Mark's Reef

Tank Update - January 2007

Mark — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 15:06:00 GMT

I've had the new lights running for about 6 weeks now. Most of the corals have responded well to the new lights. However, I did have a few corals that got burned by the new lights so they've been moved to areas with lower light levels and are recovering.

The new lights have definately brought out the colors of the corals. It's too early to tell if growth has increased although it does appear that some pieces have begun to grow faster.

I got a bunch of new corals from ReeferMadness in December - 3 nice colonies of SPS as well as about 30 assorted frags including SPS, LPS and mushrooms. I lost a few of the SPS frags to RTN but most of them are doing well and beginning to encrust and get some nice color.

Of course finding a place for everything required moving some rocks around to make room for everything so the tank looks a little different now. I've been trying to get some decent pictures but the 20K bulbs make it tough to get the colors right. Once I figure out how to get the white balance correct, I'll post some more photos.

New Lighting

Mark — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:25:00 GMT

I’ve had my 180 gallon tank for around 14 months now and have been using the power compact lights that came with the tank. The original lighting consisted of 6 - 96 watt bulbs. I used 4 – 10K bulbs and 2-Dual Actinic bulbs. The lights were about 2 inches from the water surface. The tank always looked quite bright all the way to the bottom.

Contrary to popular opinion, you can grow SPS corals under PC lights – you just need to keep the lights close to the water and the corals high in the tank. In the 12 months since I’ve been putting corals into the tank, I’ve only lost one coral – a short tentacle plate coral. I don’t really know why this coral died, but it slowly wasted away over a period of about a month and certainly could have been due to a lack of intense light.

I’ve been thinking about switching to metal halides for quite a while now but really wanted to get through the summer heat before I went and added new lighting. I did a lot of research on-line to try to come up with a plan for upgrading. In late October, my local fish store had a pair of 400 watt DE fixtures and ballasts that he was willing to sell for a very good price. So, I went ahead and bought them and started planning on a way to mount them.

The canopy that came with the tank was only about 4” tall – just enough to house the PC lights. Obviously that wasn’t going to work so I began building a new canopy. I ended up using some 1x2 and 1x4 lumber for the framing and covered this with ½” oak plywood. I got some oak doors used for kitchen cabinets and used them to close up the front of the canopy. The inside of the canopy was painted gloss white and the outside was stained to match the oak stand that the tank is sitting on.

Inside of the canopy, I fashioned mounting rails for the metal halide lights that would keep them as high as possible so that I could slowly acclimate the corals to the new light. The fixtures are approximately 14” from the surface of the water. I tried orienting the fixtures a few different ways and determined that the best light coverage was achieved when the reflectors were mounted parallel to the front of the tank.

In addition to the metal halides, I also installed 4 - 36 “ fluorescent tubes. I mounted two along the front and two along the back of the canopy using reflectors salvaged from some old fixtures that I had lying around. These bulbs are going to be used as supplemental lighting so that I can view the tank without firing up the metal halides.

Once everything was assembled and wired up, I turned the lights on. I turned the fluorescents on first and, as expected, they are rather dim. They provide enough light to view the tank but are definitely not adequate to get anything growing.

I then fired up the metal halides. After a 5-10 minute warm up period, the tank started glowing with color. The 20K bulbs really highlight the colors of the corals and are almost like bright actinic bulbs. The bulbs burn with a nice blue color and produce very defined glitter lines on the sandy bottom. Somewhat surprisingly, they actually look dimmer than the original PC lights. I’m guessing that this is largely due to the difference in the color of the bulbs and that a 10K or 14K bulb would really brighten things up. This isn’t a problem for me because I actually prefer a dimmer light. I’ve always preferred viewing the tank under the actinic lights because I really like the blue color and the way that the colors of the corals come out.

Overall, the project turned out as pretty much as expected. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll gradually acclimate the corals to the new light starting with a 2 hour photoperiod and gradually increasing the time the metal halides are on to 6-8 hours. I may also start moving them closer to the surface of the water if I feel the need to increase the intensity of the light.

My 180 Gallon Reef

Mark — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:23:00 GMT

I purchased my 180 gallon tank in Sept. 2005 as a complete setup from someone who was moving out of town. It had been running for around 4 years as a fish-only tank with around 200 lbs. of Marshal Island and Fiji rock so it was pretty well established when I got it.

I brought the tank home along with all of the water loaded into a bunch of containers so that I could get it back up and running the same day. Everything got setup during the course of the day and the fish were added back into the tank that evening with no losses.

About 6 weeks after I got the tank setup, I started to add corals. I initially started with some soft corals (Xenia, Anthelia, Green Start Polyps, Mushrooms) and then a couple of months later I began to add LPS corals and SPS frags.

The tank is now a little over a year old and seems to be doing quite well. I've got around 30 different types of corals and all of them seem to be growing and doing well. You can see some photos here http://community.prestage.com/photos/default.aspx.