55 gallon SPS reef- new additions (12/18/14)

Haha it actually has a practical purpose too. The drivers pull the backside down slightly as they are screwed to the back of the canopy. The helmet balances it out and brings the nose forward.

I've already noticed a reduction in heat. I had to crank the heater up. I rarely ran it before.

 

I bought a nice acro frag about 2 weeks ago and at night I check my colors by turning my uv at 100 because color pops the best you can see the faintest of color change. I notice my acro is turning a green color on one side with the uv on I can see it so I know it's changing. With that being said the algae living in the coral is like a sun screen and the brighter color acts as a shield and defelects uv light so the more uv the brighter the colors and the faster they will color... Sort for the punctuation I'm on my phone

 

Yeah, the 380-450 nm tend to "excite" the florescent proteins in coral; that is why actinic make colors pop. Those are different from the pigment that the zooanthelle promote. The natural color of coral is what I strive for. I want color under white lighting too, which my halide brought. We'll see how the LEDs do in that regard.

 

It looks very nice. I like how you matched the trims of the tank and light. Very nice.

 

Thanks. It came out better than I thought. I was able to construct that by recycling my canopy.

My corals seem a bit perturbed by my metaling. They don't have quite the polyp response as they did a week ago, specifically at night. They also stopped growing. Growth tips seemed to disappear and my alkalinity stopped falling.

I attribute this to restructuring my rock work, not necessarily the lighting, although that's partially to blame and expected.

 

Unfortunately, I have zero experience with SPS. I am an expert on knowing what I think looks good though And I say your light looks great. I bet you'll get the corals figured out soon.

 

I wouldn't worry about it. mine take breaks in growing every now and then when I throw a bit of a change. takes them a few days to go back to normal.

 

I'm not really concerned about it. I know they will begin growing in time. My main concern is the LEDs being able to deliver the proper spectrum and achieve proper coloration long term.

I had to ditch the halide due to heat.

 

I'm beginning to get a little STNing of the base from a couple of Acropora. This is not at all surprising or unexpected. The red planet frag may be one that completely goes in a week, but that remains to be seen. I'll just let it run it's course.

I'm not certain if this is a result of shadowing. I only had 18 of the 24 diodes in the string (now I have all 24) for 2 weeks before adding the cyans and violets back in. No bleaching during the transition, just browning, which was expected.

I'll be adding two whiter t-5 lamps to the setup within the week to have a fuller spectrum and light the undersides of the corals.

A lot of the SPS don't fully extend their polyps anymore and don't have a feeding response at night (large white polyps), like they did previously, so they're pretty pissed off.

 

I'm also a little concerned about the possibility of copper in my system. It would have come from the stranded wire I was using when splicing and soldering my LEDs. It wouldn't be a lot, about the size of a hair, no longer than an eighth of an inch. I shook the canopy/light out after working on it, but you just never know.

I'm thinking about running some cuprisorb just in case.

Could just be the lighting that the coral are reacting to.