Good to hear the tank is doing well again Marie!:biggrin:




6 cups!.....wow!....but I guess you are running it statically, right Marie?....
and how much is a lot Lance?....and are you running a reactor or running it statically?..and which tank?....just curious as Im using a reactor and following the recommendations and only using a cup and a half....


Im gonna try REALLY hard to leave that one alone Lance:razz:.....Being that it is Maries tank journal and all:wink:

I have the carbon in 2 media bags and placed so that all the water in the sump has to pass through the carbon before getting to the return pump

The flashers are doing great, the 2 largest ones that are doing quite a bit of scrapping so I think the jury's still out on who's going to wear the pants in the family :lol:

Doug, In the 90g I'm running 3 cups of carbon in a BRS dual reactor with GFO. This tank has a large mix of SPS, LPS and softies. In the 225g I'm only running 2 cups of carbon in a TLF reactor. Not much for SPS in this tank, mostly large LPS

Ah ok. You say you think they were a tad too blue for your liking, how do you like them now they have burned in? Have you seen the DE version? If so, how do you think compares? I'm interested because I just bought a pair of Phoenix SE from The Reef Shoppe, and I don't have my SE setup made yet (running DE right now), so I'm excited to see what they look like. I haven't seen the Phoenix SE lit up yet.

Hi Myka, yes I still find them a tad too blue for my liking but then I'm a big fan of the xm 10k's :lol:

I am using a HQI ballast to fire them and they are a bit bluer then the phoenix DE's I have on my other tank but the bulbs on my other tank are also over a year old.

Ohhh, ok well that makes sense then! I'm going to fire my SEs with electronic ballasts. Thanks for the info!

It's been a long while since I updated this because things haven't been doing great in the tank. I was kinda neglecting it a bit in the hopes of moving everything to a bigger tank.......that dream has had to be put on hold and seeing as how the tank has recently had it's 5th birthday I figured I should post something :lol:

FTS (the lighting is a bit weird because I am trying out 2 phoenix bulbs with a 10k xm in the middle, I don't like it and will be going back to 3 10k xms shortly)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230080.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230078.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230079.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230084.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230083.jpg

Some of your colonies look like they need a little piece cut off here/there. I know somewhere that they could go :wink: hehe. But in all seriousness the tank loos awesome. Just a minor lighting issue:biggrin:

The fish
These guys will have been in the tank for 5 yrs this june as well as an orchid dottyback who is totally camera shy
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230102.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230101.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230104.jpg

4 yrs in the tank are a pair of mandarins. The female refuses to get her picture taken

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230098.jpg

3 yrs last feb

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230089.jpg

2 yrs, a pair of potters angels

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230099.jpg

and because he is too big to miss a 3 yr old long spined urchin

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230086.jpg

and last of all, a couple of pics of my favorite tank at the moment....my 120g tank

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230075.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P4230077.jpg

Gorgeous fish Marie. Congrats on hitting the 5 year mark.

Lol, Doofus looks huge!! Congrats on 5 years! :) I like the 10k better too :wink:

Doofus IS huge :lol:


I keep getting the urge to try different bulb set ups but when I do, I regret it within the first couple of weeks ......If only MH bulbs were cheap:redface:

I got some 14K bulbs off of ebay, they're not too bad and only $15 a bulb. I didn't like them at first, then I did like them and now I'm leaning once again to not liking them as much. I think it was about $60 with shipping for 3 bulbs, still cheaper than a single ushio. I'm not as huge a fan of the blue as I thought I would be. These are a nice whitish blue (not too blue) but I found I've lost some of the intensity that the ushios provided. I might trythe 10K ones when I get myself organized enough to order them :razz:

Looking good Marie and congrats on the 5 year anniversary. Sorry to hear that the upgrade isnt happening, i was so looking forward to seeing that.

yeah, wth happened with that anyways??

It's been postponed. It'll happen eventually..... after all I have a very large hole in the wall that I have to fill :lol:

ah ok :biggrin:

Congrats on five years Marie!
Yeah, you need to get a new tank. I look at the big hole in the wall every time I drive by hoping to see some water. :mrgreen:

I just looked at the pics with the XM and Phoenix side by side, and your SE are much bluer on the magnetic ballasts than mine are on my electronic ballasts. Even with 2x54w UVL Super Actinic running beside them mine aren't as blue as yours.

Congrats on 5 years!

Would it help to motivate you on your upgrade if Christy and I came over and stole all the corals out of your 175G ?

It would probably have the opposite effect.....I would have room to buy more corals :razz:


That xm bulb is over a year old so it is a bit more yellow then it should be....

Ok, maybe that's throwing the white balance even bluer on the camera? Each end just appears reeeeeally blue...like actinic blue.

With everyone having different monitors, monitor profiles, browsers, embedded color profiles and mac vs pc...it's really tough to compare one pic to another unless at the very least both pics were taken with the same camera with the same settings and then viewed on the same system. Just sayin'... it's frustrating as hell for digital designers let alone reefers.

Just an add to that... Cameras have a white balance as well... so the color you get isn't the color that you actually see... in order to get the colors right you actually need to have a "color strip" with a white, black, blue, yellow, red, and green. You then have to manually adjust the colors to match the color card. If both pictures were taken in RAW used the same color card and then modified to match it, then you could compare pictures... but since most people don't even have a camera that keeps a pic in RAW good luck on that one. :lol:

It just came to mind. We all still compare pics... I do too sometimes forgetting all this.

Hey I can't help but notice the beautiful regal angel you have in your tank. How long have you had it? I was thinking about getting one but wasn't quite sure how it would do in a reef. Your tank looks similar to mine, mostly SPS and LPS, but I have a couple of softys and some zoos as well. What would be your advice on putting a regal angel into a reef tank? Thanks so much for your help.

I wouldn't recommend it..... that fish is a coral eater, it eats acros, most LPS (although he leaves my frogspawn and bubblecoral alone), clams and zoos.

So I wanted to ask why the 120 is your favorite tank ATM? The 175 looks pretty dang good to me:biggrin: Asside from th two-tone look

It's less demanding of my time and there are no red bugs, no flat worms, no "coral eating" fish....

The big tank constantly reminds me of all my mistakes :lol:

Oh, scratch that then. Looks fabulous though!

Ok, I agree now...the Phoenix SE are too blue for my liking as well. :tsk: Now i get to spend the next 6 months trying to decide what to replace them with. :neutral:

I've finally got around to replacing the phoenix bulbs, Thanks Brett.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P8150064.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P8150066.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P8150067.jpg

And here is a pic of a new clam I picked up from Progressive reef

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P8150063.jpg

and this is the tank the clam is in

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/P8150069.jpg

Looking great Marie! That is one big urchin! He's really doing a number on your coralline, I can see thru the back glass!!! :eek:

Yeah, it's strange to see Marie's tank without 1/2" thick coralline.

Wow that guy is pretty thorough. Don't they stab into all your corals? Always wondered how those fit into a densely populated reef...

He actually gets around pretty good, I haven't ever seen any corals with spines sticking out of them.....my fox face on the other hand seems to run into him at least once a week :lol:

I have treated the tank last night with interceptor and other then a few dead acro crabs and some very po'd millies there is no change in the corals.

Stay tuned for some huge changes with the tank in the next few weeks, I'm going to have to change the name of the thread :lol:


No bigger tank in the works yet though.....

What are you up to now? Don't go too drastic, your tank is awesome.