thirdchild's ultramegasuperslow 40g breeder (6/24/12 - 3/21/15)

[d'Espresso]

Jawbreaker wow, that's a great find!

[thirdchild]

Thanks! Mine hasn't been interested in growing, but it's slowly been developing white which is interesting.

 

 

Also, my rbta turned into triplets... sorta think it's been stressed by my water quality actually :-(

 

[kmaintl]

Is your shroom in the flow? They don't like flow. In fact, low flow and high light, they would expand to its fullest potential.

 

Thanks! Mine hasn't been interested in growing, but it's slowly been developing white which is interesting.

 

[thirdchild]

I think so. There's a rock immediately to the right of it blocking some of the flow. It's not completely still though.

[thirdchild]

 

Not much to say, just realized I haven't posted in my own thread for a while. Spent the summer and fall battling very stubborn algae outbreaks because of problems with the skimmer and slower maintenance. Also moved around a few of my coral when the rbta split and moved.

 

This month, I ended up trading the chromi and adding a tanaka pygmy wrasse. The reduced bioload and more emerald crabs finally got rid of most of the ugly algae. Also picked up a few cool acan frags which are on the sandbed :-)

[4x5]

Wow, looks great.

[BattleAthletics]

That new color combo looks killer, so what you have is a snow onyx? Looks like I might have the same clown. Beautiful colors on it too. Scape is awesome too!

[thirdchild]

Wow, looks great.

 

Thanks! I dig the white on white thing you're doing with yours. :-)

 

That new color combo looks killer, so what you have is a snow onyx? Looks like I might have the same clown. Beautiful colors on it too. Scape is awesome too!

 

Oh mine is just a regular onyx. Thanks! I caught it looking cleaner than normal LOL.

 

 

Good luck with your new builds guys

[BattleAthletics]

Thanks tc hopefully mine looks as good as yours!

[thirdchild]

Let's kick off the new year with some new pics!

 

RBTA just split again, right around New Years

 

Yellow acans are growing, but the rainbow might be getting too much light now

 

Added some more acan frags to the family. Some are already growing!

 

My last chalice frag is still alive too

 

My millepora and my encrusting montiporas have noticeably grown

 

Looking forward to seeing my new montipora caps grow. I've never had these before

 

Last but not least, my favorite coral is finally recovering from some tissue recession and the fungia keeps on trucking. LOL

 

All in all, pretty good few months after the new skimmer dialed in. I'm wondering if I should still try the wide angle lens and downgrade to one radion so I can upgrade to a pro. Maybe I'll give up and get a tripod this year too for sharper pics too.

 

Oh yeah and my clowns are nice and fat. I'll catch the others later.

[RollaJase]

Great shots, everything looks like its doing well.

[thirdchild]

Great shots, everything looks like its doing well.

Thanks!

 

Let's see what happens in another month. I just dropped to one fixture and added the wide angle lens.

[Acielot]

I like your acan frag collection. They complement each other well especially those 2 really colorful ones.

[tennis20]

This tank is sick!!!

[thirdchild]

I like your acan frag collection. They complement each other well especially those 2 really colorful ones.

Thanks! I like to grow stuff out so they'll be what I stare at for months lol.

 

This tank is sick!!!

Thanks!

[thirdchild]

So I started this build with 2 fixtures 5" for the surface at mostly 45% for a year and a half.

 

This gave me a very evenly lit tank, but the downside turned out to be lack of low light areas. Finally noticed this when I killed a chalice and was forced to sell another because it never thrived.

 

Then Ecotech announced the wide angle lens addon, so I decided to toss it on and downgrade to one fixture about a week ago.

So now I'm running one fixture 7" from the surface at 65% brightness. So far, so good.

 

 

I think the lens is improving the quality of the light by blending the led colors better when it spreads it out. So now there is less of a disco ball effect from the surface, and a more even blend of color inside the tank. I use to think I'd see streaks of a particular color at certain spots.

 

Although one fixture + 120 degree lens is brighter than one fixture without the lens, you're still not going to get a completely even look like with 2 fixtures. I'm alright with that because I want some low light areas again.

 

The drawback though is a softer light/less par; I can tell because I can now at 65% brightness and my coral seems to be fine. Just in case though, I moved my coral closer to the center of the tank under the fixture...

[GTi]

So I started this build with 2 fixtures 5" for the surface at mostly 45% for a year and a half.

 

 

This gave me a very evenly lit tank, but the downside turned out to be lack of low light areas. Finally noticed this when I killed a chalice and was forced to sell another because it never thrived.

 

Then Ecotech announced the wide angle lens addon, so I decided to toss it on and downgrade to one fixture about a week ago.

So now I'm running one fixture 7" from the surface at 65% brightness. So far, so good.

 

 

 

I think the lens is improving the quality of the light by blending the led colors better when it spreads it out. So now there is less of a disco ball effect from the surface, and a more even blend of color inside the tank. I use to think I'd see streaks of a particular color at certain spots.

 

Although one fixture + 120 degree lens is brighter than one fixture without the lens, you're still not going to get a completely even look with 2 fixtures. I'm alright with that because I want some low light areas again.

 

The drawback though is a softer light/less par; I can tell because I can now at 65% brightness and my coral seems to be fine. Just in case though, I moved my coral closer to the center of the tank under the fixture...

Nice tank and great info on the lenses - thanks for posting. I think more uniformity will be a good thing for me - I'll have to play around with things to see if I want one or two fixtures and what intensity.

[thirdchild]

Ha! I was browsing for some supplies and found some awesome news

I *think* a Gen 1 Radion can be upgraded to Gen 3 Radion!

 

I got to this chart by going to the Gen3 page

Chart link

 

This kind of explains why the tech support guy said upgrade kits were out of stock for a bit.

[thirdchild]

I finally joined Team Scoly, lol

 

Found a online store with an excellent collection of scolys allows local pickup, so I couldn't help but get one. Super nice place.

 

[thirdchild]

Alright, so I mailed my Gen1 to Ecotech last Friday to be upgraded to a Gen3 Pro for $275. If you have a Gen1, you have to mail it in for servicing. Only Gen2 folks get to DIY with a kit. So ultimately, had budget another $50 or so for shipping back and forth.

I bought the upgrade form for $0 via the online store. Downloaded the form from the confirmation. Filled out the form and mailed back the fixture and form. I was a little nervous about leaving the wide angle lens on, but the customer service person said it was fine. Didn't hurt to add a note in the form though. Fixture arrived Monday. Ecotech called me Wednesday ready to ship. So the actual servicing went perfectly and it came back this afternoon. Downtime was 1 week. I used my spare fixture to keep the lights on, haha.

So to quote some stats, I'm going from
Gen 1 with wide angle lens at 65% with a custom light scheme
• Cool White: 8 Cree XP-G (40W)
• Royal Blue: 10 Cree XP-E (30W)
• Blue: 8 Cree XP-E (24W)
• Green: 4 Cree XP-E (12W)
• Hyper Red: 4 Osram Oslon SSL (12W)

to
Gen3 Pro with wide angle lens at 45% with the Radiant Color scheme
• Cool White: 8 Cree XP-G2 (40W)
• Deep Blue: 8 Osram Oslon Square (40W )
• Blue: 8 Cree XP-E (24W)
• Green: 4 Cree XP-E (14W)
• Hyper Red: 4 Osram Oslon SSL (12W)
• Yellow: 2 Osram Oslon SSL (6W)
• Indigo: 4 SemiLEDs (10W)
• UV: 4 SemiLEDs (10W)

Coverage First Thoughts
I've only had the upgraded fixture on the tank a few hours but it is definitely capable of covering the entire tank. With a Gen1+lens, the sides were darker and I moved my coral towards the middle. Now I think I'll have no problems using all my space.

Color First Thoughts
Color is the main reason for my upgrade. I really wanted to see if I can bring back the richer reds I had in the past and I heard folks say coral were more colorful under Gen2. Glad I procrastinated and ended up with Gen3. Things are popping a lot under blues during dawn today and daytime looks more natural and less yellow. This seems weird considering the lights now have some yellow leds.

Anyways I'll use Radiant Color at 45% for the next 2 weeks and see what happens before I start trying to tweak things.

These pics were shot at different times of the day, but you can still tell how better the coverage is under the upgraded fixture.

Before


After (Ignore the sand/algae... my protein skimmer needed maintenance)


Also clowns are weird...

[icombs17]

Hi there, love you tank btw. Im thinking of going to radion gen2 (non pro) with wide lenses over my 36" tank and was just wondering how far out do you think you can place sps corals.

[thirdchild]

Hi there, love you tank btw. Im thinking of going to radion gen2 (non pro) with wide lenses over my 36" tank and was just wondering how far out do you think you can place sps corals.

 

Thank you!

 

According to this chart I found at marinedepot, Gen2 non-pro is pretty much the same as Gen1. Gen2 just has the TIR lens which increases the par. I'm guessing you'll see the spread I had last month with Gen1+wide angle lens. See the "Before" pic above.

 

So I'd just use middle of the tank for sps with higher light requirements and maybe use the very left and right for easier sps like birds nest and montipora if you want to fill it up. This comes out to about 20" in the middle and 8" to the left and right for me with the fixture about 7" above water level.

 

I bet you can raise it higher and increase brightness if you want to use all of the tank though. Plenty of other people go this route.

 

Anyways, I do think the wide angle lens is worthwhile for the 36" folks. It does increase the spread and make the colors blend better imo.

[thirdchild]

Before

 

After 2 weeks...

 

Alright, it's been 2 weeks now under the upgraded light. The acans are becoming more red and I still have algae on the sand bed and live rock.

 

The algae might be due heavier spot feeding, the loss of too many snails and the poor skimming I've been dealing with for the past month though. So I cleaned the skimmer, added a fresh batch of dwarf cerith snails from reefcleaner and some macroalgae frags to try and keep things under control. The gracilaria already died though, so I still don't think I have a high nutrient problem...

[thirdchild]

Went out today to a new coral store which sadly had no coral. Apparently they were rebuilding their frag tank and the good looking stuff wasn't for sale.

 

So I ended up stopping at my neighborhood LFS on the way home and picked up some zoas and a mystery sps frag. I'm not sure if the sps frag will live, but I thought I saw some yellow polyps?

 

 

[RollaJase]

Those are some crazy yellow/orange zoas.