Lighting dilemma

[Krish]

Beautiful tank man! Yeah, you will need to keep track of alk, mag and calcium to promote good coraline growth. If you take a look at that link I posted on the other page, you'll see a bit about it there as well

 

[Reefbound]

Beautiful tank man! Yeah, you will need to keep track of alk, mag and calcium to promote good coraline growth. If you take a look at that link I posted on the other page, you'll see a bit about it there as well

Thanks, I just returned from the LFS and his ALK test measured a 2.0.

If thats correct wouldnt the PH be lower than the 8.4 that it is now?
I dont know if any of this would be a factor but here are the changes made in the last month.

Removed Emporer 400 (Cyano factory)
Added Max jet mod supposedly 2000 gal per hour
added 40 gal breeder tank as sump
added sump with mag drive 1200 return
added two other mj900's on a wavemaker 230gph x's 2
(that makes about 3300 gph give or take for head loss)
added new Octopus 150 skimmer.
added two peieces of dry Fiji rock (9 lbs)

Ive been reading a litlle and found that my ALK is low (2.8 and up) How could I raise this without affecting other things like making the PH go higher... Arm & Hammer? or was that Baking soda...

 

[sryder]

ed, try using a alk buffer such as kent. this should bring you in range. your not all that far off. I noticed alot of coraline on the back of your tank you may want to scrape some of it to send the spores to other areas. this will help seed the coraline into the other areas. it will come back. probably spread faster than those xenias.

 

[MikeS]

Luke...where are you getting those percentage figures? What are you basing them on? Did you even factor point intensity into it? reflector efficency? You are going to have to do a heck of a lot better than that to convince ANYBODY that 432 watts of T5 are going to come even close to producing the same amount of PAR reaching the tank as 1200 watts of MH, reguardless of the reflector...

Luke, IF you care to debate this with me or others...DO NOT continue to do so in this tread, it's disruptive, and totally irrelevent to the question Reefbound asked in the first place....start a different thread, Luke, if you are interested...

Reefbound...on the coralline...I have observed the same thing as others...mine tends to prefer to grow in areas not directly exposed to light, the tops of the rocks are the last place I tend to see coralline growth. Keeping your Ca and Alk in good parameters will go much farther than messing with your light. Coralline is an algae, don't forget that...it's oppritunistic, and it will grow when and where conditions meet its needs. As others have stated, there are many different types and colors of coralline, and some are more tolerent of certain conditions than others. In time, it will return, even on the tops of the rocks...

MikeS

 

[MarineTeng]

could you link this thread to the debate with luke if you have one, i'm curious as i am looking at getting some t-5's in the future

 

[Reefdaddy1]

Coraline will return in time, no problem, Acclimation period will take time.

As far as Lukes statement: I would whole heartedly agree with 250 watt bulbs, but could not say for sure with 400's. I think the guys to ask would be Grim reefer on RC. He is the most knowledgeable man I ever heard on T5 lighting, I beleive he ran a test of Par recently on Different bulbs and posted results there. Maybe he would know.

 

[Reefbound]

Everyone, Thanks for keeping this on topic sort of... Never thought it would spark a debate over which is better T-5 or Metal Halide. I picked T-5 for price per watts it was just cheaper and bulb replacement cost.
Everything in my tank has responded positively except the coralline algae. Sryder, maybe I will give that a try with the buffer,But first Im going to try to go weekly with my doseing and keep an eye on that for a week or two. I dose Oceans Blend every two weeks and all has been ok ,maybe I will try that and see what happens.As for the tops of the rock it just looks unnatural.When it comes time to change bulbs maybe I could try a 20000k bulb instead of the 10000k. From what I see there are three different types of T-5 bulbs available...hmm maybe a mix...

 

[Jiddy]

I dont know anything about fancy lighting par spectrums or the like, but i know Luke was tryin to help and some replies to that help are borderline aggressive, lighten up (pun-get it)

Reefbound, when you say that part of your choice for gettin T5's was because the cost efficiency. Im curious on this statement because i wanted T5's over MH but i always ASSUMED that getting 8 (or so) bulbs would be more expensive than 3 MH's for the bulb rotation needed, just curious if you looked into that and what you came up with (if this is a debate and disruptive ill start my own thread) i would be curious to know

thanks
Jidz

 

[Krish]

Im curious on this statement because i wanted T5's over MH but i always ASSUMED that getting 8 (or so) bulbs would be more expensive than 3 MH's for the bulb rotation needed

Jiddy...T-5's have to be replaced in less than a year so figure replacing 8 bulbs in about 8 months or so when MH bulbs can go over a year before being replaced

 

[Jiddy]

That was what i thought, for my situation, i would think it would be cheaper to go with MH's. Just curious

 

[Krish]

Yeah...And it's actually 6-8 months. This is Iwan's thread talking about his tank and T-5 lighting where he says in his first post they need to be changed every 6-8 months and then explains why on page 2

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14511&highlight=iwan


BTW, If you guys wanted to continue the lighting debate, you guys can always finish it here where it began a few months a go

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14453&highlight=mh+t5

 

[Krish]

I see the thread has been "re-opened" and I just wanted to add that the second link I posted in the above post is no longer valid so I may start a new thread to continue the discussion on MH's vs T-5's (we can maybe even toss in the new led lights, but I wouldn't include VHO's this time) if the old thread can't be located . I think it is a great topic to discuss because people are always considering lighting for their tanks and it's good to have the info available so we'll see how it goes

 

[jezzeaepi]

I enjoyed that thread and learned alot. Its too bad it was modded away.

 

[Krish]

I enjoyed that thread and learned alot. Its too bad it was modded away.

Yeah, it was a great thread, but wasn't intentionally removed. A slight mishap, but no worries...We'll have aother great discussion on it again soon

 

[Scooterman]

I enjoyed that thread and learned alot. Its too bad it was modded away.

No it wasn't modded away, I modded it al-vanish! I was posting the information you requested after searching a long time & somehow it blew up, I regret to say it is never never land. What I can do is see if I can find a similar thread we have & revive it, best I can do. I will re-vive another thread from a while back & we can talk about that there, it is on a similar subject matter.

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7006&highlight=Fluorescents

 

[jezzeaepi]

Thank you very much scooter, Ill head over to that thread.