Eggyoke's SCA 50 cube reef log 24 x 24 x 20

[Eggyoke]

Update:

Tested my water

Cal 460
Alk 8.1
Mag 1400
NO3 .75
PO4 .06

I adjusted my dosing by 2 ml a day. Seems to be crawling up slightly. Im sure the Red Sea Pro isn't helping me either. I'm almost ready to toss the bucket and just buy the Aquaforest salt.

Lights-Im really starting to like these lights because the even spread. I've noticed my corals starting to change colors. Mainly the Red Planet that turned yellow on me. I think I had too much light on the tank. Especially with LEDs and the clusters being so close to each other. I like the 20k look and still have the dead center at 25k on the lux meter. Seems to be working. I have no plans on changing the intensity if the corals grow. Most of my corals and getting a deeper color. The LPS are fuller. With that being said, my eye par meter was way off.

I lost my Coral Beauty. My favorite fish. I believe it was this stupid crab that was a hitch hiker on one of my corals. I thought it was just one of those sps crabs that were harm less. I lost a engineer goby a while back. No exactly sure when because i had 3 and they always hung around under the rocks and never really saw all 3 at any moment. I had a felling there was a predator in the rocks because my Chromis stopped hiding in the rocks. I was a pain in the ash getting him out. I had to take all the rocks out and redo my aquascape. I threw the crab in my sump and now he's MIA.

 

[Eggyoke]

 

[Water Dog]

Now that you've had the Maxspect Ethereal over your tank for a few weeks, how have your SPS responded thus far? I too am looking at a similar setup for my next upgrade and that fixture has definitely peaked my interest. With the mounting arm essentially fixing the height adjustability for such a setup, how do you like the coverage over the 24"x24" footprint? Has the puck layout helped out with shadowing issues associated with other "traditional" two puck style LED lights? I appreciate your thoughts and experiences. Beautiful tank BTW.

 

[Eggyoke]

Water Dog, I'm really liking this light. I switched from 2 Hydra 26 HDs and getting about the same coverage. Only thing different is there isn't a difference in light intensity. What sold me was the spread of the led lights. There is a some shadowing but better than single point light source. I guess what we want is T5 coverage but without that bulky fixture and the cost of replacement bulbs. As far as the 2 x 2 coverage, maybe it's my overflow but the back corners are a bit bum. I have some zoas and they are doing fine. The front corners are a different story. Weird thing is I but this big orange digi and it's doing better than under the lights. It's brighter and seems happier. The front isn't having shading issues because the light is reflecting against the glass.

 

[Eggyoke]

 

[Water Dog]

Very nice setup indeed!

 

[Eggyoke]

I missed saying something, corals have changed a bit. The orange digi is now in the front corner on the sand. A couple of my corals were bleached. Been like that for a few months. Now they doing better and changing back to the original color.

 

[Purpule Tang]

Hi,Eggyoke.
I have a 70 x 70 x 60 cm height tank.
I will go with lps dominated tank with some of sps.
I want purchase maxspect lighting but unfortunately I don't know go with Razor model or this new light from this company.
Are you happy so far with your New light ?
Thanks,

 

[Eggyoke]

I have never seen a Razor in person so I can't compare them. I really like the light. I have a PAR meter and noticed with the puck style you get a hot spot. This fixture has 8 small pucks, if you can call them a puck, with 5 leds inside them. From using a LUX meter, the light spread is pretty even under the fixture. The center light is a bit more intense but not by much. Think this light is perfect for 2 x 2 cubes. Definitely less shadowing for your sps. I have soft corals and LPS corals near the glass and they are doing good. I purchased this light because I thought the layout would be better than the puck style.

 

[Eggyoke]

Another great thing about the light is the lack of being blinded by the LED. Last light bothered me when I was sitting on the couch. I had to turn down the light when I was watching TV in the next room.

 

[Eggyoke]

Update: In the last week I've been having trouble controlling my parameters. ALK and CAL have raised to 8.8 and 450. I was dosing about 60 ml of each but to get my levels to lower I've been dosing 24 ml. My levels won't drop.

I've going through an algae bloom right now. This is what I'm dosing. AF components 1 2 & 3 dosed with with a Jebao doser. I dose one drop of AF ABEV every other day manually at night. I'm about half way through the comment 1-3 and think it's a bit expensive. Comes out to be about 20-25 dollars a month. I'm really not sold on AF and think about m going back to BRS 2 part with Fauna Marin balling light additives. I was thinking of getting the Fauna. Marin Color elements. BRS has the, on sale. One other thing I was thinking of using is the Red Sea color program just because I already have it on hand.

 

[kazikage42]

Heard of AF but there's nothing there for me to ever want to try it. I don't have the time to dose so many things every few days. I like more time to enjoy my reef with sticking with the basics. I also have a 50 cube and just dose ESV Bionic 2 part and weekly water changes keep my mag in check. Got to the point where I just test alkalinity once a week. IMO stick with what works for you.

 

[Eggyoke]

Update: I'm really frustrated with my tank right now, Aquaforest especially! I had to adjust my doser to 12 ml of each product a day. Left it like that for about a week. I tested my Alk daily, and it stayed about 7.8 DKH. I'm testing with a Hanna Checker and Red Sea Pro test kit. Both tested about the same. During that time I had a algae bloom and red slim on the algae. I had some algae before starting Aquaforest but only on a couple rocks on the bottom. For some reason, no algae would grow on my top rocks. Now, its just a F'n mess.as for the corals, they show signs of growth, but not so much in the last week. I have a red digi that has little PE, look mostly white.

I dosed AF ABEV one drop of each every other night. This is half of the recommended dosage. I'm thinking too much nutrients in my tank. Another thing Im not using is the Zeo Mix. Just purchased some and if i comes in the mail today, I will do a Zeo, GFO, and carbon in my BRS reactors.

As for now, I pulled the plug on AF component 123. I was planning on finishing up the AF and going back to BRS 2 part with Fauna Marin trace elements but I didn't want to wait till it gets worse. I think I'm going to wait a week before adding anything. Just feed the fish. I read someone else was having the exact same problem except NO3 and PO4 exploded. Mine are staying the same, probably because I have a refugium.

Tested my water this morning:

Calcium 430
Alkalinity 8.0
Magnesium 1320
NO3 1.5
PO4 .08

Did a water change and will do another one in a couple days. I'm not trying to bash Aquaforest, the program is just not working for me. I'm thinking once a week dosing on the AF 123 with 1 drop. I really want it to work because i dropped a couple hundred dollars on their product.

 

[Eggyoke]

For the Black Friday sales, I purchased the BRS 6 Stage RO/DI unit. I couldn't pass up the deal they are having. I'm kind a ticked that they have my light on sale for about $100 less. I also picked up 3 Hanna Checker ALK refills and Red Sea Calcium refill as well. I wanted to buy a bunch of stuff but I had to control myself and get what I need. It should be here today.

 

[Eggyoke]

Update: So I didn't jump the gun and kept with the AF 123. Still dosing 12 ml of each and ALK has been staying 7.8. I think the bloom was from the PRO Bio S. I don't have a nitrate problem anyways and I have a refugium. Last tested it was 1.5 ppm. I haven't dosed AF Coral ABEV since the algae bloom. I pulled as much as I could out and the red slim has gone away. I switched my pumps to Else mode to get more constant flow and turned down the whites a bit. Tank it looking 20k rights now. I did noticed better PE. Another factor is I was using RO water from the water store. I got the BRS RO/DI filter from the Black Friday sale. I'm sure this will be one of the purchases I wished I got from the start. Not sure if the 0.08 TDS is bad for the tank, but I'm using the same city water as the store and that's the reading I'm getting after the RO stage. I'm going to do a few weekly 25% water changes over the next couple weeks. As for the AF ABEV, Im going to start a weekly dose and see if the algae returns. That stuff was too expensive to just abandon.

 

[TechnicalFisher]

Great looking tank! Have you been using one of the pre-set programs on the Ethereal or one of your own? I'm getting mine dialed in and the presets seem a bit blue. Super easy and convenient to use though.

 

[KJoFan]

This might be a stupid question, but when you're taking your lux readings and/or aiming for 25k dead center, is that at max intensity during your light cycle? I am assuming so, but just clarifying.

You sound like you're having similar issues as I am with my tank and dialing in dosing vs alk readings. I'm finding it hard to keep it steady as well, but try not to react directly to any one test reading, but it's hard not to have a knee jerk reaction.

Tank is looking good though!

 

[Eggyoke]

Thanks for the kind words but my tank is a mess right now. @TehnicalFisher, I was using my own presets 100% on all the channels except the warm/yellow channel. I didn't like how that channel overpowered the blues.

@KJoFan. I ran that cycle for 10 hours. I had a cyno and bryopis outbreak. Im not certain but I think it was the cause of my lack of ALK uptake. I have no scientific backing on this but in my opinion it stop the growth of coralline algae and sps.

 

[Eggyoke]

Update: Been fighting Cyno bryopsis for a awhile now. I think I'm starting to control it now. Tech M and 5 ml of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide twice a day. Only been a few days dosing Hydrogen Peroxide but the Cyno has stopped spreading rapidly.

I've added some new equipment. Swapped out the SCA 301 Skimmer for a RLSS R5i. Found a new unit for $133 and couldn't pass on the price. As for performance, the SCA did a good job and after seeing the difference I think its a good skimmer. I couldn't control the out put like the RLSS. I skim much dryer and darker skimmate.

Changed the lights out again. Here was the problem with the Ethereal. It's difficult to light a 24 x 24 footprint with one fixture. My interest is only sticks. As most of you know, shadowing will cause odd growth and no coloration. The Ethereal is a great light and if I could fit two fixtures on my tank I would. Two lights would work great on a 2-3 tank. So I had some gift cards to amazon and was looking at supplemental lights. I didn't know how to mount them without making a canopy. So after looking around I decided to go the T5 route. I did not want to spend the 500 for an ATI fixture. This is what I purchased.

 

[Eggyoke]

I went to Home Depot purchased some wood and for about $50 I made a canopy. I'm not done yet but I was thinking of adding some reflective film on the inside. I really don't know if it would make a difference so I might just paint it white. This is what I came up with.

The reflectors are not really individual but they do have dividers between the bulbs. The fixture was only $100 so if I have to swap it out for a better fixture i will. I'll give this fixture a test run for a few months. I changed the bulbs to ATI, 5-Blue+, 2-Coral+ and 1-Purple+.