Our Tbs

[Stormtrker]

[i]

Does anyone know anything about these? Moonlights
I don't have blue lights set up in my hood currently, and don't have moonlights, and thought these might be a nice thing instead of having my lights go from bright to off just like that. [/B]

Pat look on ebay for these same moonlights. I recently purchased a set of these on ebay for the 75gal I am setting up but haven't hooked them up yet. Just had to be patient and finally outbid someone at a lower price. They seem to be good quality.

Carla

[docklink]

Originally posted by H2OLUVSME
i read some where that the actinics dont really flux with age. they are at such an extreme end of the spectrum tha they dont loose much even with high percentages of change. i think it was Ash (the icecap rep) that posted you never need to change actinics unless for personal preference.

i do however agree that photoshopping, a cameras settings, the ambiaent light, the type pf bulb, and more are all factors in how much a coral "pops" under actinic.

I can't speak for other types, but I definatelly noted a differrence over time with the PC actinics I've used. I'm currently working on a canopy to house a pair of 175w MH with a pair of 54w T5 actinics to supplement. We'll see how they do in the future.

[patsan]

Thanks Carla. The reason why I have my eye on these is because I have an open top and have my lights suspended from the ceiling...so these look like I'd be able to mount them somewhere fairly easily on my light hood compared to most other moonlights I've seen.
I took a look on ebay and they didn't have anything like those right now.

[phil519]

yes - well i didn't want to post prices but they were more than online of course. But it's hard to judge because one cannot truly tell how "big" something is on line - even with the wyswyg mode. But - there is something to be said of bringing something home in an hour compared to ordering and waiting over night...

[Scuba Oz]

There is a whole lot to say about something you can touch, feel and really look at before a purchase. In the fish business I tend to buy what I can see, I have bought on-line, but tend to steer away from it if a local has one. I am looking for a black tang as we speak and I cannot find a local source, so I might have to purchase it on-line (which for the money I hope I dont) That (fish wise) will be my most expensive purchase for one fish. I have always wanted one and have the ability to support it, so why not

[lossman]

OK, this thread has been going for some time and most of us have TBS rock. I'm sure we have all gone through the brown and green algae blooms and some of us have gone through and/or are going through a red slime algae bloom. Who has used a chemical product to get rid of red slime and what were your results? Did you have fish/inverts? Did it have an effect on your TBS rock? Did it hurt your macro algae in your fuge?

Thanks, Sally

[phil519]

sally -

I've had some issues with phosphate which I tend to think fuels the algae - which may or may not be your case. I found the initial astreas not to be completely successful in chowing down everything. In particular I had this kinda "ring around the collar" kinda algae around the tank. It was weird - like the astreas purposely avoided it.

Anyway - since adding nerite snails and cerith snails - I've noticed a drastic reduction in algae growth.

Frankly- I'm really not sure if that is the result of the snails, or just the tank maturing - or a combination thereof.

To further improve the water in my tank I've invested in a phosban reactor and a fug (currently in progress). As I have not had these in place - I can't say for sure if these items would help battle your algae.

Finally - (sorry for being so long winded) - the only chemical I have tried is something called "chemi-pure" - which after a period of time is supposed to be removed (otherwise it may leech back in).

Good luck.

Originally posted by Scuba Oz
There is a whole lot to say about something you can touch, feel and really look at before a purchase. In the fish business I tend to buy what I can see, I have bought on-line, but tend to steer away from it if a local has one. I am looking for a black tang as we speak and I cannot find a local source, so I might have to purchase it on-line (which for the money I hope I dont) That (fish wise) will be my most expensive purchase for one fish. I have always wanted one and have the ability to support it, so why not

Yeah I hear ya. I just wish the prices here in the local NY area weren't so "ny priced".

[bkelley02]

I haven't been able to find a local store I'd be willing to buy fish from in a while. The store in my area usually has a wide variety, but they are all sharing the same water (big community filter) and are usually scratching themselves against the gravel bottom.

[drk70]

I guess I'm really trying to understand the purpose and the placement of my bulbs.

What really is a actinic bulb for?

I'm thinking that maybe I have my bulb placement wrong. My only actinic bulb comes on with 3 other bulbs. (6k sun, 2-aquablues). I may be losing something or missing out on something because the actinic bulb is being overpowered by the other bulbs. I have 2 blue plus bulbs that come on by themselves 30 mins. before and 30 mins. after the other bulbs. The corals do glow under these lights. I'm wondering if I should get another actinic bulb and swap the 2 blue plus bulbs with actinic bulbs and put a blue plus bulb in where I have the actinic now. This way I have 2 actinic bulbs come on before and after my normal daytime bulbs which would include the blue plus.

[docklink]

Originally posted by lossman
OK, this thread has been going for some time and most of us have TBS rock. I'm sure we have all gone through the brown and green algae blooms and some of us have gone through and/or are going through a red slime algae bloom. Who has used a chemical product to get rid of red slime and what were your results? Did you have fish/inverts? Did it have an effect on your TBS rock? Did it hurt your macro algae in your fuge?

Thanks, Sally

I had a nasty case of cyano at about the 6 month mark. I believe it started with a rather high PO4 level, even though I had been running a fuge with decent macro growth (the clean-up crew had stripped the tank of all algae, much to my disappointment). I used a phosphate sponge (the Kent product initially, eventually installing a phosban reactor). I increased circulation (added the seio) and siphoned. I had reduced feeding, etc., etc.
It all seemed to slow down the slime growth but not rid the tank of it. I finally got impatient and used Chemi-Clean. It knocked out the cyano in about 24 hrs and initially didn't appear to affect anything else. I'm not totally convinced it was harmless, though. I can't point to anything specific but it seemed that my macro growth in the fuge slowed and I eventually (after about 3 months) had another outbreak. I'm not totally free of it at this point, but I seem to be getting the upper hand by mostly being very vigourous about siphoning any patches that I find. HTH

[patsan]

I feel I've been lucky and haven't had any cyano outbreaks yet. I did have the brown diatoms which I thought everyone gets with a new tank.
We installed a phosban reactor pretty early in the game on the TBS tank when the phosphates were hovering between .5-1 and water changes didn't bring the levels down. The snails seem to do a good job.

On the new tank, I don't have any phosphates, but did have the brown diatoms. New tank syndrome? Snails did the job well, but I was seeing a little of it staying on the sand. That's when I put the seio in the tank and it took care of that. So I think getting the phosphates down and good flow really helps. Now whether I saw it so much could have been that the tank has finer sand and nowhere near the color in it that the TBS tank has, but you could definitely see it on the sand. I ever saw any brown on the TBS sand....only on the glass.

What Jeff says about flow, no phosphates and constant vacuuming out if you do get an outbreak seems to make a lot of sense.

[patsan]

A different type of algae I have in the tank now is bubble algae. I first started seeing it just recently. I figured that was a common thing with the non TBS rock...that along with aptasia.
This morning, I was tryng to see if I could remove the pieces of rock it was on and what I discovered, was that the candy cane coral I have is LOADED with it....both green and maroon...so that must be where it's coming from.
I don't know much about bubble algae, and so far it isn't bad, but I'm hoping it's something that won't overtake the tank.

[bkelley02]

I thought Bubble algea was one of the worst to get rid of. Hope I'm wrong!

I'm having problems with a gorilla crab smaller then a dime, dumping my Maxima off it's rock. I saw the clam rocking and was wondering what was going on so I moved him and there was this little Ba$t@rd rocking the clam to move it. He went into a hole but it isn't in a rock that's easy to remove so I tried poking/crushing him in the hole. I hope I got him or at least made him move on to a different rock for now.

[patsan]

Originally posted by bkelley02
I thought Bubble algea was one of the worst to get rid of. Hope I'm wrong!
I'm having problems with a gorilla crab smaller then a dime, dumping my Maxima off it's rock. I saw the clam rocking and was wondering what was going on so I moved him and there was this little Ba$t@rd rocking the clam to move it. He went into a hole but it isn't in a rock that's easy to remove so I tried poking/crushing him in the hole. I hope I got him or at least made him move on to a different rock for now.

It might be...I really don't know. Something I need to read up on now and see how to get rid of it. A couple of days ago, I "thought" I saw a little bubble looking thing in 2 places, but it was really hard to see at the angles I could manage to see. Then this morning, I saw it's still there and saw a few more bubbles on another rock. They're really small..maybe the size of a sesame seed.
I remember reading not to break the bubbles in the tank, so I decided to remove this rock I saw the new ones on and scrape it off and see if it really is bubble algae. I took the rock out and its was just a little bubble. I scraped it off in the 3 places it had them. I went to put it back into the tank, and for some reason, it wouldn't go back the way I had it. Then I tried moving a few different rocks around and had to move the candy cane to do it. That's when I saw it all over the candy cane.
I did a quick search here on RC and most people say to get emerald crabs or take the rock out and scrub it off. They say good water parameters are needed (which luckily I have) and water changes are needed. I currently do a water change every 2 weeks. Maybe I'll do one weekly for now and see if that helps. I don't want to add crabs to the tank at all.
I do have very small clumps of hair algae here and there throughout the tank, and it surprises me because I have zero phosphates, nitrates, nitrites and ammonia. I had this from the beginning, and put a few urchins in the tank and they seemed to take care of it. I've removed the urchins and it's growing back here and there. I figured it might be because I needed more flow. I just started with the seio, so I was hoping it would be contained. Time will tell on that. The little hair algae isn't really bothering me because it's very sporatic, very small and doesn't seem to be growing too much or getting out of control.

I can't stand crabs. I've seen them pick on more things I wish they wouldn't than I'd like them too. Hopefully it won't do any damage to the clam. That would be a shame!

[phil519]

I dunno if i'd go the emerald crab route to take out bubble...just too many posts about people suspecting the larger emeralds taking out fish. Plus supposedly the males/females differ in behavior in the tank...I'd love to see the look on the face of the LFS worker when you say - "yes, I'd like to make sure it's a male not a female".

or was it the females that were more well behaved? I forget.

This was on the freebie candy cane eh?

Originally posted by bkelley02
I thought Bubble algea was one of the worst to get rid of. Hope I'm wrong!

I'm having problems with a gorilla crab smaller then a dime, dumping my Maxima off it's rock. I saw the clam rocking and was wondering what was going on so I moved him and there was this little Ba$t@rd rocking the clam to move it. He went into a hole but it isn't in a rock that's easy to remove so I tried poking/crushing him in the hole. I hope I got him or at least made him move on to a different rock for now.

How big of a maxima is it? got any pics?

[patsan]

I'm not going any route adding crabs.

I honestly can't say 100% sure it was the candy cane. I've only seen this problem crop up this past week. From what I saw, there were 5 bubbles on 2 rocks...one rock on each side of the tank. The rock I took out this morning had 3 bubbles on it. When I moved the candy cane so I could place the rock to make it stable, I saw about 15 bubbles on the candy cane stalk. These bubbles were green and maroon. The few I see on the rocks are green. So whether it came from the candy cane or not, I don't know....I only know it was loaded with it and the rest of the tank only has a few bubbles.

Now could this also be something that was on the rock when I got it? Very possibly. Pretty much everything died off of it when it was cycling. I keep waiting to see aptasia because I read that is really common with pacific rock...but I haven't seen any yet. Not saying I won't though.

[phil519]

Originally posted by drk70
I guess I'm really trying to understand the purpose and the placement of my bulbs.

What really is a actinic bulb for?

I'm thinking that maybe I have my bulb placement wrong. My only actinic bulb comes on with 3 other bulbs. (6k sun, 2-aquablues). I may be losing something or missing out on something because the actinic bulb is being overpowered by the other bulbs. I have 2 blue plus bulbs that come on by themselves 30 mins. before and 30 mins. after the other bulbs. The corals do glow under these lights. I'm wondering if I should get another actinic bulb and swap the 2 blue plus bulbs with actinic bulbs and put a blue plus bulb in where I have the actinic now. This way I have 2 actinic bulbs come on before and after my normal daytime bulbs which would include the blue plus.

Actinics are at a 420 nm wavelength (whatever that means haha). The light is basically at a frequency that is easier for corals to absorb. It also casts a side-effect of having the photosynthetic zoo in corals to "fluoresce". That said though it doesn't mean the corals don't require other types of light in a different frequency. This is where those 10,000 k daylight bulbs come into play. If you really thought about it, I guess you could run a tank purely on 10,000k bulbs with no actinics. But the tank sometimes takes a more yellow look imho. Hence the actinics. Plus the actinics are used by many folks to help simulate dusk/dawn effects.

well - that's my 2 cents on actinics. I'm not familiar with the t5 labels of 'blue plus'. Is there a specific K associated to those bulbs?

[docklink]

The blue light has a short wavelength (~440 - 480nm). Red light has a longer wavel length (~ 700nm). All the other colors of the spectrum fall inbetween. Ultra violet light, though invisible to us, is vital for certain photosynthetic chemical reactions to occur. A lot of the photosynthesis that occurs in zooxanthella is in those upper spectrums. The peak output of actinic lights is generally around 420nm, the low UV range, though the full spectrum of an actinic light may extend from 400 to 500nm. The Blue plus, Aqua Blue, etc. bulbs tend to peak at about 450nm, more toward the true blue part of the spectrum, though their total output may range from 400 to 500nm. Blue light penetrates water better (farther?) than the rest of the spectrum. What we see looks better (more natural) with all the visible spectrum (white light) HTH

[bkelley02]

It's a gold tear drop maxima and it's about 2 1/2 inches. Just starting to get great color from adjusting to my lights. Hopefully, i got the little crab and the clam will have time to attache itself.

I'll get some pics after the lights come up today.

Brian

[H2OLUVSME]

Dennis, Phil has explained about all i know about the actinic lights they are of a spectrum that the corals use but do not "need". they do make corals look good. i would try running one actinic with the one blue plus and see if you like it. if you do try another actinic with it. the blue plus and other blue bulbs probably have higher PAR ratings than actinics giving them better growth for corals and adding the bluer look that most people like. im not real comfortable talking about T-5s (the experience i have is reading threads) but i really like a lot of blue. thats why i run 20k halides. i also run 3 actinics and a 50/50 pretty often. im thinking of switching to 3 actinics and a daylight though.

Pat, i think there are people (at least one person) on RC that run T-5 day light, and blue+, with VHO actinic supplement, so i would say some believe VHO is better than T-5 also. i cant remember when i ran across it. it was in a new set up thread in the reef discussion forum where i most recently read it, but couldnt tell you who. ill remember to post a link if i see any one mention it again. it may even be worht posting a new thread to ask around.

[phil519]

Anyone see these snails in their TBS tank? I noticed these a while back but forgot to take pics. I think I've caught a total of five of these since my tank has been up. Here are two I caught today...



The shells are very colorful and while the shape reminds me of a cerith - the pattern is not similar afaik. The coin on top is a dime.

Good? Bad? I've been only finding small ones of this size. These aren't the dreaded "pyramid snails" I hear about that eat tridacnid clams are they?

Oh and I caught another xanthid aka gorilla crab...it's about nickel sized...funny how you stare at a piece of live rock for long periods of time and then suddenly months later you notice legs sticking out of a hole!

[H2OLUVSME]

id do some searching for pyramid snail if i were you. thats the first thing i thought of when i saw the pic. i think most of the pics ive seen have been white snails, but i dont think many snails shaped like this are good.

[drk70]

Originally posted by phil519
well - that's my 2 cents on actinics. I'm not familiar with the t5 labels of 'blue plus'. Is there a specific K associated to those bulbs?

Here are some links to the T-5 bulbs.

T-5 pure actinic bulb http://www.reefgeek.com/products/cat...ng/104037.html

T-5 actinic/blue plus bulb http://www.reefgeek.com/products/cat...ng/104036.html

T-5 11000K aquablue http://www.reefgeek.com/products/cat...ng/104035.html

[Fred_J]

A bad algae outbreak was what started me on using ozone. Now all I get is a slight film on the glass for the snails. and as a side benefit my water is unbelievably clear.

Fred

[bobt2]

so, i didn't see any answers to the question someone asked the other day, whats the take on moonlights?