Looking for advice

[mayheim]

looking for advice

Posted Today at 03:14 PM by mayheim (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/blog.php?u=9709)
I have 180 gallon reef tank, that has been operating now for about six months. I recdently upgrade from a 150 gallon tank that I had opearting for a few years. In the previous tank I had no issues keeping corals.

The set up that I have is as follows: six T5 54w bulbs..2 white , 2 blue, 2 pink, on for aprox. 10 -11 per day on timers. My lghts are sitting on top of my tank about six inches from my glass. The lights are 48 inches( the tank lenght is 72, but I have my rock set up so corals are directly beneath the lighting system, and that I have less direct light on either end, where my anenomes seem be to happy. Sump system with skimmer in sump. 4 water fans plug into an " ocean pulse " wave maker. 2 pumps position on back of tank, and two more position on either end. Due 10% water changes once a week. Specific gravity at 1.025. Have an RO water system set up for my water changes and top off.


Currently in the tank, fish, tree corals, leathers(soft), carpet and bulble tip anenome that are doing fine. I can't seem to keep hard corals. usually dye withn the week. Also micro feed, turning skimmer off for a couple of hours. Supplements such as calcium levels etc. are checked on a weekly basis. Keep my calcium levels at around 420 - 450.
I had this same set up when I had my 150 tank, and my corals flourished.
I was thinking of going to a combination metal hallide T5 set up 72 inches.

Any thoughts.

[eli@fijireefrock.com]

If all your leather and soft doing extremly well I would check the parameter of your water quality, nitrates, nitrite, phosphates and you haven't mentioned anything about activated carbon,GFO or addition of calcium, you are running 2 pink bulbs unless i miss read it let me ask for what reason.

[whatcaneyedo]

That doesn't seem like very much light to me and I'm having a difficult time understanding how much flow you have in your tank. For many stoney coral you're going to want at least 30x your display tanks volume in flow per hour or 5400 gph however many people use even more than that. Alkalinity and magnesium levels are also very important so you should probably be checking them as well. Ideally you want alkalinity between 7-12 dkh and magnesium between 1200-1500 ppm.

[mayheim]

Ok what would you suggest for lighting. I was thinking about the metal hallide T5 combination. Alkalinity is around 10dkh.. I have never check for magnesium levels...will do so. When you talk about "volume flow per hour" are you refering to what the pump in the sump is doing. If so I know it is producing at a high volume. When I bought the pump it was recommended for the size of the tank , actually bought a unit that was above the recommended pump size.currently have water fans set up on my wave maker. should I change to water pumps to help increase water flow.

[mayheim]

I am using activated reef carbon in pouches in my sump. Pink bulds are 54w T5 action wave bulbs, supposed to help with coral growth

[whatcaneyedo]

Your tank contains 180 US gallons of water. Multiply that by 30 and you get 5400 gallons. To keep high flow demanding stoney coral you want all of the flow that your various pumps and power-heads create to add up to at least 5400 gallons per hour. This is just a rule of thumb but I wouldn't want to be much lower. However you can certainly have more flow than that. Some people have as much as 60x in gph. In your case that would equal 10800gph.

I don't have much experience with T5 so I can't really comment. Do you know what colour temperature yours are? When was the last time you changed out your bulbs for new ones?

[mayheim]

The T5 are a high intensity florescent bulb that operate at a low temp. have six bulbs that are at different light spectrums, 2 white 2 atinic blue, 2 coral wave(pink) that are supposed to promote growth. Going to increase water flow with bigger fans and pumps see what happens. May go to combination metal hallide and florescent T5 set up

[whatcaneyedo]

Color temperature for reef aquarium bulbs is expressed on the kelvin scale. 10000k, 14000k and 20000k are typical bulb colour temperatures marketed by manufacturers. Actinic bulbs and others that don't produce colour temperatures within that range may look nice to us but don't produce very much useful light (if any) for coral. Its also important to change your bulbs at least once a year if not more often as their colour spectrum will shift and their intensity will decline over time.

But as elias pointed out, If you have a problem with your water quality specifically nitrite, nitrate or phosphate it won't matter how good your lighting, water flow and other water chemistry parameters are. So you may want to find those out first.