Labridaedicteds 180 Build

Labridaedicted · Oct 9, 2022

Susan Edwards said:
that's exciting! And yeah, $$$! How old is the baby? I'm assuming you referred to a baby/child and not a new tank/baby lol's

Yeah, pricey, but should give me pretty perfectly even coverage that I can run at low drive, so the LEDs should keep their output for a whole.

Little man is gonna be 7 months this week. Born back in march!

keithw283 · Oct 9, 2022

Labridaedicted said:
So, back in March I swapped my SB Extreme lights for radions when the white channel failed on one of the SBs (otherwise, loved those things). When I did that, I added the 3 radion gen 5 pros in addition to the aquatic life t5 rack.

After the time it's been going I've decided that the 3 radions aren't enough in terms of coverage to get the acros growing like I want. The 24x24 coverage estimate provided seems to be a bit exaggerated and I would suspect it's more in line with 12x24 in terms of good coverage for sps. It seems to dissipate rapidly outside that. So. I made the I'm going to say too expensive choice to add an additional 3 radions to the array and run the vertically front to back to get a more even coverage. I did decide to get the radion blues for the 3 new ones as it should help make the colors pop. They won't be here till next week, but I'll post pics when I get them installed and dialed in. Gonna have to dust off the ol PAR meter as well to make sure the PAR doesn't get set too high (don't wanna raise par,really, just even it out.)

Sorry for the lack of recent updates. Been busy with the new baby, but ill be getting more active soon.

What are the par numbers you are getting with the current lights you have? Which aquatic life fixture do you have? I am in the early stages of my 180 and was looking at a similar light set you you have? Great looking tank btw

Labridaedicted · Oct 9, 2022

keithw283 said:
What are the par numbers you are getting with the current lights you have? Which aquatic life fixture do you have? I am in the early stages of my 180 and was looking at a similar light set you you have? Great looking tank btw

I'll put together a par map before and after adding the new lights. My rockscape is quite tall, with the center stack almost reaching the surface of the water. The highest coral there, being my Rainbow Doom and a cactus pavona. They both get close to 450 par where they are. The high Par has actually kept the cactus pavona in check as I've had it become quite invasive in lower pars.

The main ledges where most of the acro colonies are growing are kind of in hot spots as they're under the radions, so they actually are getting around 350 par. They are growing like weeds there. The problem is there are gaps and I'm seeing some stuff paling or reaching for light at the sand bed due in large part from shading as the radions are running horizontal now and kind of center over the shelfs of the rocks.

The aquatic life fixture I'm running currently is the 61" t5ho fixture with the 4 t5ho. I'm running ATI coral plus bulbs in all 4 slots. They help even everything out fairly well (I also run the diffuser panels on the radions).

Labridaedicted · Nov 10, 2022

Well, I decided 5 radion xr 30s (3 pro, 2 blue) were the sweet spot on the system. Running through an acclimation on them with the 2 new fixtures. Didn't pop the par up as much as I thought, but certainly evened the coverage out. Par is basically flat across the tank at the same depth across. Dialed it in so top third is 300+ and lower third is 300-. I'll know in the next week or so how things react, but the par of increased by about 50 at about 1/3 depth of the tank (where the Walt Disney is at).

Labridaedicted · Dec 9, 2022

Bit of a meat market in the Frag tank right now...

The one on the right and the Cynaria are a little upset since I just moved them to swap the Frag racks for a cleaning.

Labridaedicted · May 5, 2023

Well. I guess I have owed y'all an update for a while and the email today reminded me that I need to do that! Things have been going fairly smoothly and I've been really pretty happy with the way things have been going for the last month or so. I made a few changes and upgrades as well, so let me go over things.

First off, I started running the reef moonshiner method on my system back in February. So far, I've been quite happy with it and the dosing is fairly easy with my array of dosing pumps. I do manually dose 3 elements daily because they're only being dosed in quantities of approximately 90ųl which I don't have a dosing pump that accurate so I use micropipettes for those. I will say I feel like I am noticing some better coloration in my Acros, so I am pleased with it so far.

I also upgraded my skimmer to a Reef Octopus Regal 250 External from my Octo Regal 200 Int. I was really tight in my sump which serves as basically the distribution for the system with like 5 pumps in there so I wanted it to be a little more open for everything. The new skimmer is also enormously more efficient than the old one. I used to get about a gallon of med-dark skimmate every 2 months, and now I get the same volume in approximately 2 weeks. I also started running biopellets again and have had better results this time as I feed much heavier now so nutrients are staying reasonable.

I also started running an ATS which I have had mixed opinions on the results. Not getting nice green thick mats of algae, But more a yellow slimey layer.