Teenyreef's IM40 Not-So-Teeny Tank - August FTS

[teenyreef]

On 7/15/2017 at 5:09 PM, dropped said:

Ive found in smaller schools of bangaii the large male or female will kill off the competition. I didnt have luck with 5, have seen them do well in 10-15.

 

On 7/15/2017 at 6:56 PM, ninjamyst said:

oh wow, what an ordeal!  my pair of cardinals quickly became one too with the bigger one winning.

The last little one is gone now, but the big one is doing great. I think I'm going to name him Connor Macleod, from the Highlander movie (tagline: there can be only one") 

On 7/16/2017 at 2:35 PM, kimberbee said:

Yikes, I hope today went better once you woke up!! 

Thanks! The next day was much better 

[teenyreef]

18 hours ago, DaveFason said:

Get some sleep. Hopefully all will be ok. 

 

This tank is really looking great. The monti section looks incredible!

Thanks for the post on Instagram, Dave! I'm loving the montis, I expect they will need constant trimming as they grow but it will be worth it. 

 

As I was looking closely at the corals the other night, it looked like there was some minor bleaching on a few frags, so I reduced the lighting by about 20%. I recently changed the spectrum mix to be more blue but I think I increased the PAR too fast in the process. I'll bring the intensity back up over the next month. 

[teenyreef]

On 7/15/2017 at 10:08 PM, KJoFan said:

Fantastic.  Looking forward to seeing how you have yours set up. 

Here's what I have set up right now. The mid day levels are 20 percent lower than what I'm shooting for. 

 

Here's the graph, too. 

 

[teenyreef]

Oops, I just noticed the whites got set to 100% in the evening, they should be zero. I dorked it up while I was doing the screen shots. 

[DaveFason]

When lowering keep it at that level for a bit. See how things react. I think you maybe surprised on how the corals will adjust to the lower settings. 

 

-Dave

[KJoFan]

15 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Oops, I just noticed the whites got set to 100% in the evening, they should be zero. I dorked it up while I was doing the screen shots. 

 

Ha, I noticed that, and at first was confused, then figured it was just an error in the setting. Thanks for sharing. I'll have to open mine up and see how it compares out of curiosity. I feel like my "full daylight" peak settings are a little...warmer than I'd like, so I need to tweak just a bit, but i don't want to tweak too much.  The pitfall of LED fixtures!

10 hours ago, DaveFason said:

When lowering keep it at that level for a bit. See how things react. I think you maybe surprised on how the corals will adjust to the lower settings. 

 

-Dave

Meaning to imply pleasantly surprised how corals react or...horrified?

[teenyreef]

9 minutes ago, KJoFan said:

 

Ha, I noticed that, and at first was confused, then figured it was just an error in the setting. Thanks for sharing. I'll have to open mine up and see how it compares out of curiosity. I feel like my "full daylight" peak settings are a little...warmer than I'd like, so I need to tweak just a bit, but i don't want to tweak too much.  The pitfall of LED fixtures!

Meaning to imply pleasantly surprised how corals react or...horrified?

Lol, usually lowering the lights doesn't bother corals much other than to possibly turn sps brown.

 

If you increase intensity, just be sure to go very slowly. Corals can take a lot of light, but only if they are acclimated gradually. I try to increase no more than 2 to 4 percent in a week, with small bumps every second or third day.

10 hours ago, DaveFason said:

When lowering keep it at that level for a bit. See how things react. I think you maybe surprised on how the corals will adjust to the lower settings. 

 

-Dave

Yeah, I was planning to leave it at this level for a couple weeks at least to see what happens. I want to make sure the bleaching is fixed, and see if any of the colors morph in a good way.

[RollaJase]

Finally got through the 15 odd pages of updates that I have missed. Tank is looking amazing mate, you have done an excellent job :). How are you liking the Quad Wide?

[teenyreef]

1 minute ago, RollaJase said:

Finally got through the 15 odd pages of updates that I have missed. Tank is looking amazing mate, you have done an excellent job :). How are you liking the Quad Wide?

Thanks, Jase! I really like the wide quad, it's got great color and intensity. I think if I could hang it a little higher without losing PAR it would be perfect. I do get a little shadowing on the far left and right of the upper rocks, so I've been thinking of adding a couple T5 blue strips just to kind of fill in. I'm convinced that hybrid T5/LED is the best way to go. 

[RollaJase]

1 hour ago, teenyreef said:

Thanks, Jase! I really like the wide quad, it's got great color and intensity. I think if I could hang it a little higher without losing PAR it would be perfect. I do get a little shadowing on the far left and right of the upper rocks, so I've been thinking of adding a couple T5 blue strips just to kind of fill in. I'm convinced that hybrid T5/LED is the best way to go. 

I'm glad you are liking the light. Had Dave had them available when I was shopping around I probably would have gone down that route. I definitely think that a hybrid is the best of both worlds. I've been thinking about what I'd do if I were to upgrade to a 6ft tank in the future. I'd probably run my 6 NB arrays over the tank with 2x 39W T5's either side. Should give ample PAR for what I want to keep .

[teenyreef]

Yeah, I think that would do it! 

[Sharbuckle]

22 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Thanks, Jase! I really like the wide quad, it's got great color and intensity. I think if I could hang it a little higher without losing PAR it would be perfect. I do get a little shadowing on the far left and right of the upper rocks, so I've been thinking of adding a couple T5 blue strips just to kind of fill in. I'm convinced that hybrid T5/LED is the best way to go. 

Adding t5's is NEVER a bad idea. 

[teenyreef]

Updated FTS and top down shots for July. I'm pretty happy with how things are going. Everything is doing well and the colors of the SPS are slowwwwlly trending toward what I think they "should be". 

 

 

 

I'm still not happy with the arrangement of the zoas. My original intent was to make the zoas form kind of a peninsula that extended the shape of the rocks. But right now it's more like a big blob. I may end up just moving some of the zoas or palys out of this tank and into the 10g tank. Kind of a less is more approach.

 

[jedimasterben]

I think that adding a couple of very low rocks to the right side to extend towards the front of the tank and possibly either turning towards the front right corner or back to the left would allow you to mount most or all of them in place and get them condensed.

[RollaJase]

You could also consider making an island with them. Find a few pieces of rock that stack well together and pile up the zoas starting from the sand and work your way up. Will give you some vertical attraction on the right as well as a lot of real estate for them to grow into.

[teenyreef]

45 minutes ago, jedimasterben said:

I think that adding a couple of very low rocks to the right side to extend towards the front of the tank and possibly either turning towards the front right corner or back to the left would allow you to mount most or all of them in place and get them condensed.

Thanks, Ben! The first layout is pretty much exactly what I was picturing in my head.

 

You can't really tell in the pictures, but they're all growing on small individual rocks. So I really just need to glue the rocks together into larger chunks so they don't move around.

34 minutes ago, RollaJase said:

You could also consider making an island with them. Find a few pieces of rock that stack well together and pile up the zoas starting from the sand and work your way up. Will give you some vertical attraction on the right as well as a lot of real estate for them to grow into.

That's a great idea too! So many options

 

Maybe I'll combine the two and build a series of rocks like Ben showed, but make it taller in the middle.

[Weetabix7]

8 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Updated FTS and top down shots for July. I'm pretty happy with how things are going. Everything is doing well and the colors of the SPS are slowwwwlly trending toward what I think they "should be". 

 

 

 

I'm still not happy with the arrangement of the zoas. My original intent was to make the zoas form kind of a peninsula that extended the shape of the rocks. But right now it's more like a big blob. I may end up just moving some of the zoas or palys out of this tank and into the 10g tank. Kind of a less is more approach.

 

 

Tank is looking gorgeous!!!!

[debbeach13]

The tanks looks marvelous. I think a zoa rock is a great idea.

 

[TinyOcean]

You are a coral master. #tankgoals 

[KJoFan]

Do you change your light settings at all when you photograph or just do all your adjusting in post?

[teenyreef]

2 hours ago, KJoFan said:

Do you change your light settings at all when you photograph or just do all your adjusting in post?

Yes, I bump the whites up quite a bit. Normally the whites are set to about 50% of the blue level. For pictures, I increase the whites to about the same level as the blues. 

 

Even then, the pictures still come out quite blue, so I adjust the white balance in Lightroom until it looks the same as it does to my own eyeballs. A highly subjective process, of course

15 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

Tank is looking gorgeous!!!!

Thanks, Weetie! How's your little tank doing? I'm so behind on threads!

15 hours ago, debbeach13 said:

The tanks looks marvelous. I think a zoa rock is a great idea.

 

Thanks, Deb! I'm excited about doing the zoa rock. I always intended to glue all the individual rocks together, but between the setbacks the zoas went through due to the hair worms, and sheet procrastination on my part, I've just never gotten in done. Maybe this weekend? Hmmmm....

14 hours ago, TinyOcean said:

You are a coral master. #tankgoals 

Ha ha, thanks

[teenyreef]

I took some updated pictures tonight, but I still need to adjust white balance and get them up on Flickr. But in the meantime, here's a side view FTS. I like how this turned out, so I think I'll need to try this angle more often

 

 

[teenyreef]

Just a couple more before I go to bed...

Acan garden:

Some Z's and P's:

 

[fishfreak0114]

That angle shot is great!  I agree you need to do it more often. 

[spectra]

Looks good Teeny but we need more love for the dendro