Hey. Can I get a frag of the pink zoas in the upper left corner. I can give you this frag in return. I've already had it on a disk for like 2 months and it has 2 large polyps w/ 2 babies.

PS they are more vivid in person. The picture has too much white balance.

Sure, I'm going to be out of town next week, but I'll PM you when I get back and we can hook it up!

K. I have spring break next week. It would be best to meet around star aquatics whenever you get back.

shhhhhh..... im starting a 40B!!!!! Woot woot! Hows the tank lookin?

scratch that.... i now have a 65 gal sitting in my possession! SCORE!

It's been over a year since I've updated this thread, and I'm ashamed to say that the tank has gone downhill due in part to bad luck, but mostly due to my mistakes and negligence. Temp spikes last summer, tank-sitter catastrophe, and zoo eating 'branchs all hit right before some major lifestyle changes. The tank fell to the way-side and I gave away many corals, and lost others to stress or algae.
But now I'm back into it, and I'm committed to saving this reef!
I'll post an FTS soon, as a starting point. This might be an interesting exercise in nano-reef rehab.

In the past 6 weeks: I've started a serious war against the thread algae and cyano. I've taken apart the hardware and cleaned the skimmer, hood, fans, and circ. pumps. I've scrubbed the LR and mechanically removed as much algae as possible. I've resumed water changes, carbon changes, and chem dosing...after about 6 months of sporadic dosing and maybe 1 water change every 6-8 weeks.
Perhaps most exciting, I'm upgrading the T5s to dual aquabeam LED 600s (ordered). This hurt the wallet, but it will eliminate the summer heat problem, and make the tank look better.
I'll post pics of the LED upgrade here for anybody interested, along with more regular updates of the tanks recovery.
So glad to be active in the hobby again! Hope I can make up for past sins.

Aquabeam Dual 600's have ARRIVED!

Hope to install them in the next day or two. I'll post unboxing pics and installation.

I'm going to try running these instead of the T5s due to the overheating problem (instead of in-addition-to). I've heard/read that the light output with the two CRE-XRE 600 strips is nearly equal in useful light energy to the two T5s in the stock hood. We'll see...

Any words of wisdom?

Installation complete! I basically followed the conversion so beautifully detailed on Matthew van Gessel's website. I don't know anything else about this guy other than I saw a photo courtesy of "StevieT" in the conversion images. Does anybody have any info about him? I would love to thank him for the conversion how-to!

First some tech specs:

-These are TMC AquaBeam DUAL 600s, with "High PUR" Cree XR-E emitters
-I got the 2x12 watt Reef white and Marine blue combo
-Total of 5 blue emitters, and 5 14K white emitters
-The blue emitters are VERY blue - 465-485nm, 50,000K
-I think the white emitters are around 670nm

I'm hopefully going to add an additional 600 Reef white strip in the next few weeks.

Anyway, here are some photos from the conversion:

They came very well packed.


Testing before install.


Taking the hood apart.


All assembled.


Here is the BEFORE pic with the stock T5s


And now...UNDER THE NEW LIGHTS! The overall effect is very blue, but the shimmer effect is incredible and the corals are all fluorescing like crazy. It looks great IMO.

nice lookin lights you got there! I just got the itch again to do a tank while in school. Just started up a 4 gallon!

I really like this! Might go with the two Reef White strips though, it sounds like with half and half, the tank is too blue for you. I don't want to have to add another white strip later just to balance the colour... Plus, I like the simplicity of a direct replacement of the PC bulbs, no real hood modifications... but the price! How will I talk my gf into this? lol

Would you say the two strips are as bright as the stock bulbs, or brighter?

Hey Mikellini! Yeah, the direct replacement of the stock T5s was really slick, and after a few weeks the coral is clearly liking the change. I have two new heads on my acans, a few cm of new growth on both my acros and several new shrooms. However, to the naked eye these are much less bright than the stock T5s. They have more photosynthetically active radiation, and produce much less heat than the stock lights, but they aren't as bright to the eye - though the shimmer effect alone is worth it IMHO.

I just added a third reef white strip today which brightened the tank up a bunch and the extra 14k emitter was just enough white to balance out the aesthetic - but I really do like a blue tank - the coral just pops.
I told my wife that we could keep replacing the lights every 6 months, or upgrade to LEDs and not worry about them for 10 years. She rolled her eyes and chuckled, but in the end, we ended up with LEDs.

New FTS showing coral growth in last few weeks (since LED upgrade). This was taken with just the Marine blue strip on (2 14K emitters and 3 actinic ~486nm emitters). I'm not a great photographer, and this is from my iPhone. I'll post a video in the next day or two with all three strips on for color ref. Still fighting some really aggressive algae at the top of the tank, but its getting better...

I decided to go with a nano box kit from DaveFason... a little more pricey but very high quality, 26 emitters with a full spectrum and dimmable drivers. Nice and compact too, will take up less space and allow for better airflow and cooling. Your tank is coming along nicely! I have a little hair algae grow at the top of the back wall too, I just siphon it off on every water change and it becomes less and less each time. Params are perfect, thinking of ditching the skimmer even...

That's awesome - the dimmable drivers are huge - that looks like a nice, compact hood. I can't wait to see it. The next thing on my list is an LED controller so I can simulate dawn/dusk and storms. Half the fun of LEDs is their dimming ability, and that's one thing the Aquaray 600s lack out of the box.

It's actually a little heat sink with LEDs on printed circuit boards and a fan attached. It will fit right in place of the stock lighting, so no real mods necessary. Pretty high density too, 26 LEDs in about 4.5 x 1.5 inches. I might upgrade to a nice controller in the future, but for now I'll be happy with on/off. I'll post pics when I get it

Oh, I gotcha. I must have been looking at the wrong thing. Sounds cool. Do you know what kind of emitters they are? What color combo are you going to get?

Two of these. Rebel and Rebel ES, Cool white, neutral white and deep red on one series, blue and royal blue on the other