120 Gallon Reef Build

My goodness you are right!!!
I hadn't realized how long it's been since I've been able to update!!

I was actually fortunate enough to go to St. Thomas for five days recently with some very close friends. It was my first such experience being able to snorkel in warm coral and tropical fish-laden waters. Let me tell you it was an experience of a lifetime!!! There are so many tang, angel, wrasse, butterfly, trigger, puffer, and damsel species it's hard to keep track of them all!!!

Hopefully this excuses my absence and I will put forth great effort to update this afternoon after work!!!

But I can say that it is going nicely thus far.



We also added a flame angel last night (yup - we took the plunge and are going to hope for the best with this new guy) and hopefully I can snap a few shots of Franki Fingers(Flame Angel.)

SIDE NOTE: all of our fish have/are going to have gangster names. So far we have Tomi Two Times(Tomini Tang), SixGun Sal (Sixline Wrasse) and Franki Fingers(Flame Angel).

And I digress . . .

Here is a little teaser pic of some new BLOOD red rhodactis shrooms we picked up from our LFS!
Enjoy the teasers - more coming soon!!!

 

Glad the corals are recovering from the bleaching... Told you, the Mu LED Fixture will put out a nice punch!

 

so are you still doing half mh and half mu led... are you still liking the mu btr? and hows the growth coming... lol btw I'm jealous of your scuba trip... that's something I have been wanting to do for years

 

Been roughly 6 weeks since implementing the Mu135 BoostLED fixture.

I have been moving it up and down and seem to have found that about 12" above the spread is fantastic and the corals are all happy.

The chalice that was too high up and was getting burned is continuing to color up nicely and extend it's skirt nicely on the sandbed. The purple tip frilly mushrooms that were getting direct light on the sandbed and also getting burned have been tucked into a crevice and are taking off again.

After about a week under the lights - the new red rhodactis also showed that they were getting too much light - they were directly under the middle of the fixture - but only midway up the tank. The rock fit so well in there that we did not want to move it - this is when we brought the fixture up to 12" above the water. It seems to have made all of the corals under the Mu a little more contented.

We are concurrently fine-tuning our water params with a 2 part dosing regimen that we are dialing in.

All of this is really making me want to take the plunge and get into some serious SPS.

I am ever so anxious to see what the MU - and the system behind it that I have designed and tended for coming on a year soon - can do!

In the meantime - enjoy these few pics!

 

Very nice congrats

 

Awesome looking. My question to you is I have the 6ft 125 do you think I can get away with two of these lights I don't want to be limited by the light but the tank is only 18inchs front to back and I don't want to burn any corals I get because I may not be able to shadow them. No matter what I am only goiig to be able to buy one at a time, but only needing two would be sweet. Thanks for all of your help.

 

Shoebox - I think we already discussed this VIA PM - but for the benefit of everyone I will sort of rehash what we discussed about the coverage with these units.

Now that the unit has been raised to about a foot above the water surface, if you are only doing some lower light SPS, with concentration on LPS and softies - I can see two MU's covering a 6' tank. If you are going full-on with clams, SPS, etc - you will def want three of them. But for most corals - and at least for now - two fixtures will rock that 125's world - bigtime.

 

As always thanks that was the answer I was looking for. I mean my wife is gonna give the look when I spend another eight hundred let alone 1200 oh well a little at a.time thanks.again it looks great.

 

How is Frankie Fingers behaving itself with the corals so far M - Oean Man

they are a great looking fish IMO
But their reputation puts me off

Steve

 

Steve -
So far Franki is being a "model citizen". To be fair - we only have little more than a dozen or so pieces of coral so he does not have a full "buffet" yet.
I myself was also skeptical about adding a dwarf angel. I read and read about them and took the following major points into consideration:

A well fed angel is very unlikely to go after corals.
For the most part - these dwarf angels only go after coral that is sick or dying.
A lot of the reputation comes from the "exceptional" individuals which give the breed a bad nam.
I am a risk taker by nature.

I will certainly keep everyone posted as to Franki Fingers' behavior.