My lil reef

[Rick.45cal]

 

[Rick.45cal]

 

[Rick.45cal]

So my friend came over this evening and helped me take down my ATI powermodule so I could clean it and change all the T5 bulbs. I won’t lie they’ve probably needed replacing for 18 months or so. I wasn’t excited about doing it because I was unsure of my bulb choice. After talking with some aquarists who grow some colorful and wicked florescent corals I decided to try replacing all of my T5’s with Giesmann Actinics. So I ordered 4 Giesmann “Actinic+” bulbs and 4 Giesmann “Pure Actinic” bulbs. I honestly was kind of thinking I wasn’t going to like this spread, but I fired up the fixture and let the bulbs come up to full brightness, took the pure actinic bulbs a few minutes to really get going. I’ll admit I wished I had’t waited so long to change the bulbs to these, everything suddenly was glowing and fluorescing. I took a couple photos before resetting the ballast back into dusk mode. I used the usual orange filter I use to take photos with my iphone and the tank just said BAZIIIIIIIIIINGA!!!

(I think I am going to like this bulb spread!

 

[Rick.45cal]

I’m loving the new bulbs. The corals really pop in the photos!

 

[Rick.45cal]

 

[drawman]

So you're 100% actinics??

 

[Abhishek]

Interesting bulb choice and really loving the color . What’s the difference between actinic plus and pure actinic ?

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[Philipgonzales3]

I’m loving the new bulbs. The corals really pop in the photos!

Wow, very beautiful tank! Awesome pictures!

 

[Rick.45cal]

So you're 100% actinics??

In name yes, but 4 of the 8 are the full blue spectrum so it not exactly just just actinics. My LED’s emulate ATI a “coral plus” bulb while the T5’s are on. It’s definitely more blue than I traditionally have enjoyed but I’m really liking it more than the whiter light I had before. I’m hoping the corals do too.

Interesting bulb choice and really loving the color . What’s the difference between actinic plus and pure actinic ?

Regards,
Abhishek

So the difference, is the “Actinic+” are the full blue spectrum with the 420nm actinic spectrum, the “pure actinic” bulbs are pure 420nm actinic lamps. I ordered these lamps about 18 months ago and giesmann has now changed the names of their bulbs. So who knows which is which now in the lineup lol.

Wow, very beautiful tank! Awesome pictures!

Thank you! It’s hard to believe all this lives in my kitchen/dining room area.

 

[enemec1]

this is amazing. any chance we can get a pic of the filtration system. I'm in the building stage of a 150g tank. Love the tank..

 

[Rick.45cal]

this is amazing. any chance we can get a pic of the filtration system. I'm in the building stage of a 150g tank. Love the tank..

Absolutely! Thanks for the compliment. Filtration is nothing special or even fancy. Just a Vertex Alpha 250 protein skimmer and a 7” 200 micron filter sock. The tank is dosed 6ml of NOPOx daily via dosing pump. Looks like it is about time to empty the skimmer

 

[Rick.45cal]

Here’s my saltwater mixing station. It’s hard plumbed to the tank if I decide to do a manual waterchange, but also has a fitting that my DOS pulls from for auto water changes. I am currently changing 1% of my actual water volume (160 gallons/ 606L) so 1.6 gallons a day, changed little by little over the whole 24 hour period. I’ll generally use 100 gallons out of this 150 gallon saltwater reservoir then I will make new saltwater with Instant Ocean. It’s plumbed to my DI unit so I just fill the tank up and dump the bags of salt in the top and let it mix for a couple hours. I’ll then adjust the Mg, Ca, and Kh if necesarry then turn the DOS back 0n in the Apex. The saltwater reservoir isn’t heated, and after the initial mixing the only circulation/aeration is from an airstone and a small airpump. (You can see it on top). My goal setting up this aquarium was to make sure I didn’t have to carry any buckets of water. So far it has worked really well. Currently I only have to mix saltwater every 62 days, hard to complain about that. No stirring required!

 

[Rick.45cal]

So I’ve spent the last few days setting up a GEO 818 calcium reactor with a GEO 618 secondary chamber. I wanted the transition from Balling solutions to CaRX to go as smoothly as possible so I did some math. I took what my daily alkalinity consumption was based off of the amount and concentration of the balling solution. Then I used that to figure out how many liters of 20 dKH reactor effluent in a tank with a 9.5dKh (11.5 dKh difference) would be required to maintain that, I then converted that to ml, then divided by the number of minutes in a day, and that gave me a flow rate that the reactor needed to be set at. So I set the flow rate on the reactor (90ml/min) with my used masterflex pump (pulling through the reactor), and then slowly started adding CO2. As the pH dropped in the chamber I started measuring the alkalinity of the effluent. It took about 48 hours but when I hit a pH of 6.62 in the reactor the effluent reached 21.8 dKH so I killed my dosing completely. It’s now been 24 hours and the tank has been at a constant 9.3 dKH. So my calculations paid off. I’m also exceptionally relieved to have made the transition from dosing to a CaRX in a heavy demand system like this so smoothly.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Everything seemed extra happy today!!!

 

[Rick.45cal]

 

[drawman]

Looks great as always Rick! That calcium Rx is a beast!

 

[ReefSlice]

This has got to be one of my favorite tanks on here, I love watching the updates. Had a few questions, could you list your stocking list and tell us how much you feed every day? And nopox seems to be your main source of nutrient reduction? My new tank is similar in size and I would love to try and replicate some of your methods!

 

[Rick.45cal]

Looks great as always Rick! That calcium Rx is a beast!

So far it’s working great! I had to swap the peristaltic pump around to pushing water instead of pulling water through the reactor, I suspect the negative pressure created by pulling on the reactor was resulting in me having to use excess CO2. We’ll see. I just changed that tonight.

 

[Rick.45cal]

This has got to be one of my favorite tanks on here, I love watching the updates. Had a few questions, could you list your stocking list and tell us how much you feed every day? And nopox seems to be your main source of nutrient reduction? My new tank is similar in size and I would love to try and replicate some of your methods!

Thank you, it’s become far more than I could have imagined when I started it.

So this is a fairly simple methodology, I’m old school so it’s heavy on rock, there’s probably 160lbs of pukani. A big protein skimmer, 200 micron mesh filter sock, and daily carbon dosing via NoPOx. I use activated carbon (about 500ml) in a bag tossed in a high flow area of the sump. I generally use it for a month, pull the bag for a month then the next month I’ll replace it with new carbon. (So there’s a month with no carbon). I notice the corals grow better without the carbon in the system.

I practice a philosophy of high input in and high output out. But they have to be balanced and that’s the real trick in this. I’ve personally found in this tank that it florishes with 5-15ppm NO3 and phosphates around 0.12ppm. I feed HEAVY, and even then sometimes it’s not enough. I’ve been dosing NO3 and PO4 to keep up. I feed LRS Reef Frenzy, LRS Fish Frenzy, LRS Herbivore Frenzy, Mysis, brine shrimp, nutrimar ova. (Not all at once, but I switch it up everytime). I generally feed twice a day. I also mix a couple powdered Tropic Marin coral foods in with the tank water that I defrost the frozen foods in before i dump them in the tank. (I only broadcast feed). I personally love the Tropic Marin Pro Coral Zooton, and Tropic Marin Pro Coral Phyton I will mix equal parts (three scoops of each). I generally feed twice a day. So the high output is every two weeks I add Prodibio bio digest, and daily the tank receives 6ml of NOPOx, this seems to keep the nutrients stable if I keep up with my feedings.

Stocking list as of now is probably pretty light for a tank this size. I’ve got a lubocks wrasse, 15 lyretail anthias, a scribbled rabbitfish, 3 gold assesors, 3 pajamma cardinals, 2 Mocha Vinci clowns, and a cleaner shrimp. There’s a whole clean up crew of various species of snails, scarlet hermits, blue leg hermits, emerald crabs, 8 brittle stars, I’m sure I am forgetting a bunch of stuff. I could use a few more fish!

I hope this helps, when you think of anything else ask away!

 

[Rick.45cal]

Picture of the day!