M & G s reef the start and beyond

[Frankie]

Simply wonderful Guerry. Always a pleasure to watch your builds

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[eww]

Ok - gotta ask

Whats the ID/name on this thing? Some sorta encrusting montipora??

Looks like a Ziggy Stardust monti to me.

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[Rhodes19]

Thanks Chris, I'm not holding my breath till yall come down LOL but looking forward to it just the same. I'm sure we can find soon goodies in the frag tank!

I'd like that. :bounce: I'll need to get the 120 up and running first so I have a place for all those corals.

 

[Guerry]

Ok - gotta ask

Whats the ID/name on this thing? Some sorta encrusting montipora??

it's a reverse super man

 

[Guerry]

very nice build!!!! so how does your water change setup work?....

very well thank you LOL just joking anyway it's dual box design each side holding equal amounts of water one side is a flow threw design where overflow water passes threw the other is mix tank. With both being tied together they maintain same temp, so when time to do water change I just turn a valve that by passes flow threw chamber then pump that tank down after that i just turn a couple of other valves to pump water from mix tank to what I call the exchange tank then return flow from overflow and water change is done. It's super easy, quick and system never knows it's happen

 

[Guerry]

on the 4th picture the little box with the tube going in?...what is it for.... dosing?

It's the output from cal. reactor

 

[Guerry]

Your outa control Guerry, I'm semi-retired and don't have that much time for playing with my reeftanks.... though I could take a little break in Salmon fishing to get more done. Very nice acrylic work on the sump, wishing I would have just made mine by design as well instead of modding a 75g. The corals are looking great under your LED's and finally getting around to building mine now and should be receiving my VDM and 2-channel dimming cables for my Apex on Monday. What % are you up to with the LED's now on the DT ??


Cheers, Todd

Thanks, I'm running 45% which gives me 500+ par @ 12" below water suface and 200+ @ bottom of tank

 

[Rhodes19]

Thanks, I'm running 45% which gives me 500+ par @ 12" below water suface and 200+ @ bottom of tank

Guerry, how do those par numbers compare to the 250w or 400w MH that you were running before?

 

[Guerry]

Chris pertty much double what I had, I took almost two months to slowly bring par up to where it is now. Thats a big mistake lots of fokes make, buy leds don't have par meter and try to match light apearance. What they get is tank full of bleeched out coral and come to the concusion that coral don't do well under led lighting LOL

 

[Rhodes19]

Chris pertty much double what I had, I took almost two months to slowly bring par up to where it is now. Thats a big mistake lots of fokes make, buy leds don't have par meter and try to match light apearance. What they get is tank full of bleeched out coral and come to the concusion that coral don't do well under led lighting LOL

Nice. So you doubled your PAR and you are only running at 45% power. I guess I'll have to find a PAR meter once I get it set up. Oh, are you using a ReefKeeper Elite V2? How do you like it? A controller is something else I want for the next build. Maybe a joint Christmas present???

 

[Guerry]

Well it's been awhile since I've actually posted anything about my system so just thought I'd share a few pic's I took today

and heres a few of display tank

 

[Rhodes19]

Nice corals! I like the different colors and textures.

 

[Bob_Posey]

AWESOME!

 

[Guerry]

Whats up everybody, been quite awhile since I've been here! I thought I should do a little updating so here we go. Last April I did a full tank break down to change all my substraight and rock, I had been buying dry tongo branch and pukani rock which did needed curing. For this I set up a 150gal tank and let rock seed for 5 months before the big break down, all rock went threw phosfree soak before starting curing cycle.

Here's a tank picture before break down


then after the dust setles LOL


I've made a lot changes to the way I maintain my reef over the last coupe of years, I had come to point where I was ready to just break my tank down quit! during this time I sold most of the nicest SPS corals only poblem was I couldn't find homes for every thing LOL so big changes were in order. First I pulled the plug on all cabon dosing removed as many as 5 diffent reactors leaving only my SRO6000 skimmer for filtation and the funny thing is tank started looking better after a few months of no water changes or me doing anything for that matter. So now days it's just simple and no more trick of the week reef keeping for me, maybe a monthy water change and use dosing pumps to keep alk and cal rock solid. The next big change for me was my lighting, I have tried everything I know to get corals to hold their true colors under LEDs with spectums of 405, 420, 430, 450, 460, 475, 490, 530, and 630 I think that about covers a full spectum setup LOL any way I decided to add some T5s to see if that would help


wow I started seeing the lower side of corals get their color back as well as new colors I hadn't seen in a long time which leads me to where I am now no leds I switch to full T5 lighting and loving it!!!!

here's a few tanks shots of where I am now




thanks Guerry

 

[1guydude]

Maybe u were just shocking the coral with all that bright narrow spec lighting?
I'm sure u know ur stuff. Looks good.
Is that a 210g?
D

 

[Guerry]

Maybe u were just shocking the coral with all that bright narrow spec lighting?
I'm sure u know ur stuff. Looks good.
Is that a 210g?
D

thanks, I'm still a newbe but have learned a few things along the way. Your dead on about narrow spectum but I'm not going to get into bashing leds here as many swear by them as I once did I will only say I'm going back to old school reef keeping and it seems to be working well for me now

 

[tike]

Tank looks awesome! I also moved away from all the automation stuff, calcium reactor, phophate reactor, ato, bio pellets. It just seemed whenever I was away for sometime, something would fail and screw he tank up. I now manual dose and do monthly water changes and top of daily. If I do take a vaca I still use the ato.

 

[Guerry]

Tank looks awesome! I also moved away from all the automation stuff, calcium reactor, phophate reactor, ato, bio pellets. It just seemed whenever I was away for sometime, something would fail and screw he tank up. I now manual dose and do monthly water changes and top of daily. If I do take a vaca I still use the ato.

thanks, yell I think I've tried every magic potion, blue bottle and gimmic out there LOL now days it's just over skimming , a little ozone and a couple of dosing pumps to keep alk and cal where they need to be. I never could keep my cal reactor stable up one week and down the next. Funny thing is it took me five short years to figure out to do what works me and stop trying to do what works for others. I'm going to add a kalk reactor to my system to help cut back on two part and it will be controlled using dosing pump as well, I'm up to 187ml of EVS 2 part a day which is dosed every hour and thats per part LOL

 

[user 26995]

Beautiful tank. Thank you for sharing. I picked up a couple dosing pumps and am going to set them up on my 240. Still working on where and how. any info on how yours is set up would be helpful.
thanks

 

[Guerry]

Beautiful tank. Thank you for sharing. I picked up a couple dosing pumps and am going to set them up on my 240. Still working on where and how. any info on how yours is set up would be helpful.
thanks

Thanks, My pumps are controlled by my Reef Keeper. I first brought alk and cal to the levels I wanted to keep at then did no dosing for a couple of days then retested water to see how much drop I had from there I used reef calulator to see how much I needed to dose to bring numbers back up. With this info I was able to figure ml per day and from there to the hour then set timer based on 1.1ml per minute. This took a little dialing in but I'm able to keep rock solid alk and cal now, I still test every few weeks and if needed add a few seconds to timers to keep up with growth. Mag seems to stay stable with just water changes but when I start adding kalk I will start testing it more often

hope this helps and glad to answer any more ? you may have

thanks Guerry