Ritter's 75 Gallon Reef

How dare you assume we were being sarcastic. Bryan and I were both genuinely interested in cardboard boxes. My dad used to manage a cardboard box manufacturing company....so maybe it's in my jeans...

it must be cycle time, little emotional are we ?

Ok fine, one more pic. Actually I would have posted them all but stupid me forgot to save the images before I paid and since they are WYSIWYG the pics where gone after I paid. I did find one of the pics in the cache though.

I liked the box better

Bryan wrote:I liked the box better

I'll save it for you.

I feel so loved

That is just plain sexy. :-) Can't wait to see it all! (that's what she said)

The new zoas look great. The freebies wouldn't open up all the way but the centers are an unusual green color but I couldn't see the skirts yet. I got this really cool colony that are white with blue centers. You can see them in the background on this VIDEO. I'll have to wait to get pics until I'm home when the lights are on. When I was videoing that I noticed 5 peppermint shrimp congregated on my orange monti cap and where doing this dance. I've never seen them gather all in one spot like that before. There were 2 on the top and 3 hanging off the bottom.

Getting an attack plan together on them new Zoa's Them are some nice looking Zoa's Gabe, cool moon light too!

DonnieP wrote:Getting an attack plan together on them new Zoa's Them are some nice looking Zoa's Gabe, cool moon light too!

Thanks Donnie. You know what's funny about that is this morning one of the zoa colonies was closed up and a peppermint shrimp was picking off stuff around it. My luck I'll have some kind of zoa eating shrimps. I've never much kept zoanthids but I'm starting to collect a few different colors to fill in some of the empty spots in the tank. I've heard of peps tearing apart LPS corals for food but I've never had any problems out of mine. If they get a taste for coral I'll be investing in a hawkfish to take care of them.

Na, they won't hurt em, mine pick stuff out of my Zoa's all the time and don't bother em. The Zoa's will close just from the shrimp walking on them.

Yeah I don't much worry about stuff like that. If a shrimp eats a coral the coral probably was on it's way out anyway. I could see where the shrimp was picking around the bottom and the zoas were fine.

It's been a week since I added the led spotlights in the sump and I can see growth on some of the corals already. I put a frag of a brown digitata under each bulb and the growth seems to be about the same under 20k and 12k so far. This coral is easy to spot the new growth because the skeleton underneath turns blue in high light. Both frags have blue rims around the bottoms now and the larger frag has blue tips, (one frag has branches the other just encrusted when placed). I put a green acro frag under each light and I haven't seen growth out of either. The pink birdsnest isn't showing anything yet but it's only been a week. I have another acro frag, (humilis?), that I've had for probably close to year that hasn't shown a bit of growth in my tank and it's colors were pale do to not placing it in enough light. Since I put it under the leds it's already getting a deep green color and the polyps are expanded more than I've ever seen. I placed some pink palys under the lower light areas of the 20k to see how they do.

Gabe
You better start saving When you see what the leds will do to those sps you will be wanting to replace the MH with all leds. Like I said, once you go led you can't go back! I wouldn't pay several hundred $ for them tho, you can build them yourself like I did for the pico but use 3 watt or 5 watt leds for depth.

Very cool. I'm really pumped about your testing results. Are you planning on keeping both of them long term? If you're planning to sell off the one that is less effective I'd be interested in putting it over my frags on my next setup. :-)

You're right about the growth being easy to spot on the brown digitata too. I really like it. Do you kind of notice the "brown" looking more dark purple under the LEDs? Mine appears to have changed colors a touch.

I'm not sure if I'll be using both or not. If they are too close right now I'll have to raise them up and when I do I don't think I'll need both. They give out enough spread when raised up but close up is very narrow. I may be crushing them with light right now but I haven't seen any bleaching yet except the tips of a Heliopora have turned white so I moved to a little less light. I haven't noticed the brown changing any yet on the digi but we'll see. When it was higher up under my halides it had a green tint to it. I've seen the same coral in about 3 different tanks, (I think it originally came from Jason), and they were brown in every tank with a light green tint.

Here's a pic of the digi in this thread when it was in m cousin's tank under 250w halides.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1648974

DonnieP wrote:Gabe
You better start saving When you see what the leds will do to those sps you will be wanting to replace the MH with all leds. Like I said, once you go led you can't go back!

I'm already sold on them after seeing you and Daniel's tanks. It's just a matter of when.

ritter678 wrote:It's just a matter of when.

Now. Leds are ordered.

ritter678 wrote:

ritter678 wrote:It's just a matter of when.

Now. Leds are ordered.

Very... stinkin... cool!

Which LED fixture did you purchase?

Let me know if you are going to sell your MH's. I am getting ready to order a set for my tank.

I got the Evolution leds like Matt and Daniels. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my MH yet. I think I'm going to put one over my 20 gal. and sell the other. It's 2 x 24 inch fixtures with 150 watt halides, 65w power compact actinics and lunar lights. Fans need replacing on both I just never had any heat problems so I didn't replace them.

glad you ordered them!!! there growing stuff like crazy in mine!

I got a lux meter today. I plan on using this to place corals and monitor bulb/fixture life. I know this won't measure par but it should give me a good idea of light loss at certain depths and areas of the tank and give a very rough estimate of par. I can at least see what bulb/fixtue is putting out more light but if that light is usable or not I won't know. I figure if I can grow an acro in spot "X" then I can grow an acro in another spot with similar numbers. I hope it will take some of the guessing out of placing corals. The conversion for lux to par for the sun is divide lux by 50. I got about 1800 par at 12:30pm today, 1300 at 3:30, 900 at 4:30 and 560 at 5:30. Useless information, I know. I just like gadgets.

Lights are here! Problem is now I'm blind and I'll never be able to see the tank again.