Smite's Stout CDA - 205G

Smite

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Couple quick blue phone pictures.
This section is getting cool looking.
TGC orange creamsicle top left; Oregon tort middle, ORA Frogskin right and Tongs Aussie rainbow millepora bottom center. It made contact with Oregon tort and is winning so I gotta move it or trim it back and start a second colony.
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TGC Cherry Bomb
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spacing this spath from BC but it’s looking nice and golden
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SCOP
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AOA granulosa
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Smite

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That cherry bomb looks amazing
Yeah it's very happy and crazy PE lately.

I normally shoot with my good camera for blue so I can edit it to look more realistic looking. Phone and filter everything just looks crazy. It's what it looks like through the filter though.
 

Smite

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Thanks man, that might end up being one of my favorites. It's got some cool looking polyps on it for sure.
 

Gedxin

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Constantly jealous of your tank! Also just baffled that switching lights for you seems to have had zero issues. I've had significant bleaching and RTN, even with PAR measurements. Tell me your secrets!
 

Smite

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Constantly jealous of your tank! Also just baffled that switching lights for you seems to have had zero issues. I've had significant bleaching and RTN, even with PAR measurements. Tell me your secrets!
Metal Halide is the best kept secret now a days, haha.

Kind of kidding but for some reason MH just makes things easier for me, for whatever reason. I believe it's truly a superior light source and that makes it easier for me to work with. I haven't checked PAR or anything like that. I just hung the pendant and adjusted it's height until it covered the tank evenly to my eye.

I did have one piece not react well immediately after swapping. It started to TN on me but then stopped. Whatever pissed my whole system off to begin with, that piece just hasn't seemed to be able to make a decent recovery. So I'm writing it off as that. It has held so far. It did great under the same light in my last system, so hopefully it'll get back to that under MH. It's my red table with purple growth rim, red polyps. Cool piece, hopefully it makes it.




On a side note;
2 bone head moves - accidentally left my RODI on manual flush for 2 days straight (filled my top off and RODI reservoir, 80g) even in flush. Toasted my Di stages. Then I OD'd my daily iron trace element thinking it was iodide. No major issues but now I've got bryopsis and cyano popping up in the tank. The tangs are doing a remarkable job at holding the bryopsis at bay. I plan to dose a 1/4-1/2 dose of flux once I see the cyano knocked back. Hate to mess with the tank with it doing so well but I think that low dose will work and not stress anything.
 

Gedxin

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I appreciate the detailed response! One follow up, do you ramp up/down the metal halides at all?
 

Smite

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I appreciate the detailed response! One follow up, do you ramp up/down the metal halides at all?
No ramp but I have the blue bars turn on for an hour before and after. That's more for my viewing though. Halides have a little 5 minute warm up naturally though.
 

drexel

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Metal Halide is the best kept secret now a days, haha.

Kind of kidding but for some reason MH just makes things easier for me, for whatever reason. I believe it's truly a superior light source and that makes it easier for me to work with. I haven't checked PAR or anything like that. I just hung the pendant and adjusted it's height until it covered the tank evenly to my eye.

I did have one piece not react well immediately after swapping. It started to TN on me but then stopped. Whatever pissed my whole system off to begin with, that piece just hasn't seemed to be able to make a decent recovery. So I'm writing it off as that. It has held so far. It did great under the same light in my last system, so hopefully it'll get back to that under MH. It's my red table with purple growth rim, red polyps. Cool piece, hopefully it makes it.




On a side note;
2 bone head moves - accidentally left my RODI on manual flush for 2 days straight (filled my top off and RODI reservoir, 80g) even in flush. Toasted my Di stages. Then I OD'd my daily iron trace element thinking it was iodide. No major issues but now I've got bryopsis and cyano popping up in the tank. The tangs are doing a remarkable job at holding the bryopsis at bay. I plan to dose a 1/4-1/2 dose of flux once I see the cyano knocked back. Hate to mess with the tank with it doing so well but I think that low dose will work and not stress anything.
I totally agree about MH being something special that LED's haven't quite figured out yet. I honestly think it's all the spectrums between the peaks that LED focus on that matter too. I think when LED companies display their spectrum chart, they're filling in the "in between" spectrums and their actual spectrum is very sharp and wavelength specific.
Go slow and under dose flux, no need to disrupt the good things going on in your tank..
 

Smite

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I totally agree about MH being something special that LED's haven't quite figured out yet. I honestly think it's all the spectrums between the peaks that LED focus on that matter too. I think when LED companies display their spectrum chart, they're filling in the "in between" spectrums and their actual spectrum is very sharp and wavelength specific.
Go slow and under dose flux, no need to disrupt the good things going on in your tank..
I think that's pretty spot on. I always say "for me" but honestly I've gone between LED and MH 4-5 times now over my last few systems and every time I swap back it's night and day for coral health. Most noticeable in acros.
I'm gonna take it slow for sure. The tangs are keeping it in check for now so I'm not really in a rush. Specially with swapping lights so recently, I don't want to disturb anything until I have too.
 

drexel

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Yeah, I'm not sure why it's so difficult for LED manufacturers to copy specific halide bulb's spectrums? Especially since most of the popular halide bulbs have been charted so many times. I would simply have a few settings, 6500k Iwasaki, 10k Ushio, 14k Phoenix (or Hamilton) and 20k Radiums. I guess my best analogy would be the difference between digital and analog sound/music. Digital is pretty damn good, but compared to 2" tape or vinyl with a refined tube amplifier, it's night and day. I agree that acropora and clams need/want halides, there's simply no substitute. The fact that I see actual growth on pieces daily, under 6 1/2hrs of halides is all that matters to me and is proof enough. I've had great success with LED/T5's, but for acropora health and growth, I'll never go all LED again unless I have no choice. The Reef Brite fixtures make that happen for me without any heat issues.
 

Smite

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Yeah, I'm not sure why it's so difficult for LED manufacturers to copy specific halide bulb's spectrums? Especially since most of the popular halide bulbs have been charted so many times. I would simply have a few settings, 6500k Iwasaki, 10k Ushio, 14k Phoenix (or Hamilton) and 20k Radiums. I guess my best analogy would be the difference between digital and analog sound/music. Digital is pretty damn good, but compared to 2" tape or vinyl with a refined tube amplifier, it's night and day. I agree that acropora and clams need/want halides, there's simply no substitute. The fact that I see actual growth on pieces daily, under 6 1/2hrs of halides is all that matters to me and is proof enough. I've had great success with LED/T5's, but for acropora health and growth, I'll never go all LED again unless I have no choice. The Reef Brite fixtures make that happen for me without any heat issues.
Couldn't agree more. I love the RB pendants. I do wish there was a company that made an XL or wide version. I may under up mimicking your layout if I can't find something wider in the future. I can see the pieces closer to center growing at a much faster clip then the ones on the edge of my rockwork.
 

Smite

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I haven’t been this excited since I got my reefbrite hybrid back hahah

found a reefer selling a pair of Hamilton Cozumel suns in great shape. I don’t want 8 wires hanging from the ceiling so I’m going to come up with some type of strut to join them and hang from. It’ll be these and the quantapro ogpop on the tank eventually
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