My 120 gallon SPS progression.

[CoralWealth]

any update on how your tank is doing?

 

[29bonsaireef]

Do you live in FL? Never seen another tank with Montastraea Cavernosa before, if thats what this is. Had a piece grown out from about 2 heads to over 300.

 

[ikolbaba06]

Do you live in FL? Never seen another tank with Montastraea Cavernosa before, if thats what this is. Had a piece grown out from about 2 heads to over 300.

I do not live in Florida. I bought that at a lfs. That was before I moved and had to sell my tank. That was when you could purchase large colonies of coral instead of frags.

 

[ikolbaba06]

any update on how your tank is doing?

Yea I have some terrible iPhone pics to come!

 

[ikolbaba06]

These are all top down with my iPhone so not the best pics.

A nice little sarmentosa colony. Pretty purple/pink tips on this guy.

Not sure on this guy. Still coloring up. It is a mariculture colony and I’m having a hard time coloring up most of them as you will see soon.

Another Mari colony. Just starting to get the red/pink and hopefully the polyps stay this yellow color!

Supposedly a Mari “Pink Floyd” type. I can’t get this color to look good with iPhone. It’s not green at all in my tank and it’s super bright.

Bali shortcake. This was the smallest coral I have ever purchased. Just starting to thicken and encrust. Again terrible pic!

Yellow tips. Can’t remember from where but it’s doing well and starting to grow for me.

Again an awesome yellow piece but coming out green on the phone. I bought this one as a caroliniana. Can’t wait as this is one I’m very interested in.

My red planet starting to take off.

My S.C. orange passion doing its thing. Slow grower for me at this time.

Mari Plana I believe. It’s been somewhat dormant but colors are coming out.

Mari unknown. It greened out me but colors are starting to show.

Tyree pinky the bear frag. It’s based out like crazy can’t wait for it to starting growing upward.

Wwc my little red Ferrari. The second smallest frag I have ever purchased.

Hard to photo this guy. Turning into a favorite as I love the growth tips. A tricolor of some sort.

Mari efflo colony supposedly. It’s based out and tripled in size since I received it. It’s just now starting to shoot out purple nub growths that will hopefully form the table. It’s taken up a lot of real estate so I really want it to take off.

My favorite colony so far. Rmf last dragon.

Another Mari colony. Greened our but starting to color up. The efflo is encroaching on this coral and just fries it so I may need to move it soon.

Mariculture millepora colony I believe. It’s coming back pink/yellow so far. Not totally sure on what it’s going to do.

Mari colony. Also not as green as this but dumb phone pulls in green. It’s another of the favorites right now. It seems to be changing a little bit with some orange in the body and blueish tips.
The top right acro is rr yellow matrix. Very slow grower and still basing out.

Rmf red devil. I think an underrated acropora.

Bubblegum digitata

Pretty hairy tabling Mari acro. Not sure on species but very different growth and shape of coral overall. It’s a sea foam green base with yellow polyps and blueish new growth tips.

Not so good pic of my Walt Disney.

Mari bonsai type but this thing has super thick branches.

A Mari prostrata I think. This is the most frustrating acro. Came in red vase with blue tips but just now starting to turn pink again. It’s been a brown turd for over a year.

Newest frag in the tank. Asd rainbow millepora

Jf foxflame growing well and coloring up nicely

The piece in the middle of the pic is rmf extreme shortcake. I accidentally fragged it a few times trying to get it stick to the rock.

Mari acro. Not too sure where it’s headed. But I see orange, red and green peeking out.

This is my absolutely favorite coral. I just fragged it so looks terrible but jf beach bum. Doing very well in my tank.

I hope you guys like the pics. These Mari acros are really trying my patience. Everything I put in that is from a different thank is doing well and keeping colors but these maris are frustratingly slow at coloring up. I’ve debated about pulling them out but I just can’t do it yet.

 

[ctpeasy]

The brightest yellow coral I have ever seen. Not totally sure what it is yet. It rtnd a bit and is now growing back and I just love the highlighter yellow!

Pinky the bear starting to color back up. I got it pretty pale.

Orange passion just starting to darken up. Also one that was pale when I got it. Any of you guys have placement advice? It's getting good flow and midway under right puck of my ap700.

Sorry about the iPhone pics. I increased white for the pics on my leds.

Orang Passion, aka, tenuis like lots of light and lots of flow.

 

[ikolbaba06]

I just scraped the glass and everything is looking nice. Some more poor iPhone pics for now

This is the right side of the tank

Left side of the tank.

A fts with frag tank. Yes I love my kessils!

 

[ikolbaba06]

I ordered a mq510 apogee par meter finally so I can really know what is going on with these leds. It comes tomorrow so I’ll update soon with results.

 

[kevlow]

I ordered a mq510 apogee par meter finally so I can really know what is going on with these leds. It comes tomorrow so I’ll update soon with results.

Subscribed to your thread.

I will be interested to learn how your Apogee works out. I borrow an older Apogee par meter but I really should buy one for myself.

 

[ikolbaba06]

Thank you kevlow

 

[ikolbaba06]

Ok. So a par meter is an awesome tool! I just checked my tank with my brand new toy today.

And a sweet holding rod.

So I wasn’t totally under lighting my tank but I was close. At the top of the tank I was hitting 250-260 par and sand bed was around 80-120 par depending on the area of the sand bed. I checked at 100% with the lights at 13” above water line and got only 350-380 at top acros. So I dropped the lights to 6.5” above water line and matched the par from before and lowered intensity to 49% from 74%. I’m going to be slowly raising the intensity.

I was really amazed by the spread on these lights and that’s why I lowered them. The par spread was very gradual side to side and slightly front to back. When it’s not so late I will get some numbers up for you guys. I will say that a par meter is really nice to have to clarify what is actually going on in the tank.

 

[ikolbaba06]

So I saw a cool light refraction on my basement floor that is hard to tell by phone pic but very easy to see by the eye. It seems the kessils ap700 has pink/red , purple, yellow/orange, deep blue to cyan colored led chips. Pretty cool to see it all in a line!

From right to left: pink/red, yellow/orange, deep blue cyan green and purple mixed in. Terrible pic sorry!

So update on the par. I’ve dropped the lights down and the room is much darker due to the lack of spill over. The corals seem to be just fine since I checked par and matched it when I lowered the lights. I’ve been increasing intensity slowly and now I’m reaching close to 270-280 on my two main par measuring points, like I said slowly lol. At the sandbed I’m only hitting in the high 100’s so my goal is to have as much of the tank in the 250+ range as I can. Likely the sand bed will only be in the low 200’s but I’ll see what I can do. The goal for the top sps is to be at the 350-425 range.

 

[Makers Marc]

Any updates on how the Kessil ap700s grew your corals by themselves? It looks like uou got the par you wanted by mounting them 7" above water level....

But did that end up causing LED burn on your SPS?

Why did you eventually add on t5s?