Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by gregzz4

Wow, that white-balance shot looks awesome Adam
Now you need some more Red corals

Oh, and Ferdinand is tre` kool

hehe, it's why I was so excited when I finally got some red planet. I've started breaking all my new frags in two if they're big enough and placing them in different lighting areas of my tank to see what they do. I've found some of my corals that grow like weeds in the brightest light also wash out horribly under the LEDs, but if I put a frag in the shade, they'll grow slower but go back to their 'show' colours. I moved a colony of green stag with blue tips in and put the bigger chunk of Red Planet in it's place, but I have that blue/green stag in three different places in my tank, the one frag of it that's at the bottom and partially shaded is a beautiful emerald green, while the ones that were near the top where that red planet is now had nice blue tips, but the body of the corals were almost light tan/yellow. I'm not sure if that red planet frag is going to do well that high up on the rock, so I've got another piece almost at the bottom of the tank. I want at least one of them to develop that beautiful green under-tone.

[gregzz4]

I hope you find the happiest places for your different corals

It's funny, talking about LEDs ...
Another member has recently told me he may dump his latest ones and go back to T5s. I'm not surprised
I don't have the money to play with LEDs, so I have no input ...

Here's to your red planet growing like a weed

And keep the pics coming

[asylumdown]

Yah man, they're definitely not a 100% solution. I love them because when you get enough of them, they're crazy powerful, way more powerful than I ever gave them credit for before hand (hence 8 units running at 75% max power when I really only needed 6), but I've never seen an LED tank look as good in person as some of the T5 tanks I've seen. Argentiner's tank that I saw today is T5 and his is everything I hope mine one day becomes, it was spectacular. I'm not sure if it's that I just have them way too bright for some corals, or what the deal is, but certain corals just don't hold their 'zing' colours under my lights, while others (like that tricolour) almost hurt to look at they're so electric. So far, I'm willing to trade off the colour losses when they do occur for the fact that my tank actually has a sunrise and a sunset, and how much the look of it changes over the course of a day. I can wake up on a Saturday and look at the tank in it's morning light, then go out and come back at 1pm and it's like looking at a completely different tank. I even get an hour of hyper crazy royal blue (which I wouldn't want all the time) right before bed.

I'm just now starting to play with coral positioning, and considering adjusting my light schedule to see if I can bump up the colours that I've lost without compromising the growth, but it makes me nervous to mess with a good thing if you know what I mean. I'm sure part of the issue is also that this tank has been darn near close to ULNS for months, so things are a little more pastel regardless of lights anyway. I don't think I'd ever ditch LEDs now that I've had a taste of their overall intensity and controllability, but I definitely wouldn't buy another fixture unless it had the same sort of diode mix that the new radion pro has. I think the success of LEDs is going to be when the diode colour mixes start to approach the richness and breadth of what you can accomplish with T5s. I think if I had something closer to the 'true UV', as well as a few more peaks on the deeper blue end in there, the colours would pop a bit more, and the corals that fade might hold on to some of their 'zing'. However, a many thousand dollar upgrade to radion pros is not in the cards for a while.

[asylumdown]

Also, just checked before bed - my male true perc clown is in the nem! He's wiggling around in it like a pig in mud! Here's hoping his girlfriend figures out it's there tomorrow

[gregzz4]

That's kool
Wish my captive-bred clown would play in my bubble tip, without being eaten mind you

The whole lighting thing .... best of luck with your decision

[kien]

That's a good idea playing with placement. I've been doing the same thing. I have a red planet in 3 different places and all three look different! One is more red one is more pink and one is more green. I also have a bonsai in two different places and one is more blue in its tips while one is more purple. It's kinda cool to observe the differences.

Personally I think your pale/pastel colours are due to your ULNS environment. You don't have a lot of fish in there at all. It depends on your perspective whether or not this is a good or bad thing tho. Many people strive for that pastelly zeoVit look. I think this is why zeoVit has all those other bottles to play with. You strip your tank clean with the zeoLites and pale your corals out, but then bring back some colour (possibly selectively) by dosing the various additives (Coral Vitalizer, pohls xtra, amino acids, etc..). Then there are people like me who would see this as an excuse to add more fish.

[lastlight]

are you gluing your stuff directly to the rock? I also had a few corals in multiple spots but would have done much more of this had I drilled my rock to peg the corals in place.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by kien

Personally I think your pale/pastel colours are due to your ULNS environment. You don't have a lot of fish in there at all. It depends on your perspective whether or not this is a good or bad thing tho. Many people strive for that pastelly zeoVit look. I think this is why zeoVit has all those other bottles to play with. You strip your tank clean with the zeoLites and pale your corals out, but then bring back some colour (possibly selectively) by dosing the various additives (Coral Vitalizer, pohls xtra, amino acids, etc..). Then there are people like me who would see this as an excuse to add more fish.

Yah I've been meaning to get more fish, but I'm pretty sold on the tank transfer method as a QT procedure and man is it ever labour intensive. Also, it turns out there's not many 12 day stretches where I'm in the city continuously, and I already ask too much of my roommates in regards to my tank to be ok with asking them to do a transfer for me or stay on top of ammonia testing. I have been dosing Pohl's Xtra with my doser, and for a while I was dosing B-balance, but I didn't see any difference in coral colours and within a week of dosing B-balance I got my first flush of dinos. I can't say for sure they're connected, but since I stopped dosing B-balance, the dino issue has subsided dramatically. I'm nervous to dose things when I don't really know what they are, and if it can't be automated I'm also too lazy to keep up with it lol.