Magnus's 55 Gallon Reef - Updated pics!!! 6/25

I got my new replacement bulbs today, so I will be posting a lot of before and after pics as I change them along.

All these pictures are right at "Lights On" time, so there's not too much PE, but it will work for the moment.

I will do 2 bulbs at a time in about 2 or 3 weeks, and I will raise my fixture a bit as well. I have also tried once to just reduce my light schedule by half or more, but I think I want to try the "go slow" part of our motto this time around.

Anyways, here are a ton of new pics with my current bulbs. I'll have the 1st combo of two installed tonight and will take pics tomorrow so we can see what it looks like. I apologize for some blurry picks or bad light ones. All these pics were taken with my





















































































Now, that lights are out, I'm going to change my bulbs!

 

sweet thread magnus.. cant wait to see the new bulbs.. as for the coraline i have the same stuff.. the deep red coralline is taking over my pink coralline in one of my tanks. what bulb combo did you end up getting? I know you got 3 ati blue+ right..

 

I ended up getting 5 bulbs:

3 x 54W Blue Plus T5 HO
1 x 54W AquaSun 10000K T5 HO
and in case that was too blue I also ordered 1 x 54W GE 6500K Daylight T5 HO

I'm aiming to using the 3 blue plus and the aquasun. Hoping the 10k will be clear enough to light up other colors without washing away most of the blue from the 3 blue plus.

We'll see how that goes. I'll post pics tomorrow.

 

Magnus,
Your 55 looks amazing. 55's can be very tedious to aquascape. You seem to have done a wonderful job. Great work!

 

Thanks! Those are my thoughts exactly about the acuascape, but I'm not really happy with this one just yet! I will try and pile up some more rock somewhere for added surface, since most of my SPS are at the top in a 2 feet section.... getting crowded!

Hopefully once LED's stabilize in their development, I won't have that problem anymore!

Sent from my phone using my two opposable digits

 

2 out of 4 bulbs replaced! Let's see how they work.

Pictures coming up later when I wake up.



Sent from my phone using my two opposable digits

 

Super clean looking tank Magnus, I like it I'm 99% sure the red encrusting stuff is a type of encrusting bryozoan. There are also encrusting calcareous and non-calcareous algae, that are not coralline. IDs are tough, so, in the hobby all things seem to be either nuisance algae, macro algae or coralline LOL. I certainly couldn't id most of the algae out there, so I sympathize. I'm almost sure this is bryozoan though as I've seen it before and have researched it a bit previously.

 

Actually, sorry, looking at this again, I am not sure if that is it.... Looking on a different monitor, it just looks like the picture is blurry. If it is a bit thicker than typical algae and has a little tiny pinhole pattern, then it likely is. Otherwise it might just be some sort of red algae.
I thought it was more like this:


Hard to tell, but if it comes off with a toothbrush though, I don't think it's coralline. Coralline is calcareous and takes a lot of effort to remove. There are over 5000 species of red algae though. I'm not sure how many encrust like coralline, I know many do and are not calcareous. Sorry can't be more specific...

 

I meant to write u about it. I looked up the name u had suggested and could not find a match on Google, but if u Google red algae or red Coralline a bunch of picture that are similar to what I have come up on the results.... the question is.... which one is it and is it bad? In my tank is very deep red, velvety looking patches but I'm starting to think these may be 2 different things what my brother in law has and what I have. His, eventually and rather quickly developed a fuzz, where mine stays thin and slow growing.
Seriously.... no idea what this is. I'll try to get a better picture today and post it in the ID This! Forum answer deep what we get if we all put our heads together....... a wind tunnel? J/K! Couldn't resist

Sent from my phone using my two opposable digits

 

Likely the fuzz may indicate a turf algae. However, yours, without sending a sample to a marine algae botonist, will almost certainly be labeled "red coralline". Corallline is as hard as a rock though, in fact, dead coralline becomes the rocks.... So, I don't think it is, but that is probably as close as hobbyists could identify. The Rhodophyta division of algae is just too big for any of us to really have any comprehensive knowledge of and even if we did, we would need detailed microscopic and histological examination to identify the exact species. Turf algae would be bad, coralline or anything that would likely be misidentified as coralline probably isn't an issue.