Help
It seemed right to start a new tank thread as the leds are now long gone and the tank is basking under two 400w halides - (6500k iwasaki lamps
)The six month experiment was conclusive in my mind - the aquarays and tiles do enable most corals to live alright, but they are not good enough for the tank to flourish. I wanted to be able to add any coral and it stand a good chance of survival, good growth and good health so it didn't take a lot of convincing to switch over to metal halide.
To be honest I knew some corals in the tank could be better, and it didn't matter how many times they were repositioned I couldnt find a place under the leds where they would do well.
The lobophilias slowly declined, some beyond recovery which was a shame. Many lps I thought looked good expanded beyond belief within 24hrs under the new lamps - the acans, hammers, torches and cataphilias visually doubled their expansion and the surviving lobos have started the slow road to recovery.
As the tank was going through major changes the sump was rebuilt as a single chamber, no sand, no light, no cheato and the biolgical pellet filtration increased from 500ml to 2 liters. The skimmer was upgraded from the mce600 to a sc2060 and it pulled out an amazing amount of organic gunc from day one. A calcium reactor took the place of the kalk stirrer and the redundant stirrer turned into a O2 reactor for the calcium reactor effluent.
Now the lights and water quality are improving the tank was rescaped so some sps colonies could be added and the expanding lps corals were spread out to allow for their new polyp expansion. Finally the tank is taking a little direction and we are aiming for a natural and 'in scale' reef so the larger Tangs were re-homed making way for several shoals of smaller fish that will live and swim within the coral branches.
Cameras charged so picture time tomorrow
