Just went through the journal, and very impressive and interesting indeed. I like how you persisted with the aquascaping and coral placement adjustments until you got it the way you wanted. Nice contrast, too, the large colonies and stags with the smaller frag colonies.

Amazing what can be done in just 2 1/2 years! And some good lessons for me in this build. Thanks.

Truly gorgeous! Can you share your thoughts of the sps growth under LEDs vs t5s and what made you switched?

It really depends on the coral, I have some stuff that grew like crazy under LED and some that did absolutely nothing. Since switching to T5 everything is growing well, some of the stuff that was stagnant is starting to form growth tips. Other stuff that grew like crazy under LED is slow growing under T5. I think the trick to LED is to have a lot of coverage.

The reason for switching was purely financial at the time. I was almost $3000 into Hydras and found my tank required several more to get the proper coverage. It was cheaper to cut my losses and sell the Hydras and pick up a T5 fixture with some spare bulbs. In fact I pocketed a bunch of money and have bulbs for two years. I was worried about power consumption, but there was no difference, in fact my power bill seemed to go down a bit (pretty sure it's due to me enclosing the top of the tank).

I found the same thing with the switch back to T5 Wayne.

I had certain corals that were growing like weeds under LED, but I had a lot that were stagnant, or lost all of their color.

I switched to T-5 and I was getting growth out of everything again … after about 3 months I started to notice certain stagnant browned out corals starting to sprout new life and morph colours.

That was enough for me … I've never looked back, and I'm planning an 8 foot upgrade in the next few months and It'll still be T-5

Thanks for sharing guys. I'm looking at prob switching to the Ati hybrid and trying to gather as much info before taking the plunge.

Wayne

Just this one? :wink:

i have been putting a lot of man-hours into helping to setup my old 400 lol. at least wayne's not asking me for help sheesh.

T-5 combination
 

Your tank looks fantastic.
Could I ask you what combination of T-5 bulbs you are using and your time period?
Thanks.
Michael

No problem. :)

4x Blue+
2x Purple+
1x Aquablue Special
1x Coral+

From front to back it is... b+,c+,b+,p+,b+,as,p+,b+

11-11 is two b+ and between 2 and 10 is the rest of them.