Cali Kid Corals

yaradartist's 36g

Great report, Richard! :D I too am excited as I watch my reef adapt to the new lighting. Surprisingly, many of my acros and branching corals were shocked by the LED light spectrum and many bleached out and died off. I found this odd as the overall light level seems much lower than having two, 250w Mh's and 6 T5's running. Robert at Neptune warned me to "throw out" any preconceived ideas about lighting and be very slow and cautious about acclimating coral to the top levels of the reef. I currently am running 4, white 48" RB strips and 3, blue 48" strips. I"m seeing an adjustment taking place and am REALLY happy with how my LPS and montis are looking. My sunset monti is spreading like butter on hot bread. Even some more unusual colonies like the Super Nova and Blue Steel Porites are looking better than ever. The colony of pipe organ coral that you gave me is the size of a grapefruit now. Need any back? lol. I'm liking everything about my conversion to LED's. I should have anticipated the initial stress it would place on my tank to make such a sudden change over. I'm a little eager to see if I can truly keep acros like pearlberry, german blue poly, tri color, bonsai and others as well as the host of millis that I now am missing. One frag at at time, starting them out on the substrate and slowly moving them up as they show continued health. If successful, I'll be begging back some (a lot) SPS DBTC coral that has been lost in the transition. Two that I really miss are Jeremy's sunset and ultra cherry bomb millis as well as the famous barbecue milli. Bumma

Thanks for checking in with the progress information. Also, nice to hear the job is keeping you hopping. They are darn lucky to have a creative and hard working person like you on their payroll!
 
John you are making me consider now. The coral had better color last week. I will turn them back 5%.

You should be fine with all the SPS as every one of my acros are much better since the change. The only coral I am watching it a cynaria that seems to always have a black ball stuck in its mouth. I am not target feeding. I wonder if it is the dead algea from its tissue and it is turning it over very fast as they cannot adapt to the new spectral limits. It inflates as normal and the color if great. Maybe I did not notice the black plug before?
 
So I gave away about 2/3rds of the coral from my tank in the last couple months. Then moved all to a styro shipping box for three weeks, cut the tank down and moved all back with a new built rock 'island' to have a large under ledge surface for the assesors. They are swimming upside down and all around the rock, a great look. Very happy with the new height as I cleaned it this week in a fraction of the time.
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And after lights out a view under the rock, the fish doing its sideways transition to under.
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Another thank you to Omid, Roberto, Dave, and John for help building the LED system. It is everything I had hoped for and more. The tank volume is now about 25 gallons, with no sump, I am working with macroalgae in the tank and waterchanges to clean up the water. I will be experimenting with a surface cleaner in the coming weeks, as a film developes without a protein skimmer on line.
 
Thanks Dave, The tank is right beside the breakfast table now so I magnet clean it sitting there. Mike, variability makes this hobby very exciting, vocation too no doubt. Stop by to see the new set up when you are in the neighborhood.
 
bondolo said:
The pictures look fantastic and really quite beautiful. I look forward to seeing it in person! Very well done Richard
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Stop by anytime Mike. I am hoping to organize another tank tour in this area in the winter. Mine might be the smallest on the tour again.
 
newhobby said:
Damn Richard :)
Super clean.
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Thanks. It helps to have all new rock and spend a couple hours cleaning up the frags. It will get all grown over soon enough. My goal was to eliminate the Caulerpa verticilata, or some close cousin, from the tank. It had 'mossed' over the base rock in one inch thick, sometimes longer trailing fine green. Nothing in my small tank ate it so changing the rock was the best choice.
 
Richard, your tank looks great! Especially without all the caulerpa. Sounds like the perfect dimensions now. I can return your orange fungia and your lobo ... they've been doing fine in the big tank, and it looks like there's room in your tank for them again. In the last photo, is the rock on the right placed on top of an acrylic box/ledge? Or maybe it's just a reflection of an edge of the ank.
 
99sf said:
Richard, your tank looks great! Especially without all the caulerpa. Sounds like the perfect dimensions now. I can return your orange fungia and your lobo ... they've been doing fine in the big tank, and it looks like there's room in your tank for them again. In the last photo, is the rock on the right placed on top of an acrylic box/ledge? Or maybe it's just a reflection of an edge of the ank.
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Good riddance green covered rock. Where do you see space for them? I am glad they like their new home.

That is a reflection. There are two acrylic rod feet for the rock ledge and they are visible in that shot, both of whick intersect that ghost line along the bottom. One at the left end tilted to the left, and the other directly under the center of the fish or so. The third 'leg' is a point on the rock that jutted down from the plane of the ledge. That shot is a back side and from the front the two glued legs are difficult to see.
 
650-IS350 said:
Looking good. Love the Assessors. Thinking about getting a pair of Yellow and Blues myself.
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Best fish ever. Took me a bit of housing others to find the right thing for me. Never touch the coral or pick at any of the feather worms. I like the green banded gobies too. He is peeking out in the last photo. Its mate only lasted three spawnings and she went missing when he came back from quarding the eggs. They did not see much of each other with him being gone a couple weeks out of the month.
 
Richard,

The tank looks great ! Thanks again for the corals, they are doing great in my RSM.
I look forward to another east bay tank tour. :)
 
gimmito said:
Richard,

The tank looks great ! Thanks again for the corals, they are doing great in my RSM.
I look forward to another east bay tank tour. :)
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Thanks Jim. Once cold weather gets here work slacks off and I should be able to get a weekend day off for a tank tour.
 
Any ideas as to why the lower left hand branch of this Caulastrea is not opening in this lights out shot? I noticed it in the last five days or so. It also is about half as inflated during the daylight too. It is not shaded more or exposed more than the other three fourths. Flow seems very similar for each side. Nothing seem to be bothering it. The section is separate now from the others as it has grown all from one head, but now is four branches of about a dozen heads each. The other three all look normal and are feeding.

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The tank is dry. It took several months of coral leaving to good homes for me to decide it is time to rest. Today I handed over the last few rocks and attached fragments of coral.

Great to see animals I have nurtured doing well in other tanks, including The Steinhart.

The LED turned out to be stronger than I needed. This light would work well on a 36 inch deep tank. Some macros, growing 24" from the light, on the bottom of the tank, were light yellow in color. I could get good growth if I tucked cheato under a rock ledge. It was thick and deep green. Coraline grew bright pink/purple under rocks. Exposed it was pale to almost white.

I would like to see LED on a track moving over the coral. It seemed the constant limited color bands of the individual emitters limited growth. The reflected light under edges, where the colors had a chance to blend some provided good growth for low light requirments. The LPS grew well and kept great color.

Overall building the LED fixture was one of the most rewarding parts of the tank. High on the list of rewarding parts of the tank husbandry was snorkeling this January off Puerto Morelos, Mexico. Seeing SPS coral colonies three and four feet in diameter blew me away. Over the years I had taken several montis from chips of frags that had only one polyp, to a couple inches. To see the scale of growth in my tank and how much eat them made these wild coral grand beyond words.

A huge thank you to all the teachers and sharers in this club. With much more to learn, I hope to see you at a meeting soon.
 
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