral programs and par levels/acclimation, I’ve been able to basically maintain the same alkalinity consumption as before the switch. It slowed briefly for a few weeks while I acclimated, but my calcium reactor setting is back to its original place. The reef breeders do a great job at eliminating hot spots from pucks. It’s a blanket style light that covers end to end so there isn’t any funky leaning of new growth or twisting of branches. 90% of my corals look basically identical to before under 20k metal halide lighting. Rendering and all. I don’t run a super blue setting outside of a brief dawn and dusk. Visually the overall ambient color temp is about the same as 20k metal halides. No weird morphing or color loss. No reduction in growth, with the exception of ONE coral. My RR Rainbow Loom has totally lost all of its color and has now gone dormant. Otherwise everything else looks exactly the same as before. No false fluorescence or goofy color lies like led haters swear will happen.
Now....I will admit most of my acros are on the easier side. I don’t keep any historically difficult species to my knowledge. I think the Most challenging coral I own is probably my acropora humilis which is easily one of the fastest growing and pleasantly colored corals in the tank. Especially under whites. I can only report what has been my own observation. On my next tank I intend to follow something closer to the WWC philosophy, just in reverse. They run a very high par and lower kelvin photoperiod before open and a lower par heavy blue setting during the lengthy business hours. I will run lower par heavy blues during my work hours when I am away from home, and tune them down to 10-14k bright white high par for the evening hours when I can be home to enjoy the tank.
Allow me to clear out some of the blue cloves this weekend and next week when I have a little free time, I’ll take some updated pictures of some things and post them to the profile.
