12"mr.aqua cube! Drilled!

[gulfsurfer101]

Well my nem is on the move and has completely covered up a 3-5 headed frag of phe's and making his way towards a small kenya tree coral that attached to the rock whre the nem has taken foot to. I'll just let things take their course till the nem settles where it's going to settle. A big plus I'm looking foward to with the led bulb is avoiding color shift unlike mh where it would cause things to start becoming unhappy and start to move all over the tank 9-14mo later. Hopefully whever the nem settles down it will decide to stay put for a very long time. I also have plans on getting a few shrimp that will host my maxi mini.

[gulfsurfer101]

Here's the sps doing nice a few days after being introduced back in. I added a staghorn acro that is purple with gold polyps in my main tank. It is a neon green flourescence with shades of tan in here. I am amazed how much of a difference the lighting makes. I also added a small frag disk that's about two thirds encrusted with a blue acro tort growth. Both looked really good minutes after being added and are holding strong a few days later. I also hadn't seen my blenny for over three days and began to think it had died. After moving some things around I must have covered it's burrow. I later found out he was alive by all the sand that was kicked over my zoas. It's cool to see he got settled in though.

sps

my blenny likes it new home!

sand and rock work

and the latest fts

[.Newman.]

nice look to it

[will46r]

I like it, the blenny looks perfect in there.

[gulfsurfer101]

Thanks guys, the blenny is loving it in here as the soul resident along with a few hermits but those guys don't count anyways right. I want to add a few sexies or white spot nem shrimp soon. I don't have monies till a few days from now though so it's a waiting game for me. I do have a bunch of hollywood stunner frags that I have grown out though I may use for credit towards some skrimps.

[.Newman.]

everything counts man

[gulfsurfer101]

Yep, and I waits, and I lurk.

[gulfsurfer101]

I decided to take this tank out of my room and put in the living room since all my guests thought I hung up the hobby. I decided on this tank since all I had to do was drain most of the water out into a 5g bucket and move tank stand and all with the help of my wife. I decided to remove a large chunk of rock that had the gsp growing on it to free up some space. I also took the liberty of adding a pico-sized elegance coral. I must say an instant favorite.

 

Pics:

[Funktastic Wint]

i love this tank!

what fixture did u screw that boostled into? i want one for my tank. very cool.

[gulfsurfer101]

Thanks man, as far as the fixture, I basically just took apart an ugly old lamp that was sitting around and slapped it together with some tubing.

[bigcapct]

What media were u using in that aquaclear filter?

[gulfsurfer101]

No media, I just placed some filter floss over the the intake spill over and used the media rack that was provided to hold down my macro in place. What you see is grape caulerpa that has been replaced with cheato and banished to my trashcan sump.

[gulfsurfer101]

So I chucked some more live rock to the sump, added a small torch frag from my 30g, and two pom pom crabs that came with no pom poms.

 

 

My poms seem be active only after lights but have heard that is common till they get used to the tank. Hope to get some pics of them next time.

[glennr1978]

So what's the verdict on the LED's? My wife wants me to set up a little 5.5g tank on the bar between the kitchen and the living room and I'm thinking about using a par30 20k w/ 60 degree optics. The tank will only be a few pieces of LR covered in rics. What do you think?

[gulfsurfer101]

For rics shrooms and lps the leds seem to do just fine but my zoas and sps just don't take to the bulb and growth rate is not even comparable to MH. The 20k with 60* optics is what I'm running and I honestly wish I went with the 40*'s instead. I contacted boost and they said they would replace at no charge to me if I paid shipping both ways. I would have done it but the tank was already running still pretty cool of them.

[bigcapct]

Thwy just recomended 60 for my 12x12 tank for sps,lps

[gulfsurfer101]

The 40* has better par rating with a tighter beam but with my bulb only 18" of the sand bed I get complete coverage according to the par chart at boost with enough par to grow sps on the sand bed directly under the bulb withing a 3"-5" radius on the sand bed with the par I'm getting from my 60*'s.

[.Newman.]

I'm not too savvy on this PAR stuff, but if you have a shallow tank, youre better off getting the highest rating like 80 or more or using no PAR lens at all. I run no PAR lens on my LEDs because my pico is relatively shallow. if i did, the beams would be more narrow and more sections of my tank would be left dark.

[gulfsurfer101]

I was thinking about this since I'm sizing up a diy fixture for my 30g aoi and I will have a lot more space to cover than a mere 12". I did notice that when I first set up my tank and I was using the clamp on fixuture I had a lot more dark spotting around the edge of the tank. I raised the bulb to around 21" off the sand bed and finally ending at 18" over the sand bed. That places the bulb about 6" over the water surface and I get complete coverage over my sandbed using 60* optics and I notice I have no more dark spotting around the outer edges and rear of the tank.

[gulfsurfer101]

I was messing around with my camera today trying to figure how to capture coral better under led lighting and I lucked out and noticed one of my pom poms wondering about the tank today. This is one of the first times I have noticed them out myself but my wife has told me she has seen them out lately.I'll update with a few pics, I took out the K-nano and slowed the flow down a bit and noticed some full polyp ext out of my lps and shrooms. I'm liking that my zoas are better taking to the leds now and are starting to open and some have even started to spread. Things seems to have responded well to me lowering the bulb a few inches and slowing down the flow of the tank.

 

and pico life

[.Newman.]

now i may be wrong because i do not see everything in your tank, but i dont see any zoas at all in your tank, only palys in those pics. Everything looks nice, and nice pom pom crab

for the LEDs and coral color do the setting on your camera that's called custom set the white balance or something like that.

[gulfsurfer101]

I have tried to set my white balance using the program mode on my camera to customize it to my needs but I still get better results using auto balance. I've been getting a little more lucky recently with the pics I've been getting and will be looking to upgrade to a better camera after the tax season. I guess I forgot to add pics of zoas but so far I only have a few that have taken to the light. My rde's and wwm's did not take to the leds at all and didn't open after introducing them, my phe's made it in here as a two polyped frag and have started to stretch out some and my trpe's are showing signs of budding now that they have acclimated themselves better to the light.

I have noticed lots of hair worms streching all over my rockwork and was wondering if maybe a fw dip would help me eliminate them from my tank.

[qwiksilver711]

I really like your tank, this is the tank I will get for my next setup, probably about a year from now. I like the par38 on it. could I trouble you for some more pics? specifically your plumbing. and what kind of pump do you have for the return? if i'm not mistaken that is your only source of flow in the tank right? I really like the idea of plumbing a sump into this tank if only for the additional water volume and more stability. I just dont know much about plumbing so I was hoping to imitate yours

[.Newman.]

now i see some zoas - those pinkish ones.

for the white balance thing, if youre doing custom set, you must point to something in the tank thats closest to white color (sand) and take that sample. then youll get the correct colors.

[gulfsurfer101]

Thanks I'll give it a shot now and see what I come up with.