Well, it's been a little longer than I intended again, but time for another update, this time about my equipment.
I've tried everything when it comes to lighting. With my 150G, I had three 250W halides which were nice, but expensive to run and because I have very little head room over the tank (due to furnace duct work) also heated the tank more than I wanted. When I upgraded, I decided to go LED so I bought three units from a local store as a test knowing that eventually I woudl need more. While I liked the colour, I wasn't crazy for their effect on my corals. I know others have had different experiences, but I thought they burned my lps and browned my sps which I was just starting to get into. I probably shoudl have stuck with them longer, but a friend of mine Greg, a local reefer in Burlington who goes by the handle "living reef", showed me some of the tanks he maintains and one of them was a stunning sps penninsula tank with T5 lighting. As my only other choice was to go back to halides, I decided to give T5's a try. I already had 1 3 foot fixture over my frag tank, and over the next few months I picked up 2 4 foot fixtures so I now have a total of 18 bulbs over my display. Currently I have mostly blue pluses with a coral plus and a purple plus in each fixture, but I plan to play around with the combinations a bit more, perhaps adding a few actinics which I've heard neat things about. Although I miss the shimmer of the MH's and LED's and 18 bulbs are expensive to replace every 6-8 months, I love the colour and growth I get with the T5's. They are also lower profile than the halides so I can raise them a little higher off the water. I still have the other lights, in case something breaks or I change my mind (again).
For flow, in addition to my return and closed loop, I have 2 MP40's and a gyre, all on one side of the tank opposite the overflow. It is challenging finding the right flow for a tank that is mostly sps but that has a few choice lps as well, including an elegance and a bubble that I've had for over 5 years and are quite large. I've had to move the elegance into a protected space behind the bubble because the tissue was starting to recede when it was out in the open. I've never calculated the turnover in my tank but I'm sure it's quite high. I've just bought a used MP60 which I might replace the gyre with, moving the gyre into my frag tank because I'd rather not have any cords in my display.
When I upgraded, I also signficantly upgraded my skimmer, which I think is essential for any sps tank especially given the large number of well-fed fish I have. I bought a Reef Octopus 5000 external skimmer which overflows into a bucket which overflows when full into the sump. It's kind of finicky, especially after a water change or aquascaping, but once you re-find the sweet spot it pulls out a lot of dark gunk.
For top-off, I used to have a Tunze Osmolator on my old tank and absolutely lover it, used to call it my best investment. Well, after it broke I tried different things but eventually settled on a very unsophisticated but effective solution - a maxi jet 1200 on a timer, that pushes water into the display 3 times a day to approximate the water that evaporates. With a large water volume, it's not as important that you are precise. This is one areas I've probably had most of my accidents, either with the timer tripping and me not checking it for an extended period which drove the salinity up, or me running the pump on a regular circuit for whatever reason and forgetting about it until the whole reservoir was drained. Despite my large water volume, I once emptied over 60G into my display which dropped the salinity by about 3 points. I was very attentive for a while after that.
Finally, I used to have a calcium reactor but gave up on this when the CO2 leaked into my sump over the course of a few weeks and caused all kind of algae problems. It was undersized for my new sps tank anyway, so I began to dose using a doser and B-Ionic supplements. I am still playing with doing amounts, but I am having to dose upwards of 300 mL every day of both solutions to stay on top of utilization. It is a three channel doser, so with the third channel I dose a much lower amount of potassium. I used to dose vinegar but stopped to start dosing potassium and didn't notice a problem when I did. My nitrates are starting to climb though, so I might have to revisit this. But that will be the subject of another post.
my lighting evolution....
my flow...
my doser...
my top-off...
my skimmer...
