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Innovative Marine Aquariums

Alexraptor's "25g" Mandarin Garden - Relaunch Pg. 2


Alexraptor

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Time to kick up this thread again.

Dusk FTS, things have changed quite a bit.

All the Caulerpa just slowly withered away and died I'm sad to say, though just as well maybe as my wall hammer has grown enormous! At this point cleaning glass is a very delicate maneuver around it as it's soft-pressed against the glass, I.E smooshed against it when it expands during the day! And thus I can only clean the glass at dusk or night.

Reef has also gotten a wee upgrade in the form of a 150w Maxspect RSX, big step up from a budget 4x24w T5HO. 

 

My male Mandarin is alas gone on account of an intestinal-parasite that I was unable to catch and treat him for, also lost my female clown to it as well despite treatment, nasty business. No idea of my male(Female by now I guess) is still carrying it or not, but he seems to be in very good vigor, coloration and has no problems keeping up his weight, and it's been almost a year now.

Getting a new Mandarin right now may be problematic on account of the cleaner shrimps being thieving scumbags when it comes to supplemental feeding. 😛

 

And speaking of cleaners...

 

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How are you finding the light? Looking at the 200w version; not many people seem to be running them. 

 

Tank looks great! Any photos of the hammer when it's opened up fully? 

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You mean like this? 🙂

 

 

As for the RSX, So far I'm liking it a lot, though I've only been running it for a few months. I'm running the SPS dominant preset, and I really dig the Dawn/Dusk throttling and moonlight. The moonlight is extremely simplistic, just keeping one channel at 1% power, but my corals really respond strongly to the dawn/dusk dimming.

Funny thing, despite upgrading from a much much weaker light, I was able to ramp up the power on this new one very quickly without ill effect, probably because I have direct sunlight falling on the front of the tank a few hours before noon. 😎

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The hammer is amazing! 

 

Glad you like the light, I'm definitely tempted. I love the purple, dim look of the dusk mode. The LPS mixed reef preset is the one that interests me most, I'm hoping that I could run it without having to get the controller too

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I don't have the controller and the presets work just fine. 🙂

My endgame is to get a clam into that tank at some point, so while the LPS mixed preset would probably be fine, I wanted to already have the corals used to the SPS dominant preset. 🙂

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Was it straightforward to set up? I've not seen anything about the legs, but it looks like they pull out to the length needed and then tighten up to hold them in place? The 200w unit is 850mm and my tank is 900mm

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2 hours ago, Patrick17 said:

Was it straightforward to set up? I've not seen anything about the legs, but it looks like they pull out to the length needed and then tighten up to hold them in place? The 200w unit is 850mm and my tank is 900mm

Yeah that's pretty much it, just slide them in at the ends. And then the dial on the side lets you configure between manual and automatic, and select profiles as well as configure simple custom settings.

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5 minutes ago, Alexraptor said:

Yeah that's pretty much it, just slide them in at the ends. And then the dial on the side lets you configure between manual and automatic, and select profiles as well as configure simple custom settings.

Brilliant, thank you. I'm following along to see your progress with yours 🙂

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Christopher Marks

Welcome back @Alexraptor, great to see you! Big changes indeed, that hammer coral is unreal! That torch coral is getting huge too.

 

Really neat to see the cleaner shrimp babies! Do they have any shelter to survive, or were you just lucky to catch them at the right time?

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It's actually a branching frogspawn, and that's nothing, It was actually much larger up until a couple of months ago ago when I had to prune it back. I took more than 20 heads off that sucker! 🙂

 

I was just lucky to be checking up on the tank at the right time unfortunately. Wouldn't mind trying my hand at raising cleaners some day though. At least its free food for the system in the meantime!

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Thanks! It wasn't easy trying to shift around my Maxspect RSX and squeeze my Nikon with macro lens in between It and the water surface! 😂

Reef's weathered the summer just fine, despite days with room temperature peaking over 31 degrees Celsius. :)

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