450 Gallons, My Peninsula build.

[Sleeping Giant]

beautiful tank

 

[strich]

What a whirlwind ride to read through 7 years like this haha. Nice work and keen to see it continue to evolve, thanks for sharing.

 

[wishntoboutside]

Thank you. I am very happy to be about half way through this. I think I will be starting 2021 updates tonight. I feel like I am getting close to a great ending. lol

 

[wishntoboutside]

So when the aquarium looks good one just takes pictures. If it is not doing good one does not. So as the aquarium keeps getting better I take more pictures. I look at these pictures now and see how much has changed and I am not sure if I should derail things and start showing pictures now. We will just see how it goes. I could also do a thread alone on aquarium fish stores thru many states.
so the was around late 2020
note tope greenish orange coral to this day I have no idea what named coral it is just a slow grow and a beautiful one. The second picture shows Redplant. Law Office Aquarium Purple tipped staghorn The top pinkish red was an unknown that I did lose that was one of my favorite corals I ever came across due to its color and texture.

 

[wishntoboutside]

Some times you put in corals to see how they do or tester corals. I always tried to warn myself that all monti's should either go on there own rock or just put in last as they are aggressive. I do love monti's so do not get me wrong they have great color and just suck up a lot of elements. All of them just come weeds. Some are more beautiful than others but this one I have always loved the color but regret ever putting in in my aquarium.
I was smart and mounted the hurricane chalice on a small rock.

 

[lubeck]

Love this build!

 

[wishntoboutside]

You next start farming the faster growing corals to buy other corals or have beer money. -)

One of my favorite old school corals. Hawkins Ecinata.

 

[wishntoboutside]

living in So Cali sometimes one has to stop and take a deep breath and enjoy the sunset from time to time.

 

[wishntoboutside]

Here is a cool shot of my ladies favorite fish she calls blue lips. =) The aquarium is now looking more and more like a reef.

 

[wishntoboutside]

We are now in January of 2021. Just giving time frames of things filling in.

 

[wishntoboutside]

Here is a shot of one of my favorite corals I am still growing. It has seen hell and came back. such a slow grower for me. Event Horizon Millie if I reall. Garth Bonzi on the left.

 

[wishntoboutside]

a few unknot corals. wow my rock was looking horrible at this point. lol. Purple Nana in the bottom.

 

[wishntoboutside]

A great thing about having a large tank is some of the dimensions. My aquarium is 6 feet deep and 4 feet wide. It is really misleading at time as it looks like a giant cube.

 

[wishntoboutside]

Love this build!

Thank you.

I am having some fun going thru these pictures.

 

[wishntoboutside]

I am going to end the evening of posting with a bunch of coral frags added at this time and of others filling in. Yes I am kind of an acropora guy.

 

[wishntoboutside]

One of the baby torches growing out. =)

 

[wishntoboutside]

When I got my aquarium going and stocked it up with some fish. It was around a Reefapoolza show in so cal I was able to get some great fish from ORA for one of the both I assisted setting up. At the end of the show many of these went back into the aquarium. Here are some shots of my favorite fish.

 

[wishntoboutside]

We are now rolling along into late July 2021. Things are growing slowly filling in. At this point I was tuning parameter more and more. As I go thru these pictures I remember how much I loved T5 lighting but those damm topdown shots were always impossible fore me. I will honestly say doing this thread is making me want to take out the real camera with the marco lens.
I always enjoy nice top down shots this was an attempt play around back then.

 

[wishntoboutside]

So Here we are in mid summer of 2021. I did my final equipment change on my aquarium. My first set of lights had loud fans and sounded like a rocket ship at times. The Giesseman was nice blending with the dimmable t5. the led just did not have enough punch for me. I was ready to try something else. It was time to try a different set of lights and hopefully be more happy with them at the end of the day. Luckily having 8020 light rack I felt like I could almost doing anything with it at this point.
After much thought and consideration I went against many and decide to go against radions. I felt to do it right I needed to many lights and was not sure about the generation that was offered. pros and blues. They were also a ton of watts, possible fan noise as well.
I really was liking the build quality of the Phillips Coral Care lights. No Fans, No noise. No heat with the heat sinks and best of all a UL listed aquarium light. It just seemed to be to be true. I Also thought that Phillips would not just put there name on something as to me it is kind of a household name. I am also sure they did their own research on aquarium lights prior as this was their second run of this. The only thing that was a little concerning may have been the weight as the ballast are build in the light. I also did like that the light was app driven so it would be easier to due customer programing.
the lights came with a hanging kit that I knew in advance that this was not the direction i needed to go. I found a threaded hole on the side of my lights and was easily able to make a mounting system and even being able to tilt them some if needed.
Here is some of these getting set up on the aquarium and these are the current lights on the aquarium to this day. After having these lights I have to say they have been absolutely trouble free and can grow corals beyond my expectations.

Here are some photos of them getting up and running.

 

[wishntoboutside]

Added 2 more lights. four total at this point. They do have an industrial look but I think they blend in really well with the 8020.