Texas 180 half hex tank

[Monster reefer]

Hey guys I'm Christian from Texas I have a 180 half hex aquarium, I have had it running for a little over 1 year now.
It's Looking quite sad I want it to look amazing. I need yalls help.

I've gone through lots of ups and downs with the aquarium in the beginning of the year.
I just changed my lights from MH to LEDs about 2-3 months ago.
I'm running 4 kessel 160w
2X 48" ecoxotic 420 actinic led stip
2X48" ecoxotic 20k led strip the 4 are connected to a one touch ecoxotic lighting timer.

And some of the fish and corals I currently have in the tank.

 

[TD13]

FIRST!!!!

Nice tank, good luck! Don't hesitate to ask any questions!!
Rule 1. The only things that happen quickly in this hobby are bad things.

Maintain a decent water change schedule and look to your inhabitants to see if they are happy. As long as your parameters are in the "normal" range, leave it be.

 

[Monster reefer]

I run an apex system which is awesome but I need to play around with it a lot more lol.

I have green hair algae and it looks bad I remove it, and have. A sea hair, a long spine, lawnmower blenny.
Some snails not sure how many non are turbo snails though, they all seam to die on me for some reason.
I have a sand shifting starfish, 2 queen conchs I thought I only had one , not sure where the other one came from.

Water parameters as of 3/3/16
Salt level: 1.026
Temp: 73.1
Ph: 8.11
ORP:442( I just did a lot of cleaning on the tank tonight)
Rest of water test tomorrow along with water change.

 

[TD13]

I have green hair algae and it looks bad I remove it, and have.
Temp: 73.1

Is your temp really 73.1!?!? That seems COLD to me! Mine averages 78.5.

NoPoX will make your Po4 go bye bye...

@Randy Holmes-Farley parameter suggestions
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/

Food for thought.

 

[chefjpaul]

what are the green kessils?

 

[Monster reefer]

what are the green kessils?

The green ones are more yellow in color, and I did not like them I wanted more blue do I took out the 2 green and replaced with the blue tuna kessels.

Is your temp really 73.1!?!? That seems COLD to me! Mine averages 78.5.

NoPoX will make your Po4 go bye bye...

@Randy Holmes-Farley parameter suggestions
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/

Food for thought.

"Coral reefs are found in shallow water where sea surface temperatures range from 68° F to 97° F.More than 90 percent of the world’s coral reefs occur in the Indo-West Pacific biogeographic region. Reef systems also can be found in the West Atlantic, East Atlantic, and East Pacific oceans between 30° N and 30° S. Most reef species are endemic to the region in which they are found."
Source: https://php.radford.edu/~swoodwar/biomes/?page_id=837

 

[TD13]

Just shooting you some ideas. I don't know of many people that keep their tanks quite that cold.

 

[chefjpaul]

Those green leds are fresh water lights, hence a wrong spectrum helping algae growth.

As far as water temp, sure you maybe right with an article, but there are variations to that statement, and with all the successful / stable reef tanks in this hobby there is usually a reason.

What are the other major parameters?

 

[Monster reefer]

Yes the temp I will agree it's a little low, I like to run it about 75-76.
The hair alage was in the aquarium when I was running MH with the 4X48" led strips.
But yes I think the green kessel lights might have added to the groth. But are no longer running on the tank.

 

[chefjpaul]

You might want to put out all your info for the guys to chime in.
All parameters, filtration, sump set up, dosing, etc..

Your tank might be a good candidate for the h2o2 thread or a carbon dose regiment.

Nice tank btw-

 

[Monster reefer]

You might want to put out all your info for the guys to chime in.
All parameters, filtration, sump set up, dosing, etc..

Your tank might be a good candidate for the h2o2 thread or a carbon dose regiment.

Nice tank btw-

Cool, thank you. I'll have to post on the h202
I'm going to post water parameters tomorrow when I do a water change.

Sump design:
The aquarium and sump are made by Marineland used as a an old store store display system. They are bout close to 15 years old.
The water drains by a 2" drain with a " T " shape design that drops into the left hand side of my sump witch holds a built in hearted whitch may or may not work. Turned it on once set it to 75° and it brought the take to 95° in about 5-6 hours lost lots of corals the next day
Their is a sponge filers that all the water in the tank passes through be for going into the rest of the sump witch is an open are with a small frag rack holds empty frag plugs, I have two return pumps(will name them tomorrow) one pumps to the left side of the tank and the other to the right hand side where the drain is. A skimmer witch is made for a nano tank but does a good job I clean the skimming cup about every two- three days.

The picture above is of the marine land aquarium filtration system, mine does not have the bio wheel or trays that are shown here. I used the hole you see next to the heater to collect the drain water be for going to the place where the trays are.

Here is the skimmer that I am useing with a couple of modifications to the drain by extending it with pvc and it sits in my sump attach to a post with some zip ties.

 

[Monster reefer]

Here is the tank this morning

Water parameters
Specific Gravity: 1.026
Temperature: 73.3
pH: 8.09
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0

 

[Monster reefer]

Oh yeah here is a picture of the sump. You can't see the return pumps one exits the left and on on the back right side.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Welcome to R2R!

 

[Monster reefer]

Welcome to R2R!

Thank you

 

[Bunnee911]

Wow! A MARS. I have wanted one for ages. BTW, i run the backpack II and I took the blue bale stuff out. Mine was catching detritus. That is not where I wanted to catch it.

 

[Monster reefer]

Yeah Mars makes great aquariums that last for ever!

 

[jsbull]

Monster, please post your water parameters prior to the water change. That will be more indicative of why your tank is where it is.

I think your temp needs to change slowly up to the 77-78 degree range. Aside from a few specific species tanks, I don't know anyone running a reef tank that low.

One flag that goes up for me is that I don't see any coraline algae taking over. In a year, it should be pretty wide spread.

 

[Monster reefer]

I did not do a water change today. But I did check my water parameters that are posted above.
I did add a hearter the water is up to 75° I did not want to make it jump up above 75 in a day.
In all my years of reef keeping I have not really had a lot of Coraline alage groth in any of my tanks.

Here is a picture of my old aquarium in Corpus Christi

 

[chefjpaul]

Hey bud,
I think they meant these as well:
ALK
MG
CA
I would double check the NO3