Matt's 29g Custom LED

Wow... what a night. I did a whole lot of work on the tank. Took out nearly all of the rock that I added several months ago. Tomorrow I'll finish that process when I take the rock with the war coral out. The tank will be back to the original three rocks I started with. I had a pretty eventful time though. Man... I've got a TON of coral packed into this thing! A full frag rack AND a FULL FULL FULL sand bed. I've barely got any room in this thing right now. My frag tank is currently cycling, so hopefully we're only a few weeks away from me being able to move some things over. The rock I pulled out of this tank went over there, so hopefully that will help seed things.

I'm updating some coop threads with the corals that got broken while I was removing them from rocks and moving things around. So make sure to check those out. I'll update with some pics tomorrow! :-)

Finally, an update about the dosing. I don't want to sound like the mad scientist here (too late, yeti has already got me pin pointed)... but the dosing products do appear to be effecting a few things. First of all, a few colors. The most notable change over the last week are a few of the zoas. My goblin fire zoas are a darker color, as well as my Lord of the Rings zoas. I haven't had the rainbow palys for very long, but they're darker as well. My pink jade appears to be getting lighter, and my blue tort's base is getting lighter as well. Second, I'm getting better polyp extension. The most noted is the GARF Bonsai Acro. It's bright green polyps are extending further than ever... sadly I liked it more with less polyp extension to show the deep purple base! Haha. My pink milli, green slimer and pink jade are also extending more. The new corals in my tank are changing as well, but they haven't been in long enough for me to attribute that to the dosing.

Alright guys, sorry for the epic long update... just had a lot going on! :-)

You and Jenny are both "Nesting" huh?

Alright,

Here's a full tank shot. This is basically like taking a picture of your house in the middle of a remodel. Haha. I've got a lot more to do, but the frag tank appears to be doing great. I placed a red monti cap frag in it after putting in the live rock that I transferred from my tank and it's doing well. Might be ready sooner than I thought! That's what I'm hoping anyways. I've got several things that I'd love to move into that tank yesterday!

Here's the full tank shot! (taken incorrectly by an amateur photographer... I should have slowed my shutter speed and closed my aperture so that more of the tank was in focus!)

Man! That small purple Acro back left, you got a couple of weeks ago sure has grown well, are you using Kryptonite in there too?

Nope... just common sugar and I switched to table salt.

Little blue pills Yeti.... that's what I heard anyways.

Ohh thanks for the tip Matt, I think I saw some de-ionized salt in the kitchen cupboard, and I think we have some brown sugar, which will obviously add more colour than the bleached white sugar....oh my tanks going to look good.

Jason, I've tried the small blue pills...fed them to my Duncan, poor thing couldn't close up for a week, tentacles were so stiff!

Only works for acros! Gotta be careful though lol

To late, but thanks, my Feather Duster is acting like a scrubbing pad on the fish.

I think my tank officially looks the nicest it has since it was started up. I still want to get the frag rack out of there, but that's going to take a few more weeks. Once that's out I'm going to clean the back wall really well and try a back lit background that I'm going to custom design and print.

It has come a long way!

Random update. Tree limb fell and knocked power out. Got the battery powered bubbler running on the tank. I'm going to go ahead and make a generator my next big purchase.

Edit: oh and look at the pic again... my clam finally attached up top after a year of trying!

matt_longview wrote:Random update. Tree limb fell and knocked power out. Got the battery powered bubbler running on the tank. I'm going to go ahead and make a generator my next big purchase.

Dang. Power is out at our house too. Power line fell and started a big fire up the road.

I would suggest a large enuf generator to be able to power the house.
We need to get one soon. We got a small one that can keep the tank running fine. But need a larger one, in due time. Been having more need for a larger generator and storm shelter so we need to get on the ball.
A double wide is nothing to high winds. Had to fix a couple of shingles that were folding over.

I really want a solar panel setup for the tank but funds are holding me back right now?

Did a ton of work on the tank. A 15 gallon water change yesterday, added phosban today, went through 2/3rds of an epoxy stick attaching more corals and added zeobak to my dosing schedule (every other day, 1 drop). Everything looks really good right now.

I'll follow up tomorrow with some pics. I know I keep saying this, but I'm running out of space for corals! :-)

Matt, that carpet would almost intimidate me to put my hand it the water, I could see it curling around my hand....and sucking me in.

Can't see the clam.

Yeah. It's a pretty aggressive guy. I'm never planning on touching it!!!

After adding the GFO yesterday my phosphates today tested .02!! Whoo hoo! I double tested and got .03, so I'm positive that they are lowering. I'm hoping to see the remaining GHA to die off over the next few days. I'm going to build a custom reactor for my gfo. It's literally two tablespoons of GFO, so a commercial reactor seems unnecessarily large.

Tank lighting isn't on yet, so no pics.

Lights are on. It's go time!

I got 4 words for you....Gimmie your Zoa's NOW!!!!!

Great looking tank bro, I am jealous for sure.

Haha. Thanks for the compliment. I wish I could get a pic that showed how the zoas look under the blue LEDs, but it's just impossible. They're insane! :-)

I have actually already picked out two or three more places that I could put an SPS. Someone help me... please?

So I believe I've just watched the best two weeks of growth in my tank ever. I also see some gorgeous colors in my corals right now. The most significant color change is in the "brown procilipora"... the polyps are still a brown/maroon color, but the skin of the coral is rainbow! I've had this for over a year and it's never looked like this! Koral Color? Strontium? Low (0.00 tonight) phosphates? No idea what the exact cause is but I'm keeping everything the same!

With the increased growth I've had to increase two part dosing up to 7.5ml per day. Poor me right!! Lol

Looking good. Have you lain the zoa frags on their side on purpose, to have them grow down over the bottom?

More like I can't get snails and cucumbers to quit knocking them over! Lol. I've glued or epoxied most of them to rocks now. That rainbow paly frag is growing heads like crazy! The palys will supposedly grow across sand without rock to attach to, but my keds red zoas did that as well (you can actually see that in the pic).

I thought I could see that, and I personally think it looks good when they do. I have some Zoas in the 75G, what's interesting is that the PC light cover the rear half of the tank (Glass lids on the front). The one Zoa is on a rock, such that half the colony are under the PC and half under the glass. The rear hal have great colour, the front half of the colony are much paler, even though we are talking only an inch in difference from directly under the PC, to not. I'm hoping to get the colony to spread, but before that it's going to be a case of moving the rock back a few inches.

So over the last several weeks I've been trying something. I wanted to see if three of these 120w fixtures would be enough light for my sps dominant 227g tank.

A few weeks ago I raised my light fixture up from about 5" over my tank to about 8"... then proceeded to move it up to 10".

Well, as it is now... I've raised my fixture up 12 inches over my tank. So it's now 30 inches above my sand bed. So it should be giving a close representation of it bring over a 27" tank, approx 5" above the water. The funny thing is, corals seem to be growing BETTER than they were before. Even more bizarre, the corals on the bottom of my tank are growing fastest! It's possible my growth has been slowed by too much light?

Either way, things are growing well and looking great. :-)

nice diagram