lol thats a long time for my brain to have to go back :razz: So how big was it when you got it? It looks huge! I'm hoping I can keep my squamosa going to that size

it's a clam tho. which these days means it's prob worth 2k at that size...

Ya no kidding! :-) Here is a pic of it from back in August 2009.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3496/...e6eeed38_o.jpg

I guess you can't really get a sense of scale here but I believe it was like 3 or 4 inches. Its shell alone is twice that size now. In that early pic it doesn't have a lot of growth scutes. Its shell is quite smooth there. In newer pics it has quite a few scutes with blue clove polyps living in them :lol:

When it really fans out its mantles it is quite impressive.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3527/...28487a34_o.jpg

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2905/...75d4c187_o.jpg

In 5 years I have only ever seen it spawn once. I've had to move it quite a bit over the years. Where it lives now I had to remove a large piece of live rock structure as well, to accommodate it. It seems to have stopped or slowed down growing, thank goodness. I love it but unlike mostly all my other corals, I can't prune back the clam :sad: I also have this issue with my red goniopora on the other side of the tank that's trying to bust out of the tank. I'm running out of spots to move it to. :cry:

New bulbs!
 

The end of the year holiday season usually signals a change in bulbs for me. This year I'm a little bit late, but close enough :-) This year I ordered another set of Phoenix 14K halides on boxing day. I had hopped to get a fresh set of T5s that weekend as well but unfortunately everyone was out of stock on the bulbs that I was looking for. I guess that contributed to my delay in swapping out the bulbs. At any rate, with all the bulbs in hand, it was finally time for the swap out!

The Magnificent Seven.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psr1d0bu50.jpg

Here are the old halides. I've noticed that the longer they are run, the more of a dark dirty haze they get on them.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...pso1uskmjf.jpg

Ahh, new halide goodness.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psojkdmtca.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...pso6f6rftj.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...pskoawwixe.jpg

Sadly this may be the last time I ever install my beloved Phoenix halides into this fixture :cry:

And also, OMG I feel like such a geezer talking about my halide fixture.. :lol:

It will be interesting to see your tank with new lighting

As to the old geezer part no comment because I'm probably way older than you :mrgreen:

The tank is a lot brighter bluer with new lights. Go figure :lol:

You might be surprised to find out how old I am :-)

Your lights are singing the bright blues....

So have we confirmed that the Phoenix 14K bulbs are discontinued? I lost track of that other thread.

Actually that's a good question! So far, all the vendors that I've spoken to has said that they are discontinued. However, that could just mean they are no longer ordering them. They could still be manufactured maybe. I don't really know.

I had heard they were discontinued but now that i'm looking for evidence of this i find absolutely none. I think it was Greg (Snappy) whom i first heard this from maybe he can confirm where he heard it?

New Bulbs FTS !
 

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...t.jpg~original

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...r.jpg~original

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...ps80iyhvqa.jpg

:jaw: :jaw: :jaw:

That's one sexy spread! That blasto colony is really hot man.

Very nice Kien.

I love your red flowerpot. OMG that's beautiful and so is the rest of your tank.

" awesome "

Still one of my favorite set-ups !

What are you thinking of switching to.

radium 250w bulbs! or aqua connect 14,000k. just a suggestion for when the phoenix bulb supply dies up

I don't think Radium does Duel Ended. Only mogul :(

I have no idea what I'll try. Who knows, maybe I will be lucky and find a supplier next Christmas. If not I may have to try another vendor. Seems odd talking about changing out (halide) bulbs in this day and age :lol: Seriously Keener, it's 2015, get with the times!

Hailde or bust! :p

They have 150w at J&L, maybe they make 250w

This is starting to sound very familiar :-) Pretty sure I've been down this road before. The last time I checked which was about a year go and the year before that, they didn't have DE 250 watt bulbs. Maybe that's changed, I'll have to look. If they do, then ya, that's a no brainer! I love Radiums (that I've seen on other tanks).

Sorry, no go

http://premiumaquatics.com/articles/radium

kien, have you tried to contact Phoenix directly? Their site however is only in Japanese. Got any Japanese friends?

Cool, I hadn't read that article before. Let's try to remember it the next time I'm hunting for halides, because this quesiton comes up often :-)

No I have not. I don't need to worry about this until December(ish). It is a long ways from now so a lot of things can change. For example, maybe I will have joined the cool kids and gotten myself updated with an LED fixture by then. Of course, by that time all the cool kids will have moved onto the next big thing like plasma lights, or something.

I tried out the xm20k bulb and I really like it, quite blue

lights out..
 

Well, it's official.. my beloved light fixture has given up the ghost. Last year it was a blown ballast which I easily replaced (thanks to some grow-op suppliers on Amazon), but now one of my light fixtures is blowing out bulbs :cry: At at first I thought it was just a dead bulb so I ordered a new one (they're $78 now). As soon as I plugged it in, POOF. $78 up in a proverbial puff of smoke. It's not the ballast this time because I've done the ballast musical chairs thing to test them all out and they all work fine. There must be a circuit inside the fixture that's shorted or something. I'm not an electrician and I don't really want to spend the time to crack it open to debug it further so I am officially on the hunt for a new light fixture now.

Sadly, I may have no choice but to go LED. If I can I'd like to go hybrid LED/T5. Actually, if I can, I'd like to get a whole new Halide/T5 fixture! I think Giessmman still makes them?

Haha, Radions on the way... And you can tweek the spectrum to make the corals any color you want. Blue and black to some, and white and gold to others...:razz:

Yep!

Have a look at the Giessmman spectra.

That is the fixture I decided to go with on our new cube display.

What about a Hamilton Tech halide/T5?

I thought this day would never come....I vote ATI hybrid all the way, LED has its place in the hobby but it does need supplementation and with the hybrid module its the perfect combination. If you don't want to spend that kind of money I would also look into T5 fixtures but if all fails, we can always go back to the trust worthy MH with T5s.

How long is your tank? I can sell us my old halide t5 if interested just have to figure out how to package it

If it's not the ballast the wiring inside the fixture is incredibly simple. I would consider replacing the socket and wire, otherwise you're totally using this as an excuse to get what you've always wanted anyway :wink:

I Still am loving my ATI Hybrid T5 Powermodule problem is you tank is so long so it may get expensive. :(

It's a six footer!

I'm going to play around with the ballast some more. You may be right.. Although I swear I swapped them around but maybe I didn't plug them in right (they are quite aways from my tank). At any rate, you got any LEDs for sale? :wink::wink::wink: :mrgreen:

Ya, now that I'm in the market for new lights again (again), I'm looking at all my options. I do like those hybrid powermodules. The longest ones they make are 60" which I think would be fine on my tank. Sure they are prices but no matter what I end up with it's going to cost me a good chunk of change I suspect. Maybe I'll get lucky and find someone who has shut down their reef tank to convert it into a swamp tank and no longer has a need for their 4 Mitras..

Sorry swamps need mitras too :mrgreen:

STILL uncool.
 

Well, looks like it was a false alarm, again ! I was sure this time that the light fixture itself was toast, but after proper testing I discovered that it was just a bad ballast once again. Like last time, I scoured the web (retailers) for another replacement (Galaxy Ballast) but could no longer find any! Again, I was certain that I would finally have to give up on my halide fixture and get a new light, possibly LED.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), after a routine visit with the boys at Concept Aquariums I discovered that they had a supplier that had ballasts that would work with my Sunlight Supply Maristar fixture! So of course I ordered two (one as a backup).

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psvm6pfp22.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1427687346

One of these is not like the others..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1427687582

Now I'm kicking myself for not ordering 3 of them so that they all matched, and using the existing Galaxy Ballasts as spares/backups. :doh:

Best reef thing since sliced bread!
 

Also..

I recently discovered this little gem!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psfyxzrqqn.jpg

OH EM GEE! This is one of the best purchases I have ever made! It's essentially a kent scraper with a magnet! So much easier to clean the glass now that it only takes one pass and not 10 like it did with my old magfloat/shark.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...pssvxt4jej.jpg

And as an added bonus I can now scrape down BELOW my sand line without worrying about scratching the glass (not that it really matters now that my tank is already scratched up all to hell; DAMN YOU MAGFLOAT!)

So much awesome!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...pscizi0age.jpg

Do you know what's the difference between the "Long" and "Strong" version of the care magnet?

I recently purchased a Shark, while its cleaning abilities are great, I'm always scared to clean the area near the sandbed in fears of scratching the tank, and moving the shark magnet requires a lot of force and makes daily cleaning too much of a chore (or I'm just a wuss with tiny Asian arms :redface:).