Matt's 29g Custom LED

One of Jenny's friends is a photographer and let us borrow her L-series Macro lens for about 20 minutes before a party they were headed to today. I didn't have much time, but I snagged as many good pics as I could with it. :-)

Oh.. and I'm not going crazy. Today Jenny looked at the tank and said... the water is really clear. So ha! Lol.

On with the eye candy.
Mini-Maxi Carpet Nem - Still steals the show. Still my favorite thing in the tank.


GARF Bonsai Acro


Green Slimer Acro


Pink Birdsnest


Branching Hammer Coral


Left Side of the main shelf rock.


Right side of the main shelf rock.


Sandbed - Derasa Clam is still growing extremely fast!


Frag rack packed full of SPS.


Full Tank Shot - sorry... all of them I took were out of focus. :-(

Wow Matt great photos! Your tank is amazing thanks for sharing, helps keep me
focused to where I want to get.

Thanks Terry! :-)

I held off on dosing the alk last night and my alk dropped pretty good. I dosed again, am going to get it back up a touch and test right before bed. Then I'm going to test at the same time tomorrow. The hannah alk checker goes by ppm, so it measures by the .056 dkh... I should be able to set my dosing amount off of a single days drop. I'll test every three days or so to make sure I'm keeping track for awhile.

Also.. the phosphates tested 0 tonight. I tested twice... and then I wondered if maybe I should have tested twice when I got the .10 reading. They appear to be 0 for sure today. Biopellets maybe? Doubled them 36 hours ago... might have done it?

Also... had to super macro this shot:

Tank looks Great. Have you had any problems bleaching with the leds.

Thus far none. I've really had great luck with the LEDs... I did raise it to six inches and my colors seem to be getting better but I'd buy this exact fixture if I had it to do over again. :-)

My JBJ LEDs seem to bleach out some of the coral. They are so bright. I'm thinking of leaving the 14k on only 7-8 hours a day and see if that helps. My cousin is setting up a 90 and is going to use the evolutions.

My full spectrum lighting is only on for 7 hours. I turn my blue LEDs on at 10:30AM and shut off at 9:30. White LEDs on at 12:30pm and shut off at 7:30.

I've got acros on my sandbed, so I think it's okay! Haha.

The biopellets appear to be working well. The green hair algae has slowed down and my phosphates are staying down even with the insane amount of feeding. I did increase it to a full dose recommended for 29g this past weekend since I've saw nothing but good thus far.

I ordered in some fun products that I'm going to try out. Brightwells coral color, strontium, potasion, coral amino and sponge stuff. I'll give my opinions on if these products actually do anything or not! :-)

When you add these Herr Doktor Frankenstein, is there any way to test for concentration levels? How will you know if they are being used, or if you are risking an overdose?

Basically you add slowly until your nitrates and phosphates drop to 0. Mine dropped, but I still had some slow green hair algae growth, so I knew they were still around.

It is like a crazy experiment for sure. Lol

I'm running full tests tonight and tracking on here. I did not find my maintenance dose last week because I realized I was adding salt water in my ato to raise my salinity to 1.025 (which it is now at). So I'm going to do that this weekend. Tonight I'll take readings and then dose to ideal numbers. Tomorrow I'll take readings and note results, then Sunday I'll note the drop that occurs over a 24 hour period. Then I'll calculate my daily maintenance dose.

Salinity: 1.025 - Refractometor
Nitrates: 0 - Elos
Phosphates: 0.04 - Hannah Checker
Calcium: 520 - API
Alkalinity: 6.16dkH - Hannah Checker
Mag: 1350 - Elos Pro

These Hannah Checkers are spoiling me. I hate running other tests! Lol

Wow alk vs cal surprised me. How does it keep getting thrown off when my mag is fine? I can't wait till I've got the cal and mag hannah checker! :-) Time to dose some alk!

Tonights alk reading: 6.94dkH after adding 14ml of alk 2-part last night. I'm going to double up the dose this time, adding 14 tonight and another 14 tomorrow morning. Hopefully that'll put me near my desired 8.5dkH and cal can drop to my desired 480. Then I can do my 24 hour test on Monday night.

8.12dkH tonight at 11pm.

I'll test tomorrow at 11pm as well, and that will give me my daily dose value. The great thing about the hannah checker is that it measures in increments of .056dkH, so it should be a very accurate daily dose. I'll give my readings tomorrow.

Tonight at 11pm. 7.44dkH

So here's my total dosing plan, all Brightwells products.

2-Part - 7ml per day
Koral Color - 5 drops per day
Potassion - 5 drops per day
Strontium - 2 ml every other day
MB7 - 2 ml every other day
Lugols - 1 drop twice a week
CoralAmino - 2 drops twice a week

Gotta put this into the calender on the phone!

I'm going to add some zeo products in soon also. Just the ones in the nano pack. :-)

After two days of dosing I have determined one thing.

It feels cool!




but of course... if it doesn't show positive effects on the corals that absolutely won't be worth the money! Haha.

Wow... what a night. I did a whole lot of work on the tank. Took out nearly all of the rock that I added several months ago. Tomorrow I'll finish that process when I take the rock with the war coral out. The tank will be back to the original three rocks I started with. I had a pretty eventful time though. Man... I've got a TON of coral packed into this thing! A full frag rack AND a FULL FULL FULL sand bed. I've barely got any room in this thing right now. My frag tank is currently cycling, so hopefully we're only a few weeks away from me being able to move some things over. The rock I pulled out of this tank went over there, so hopefully that will help seed things.

I'm updating some coop threads with the corals that got broken while I was removing them from rocks and moving things around. So make sure to check those out. I'll update with some pics tomorrow! :-)

Finally, an update about the dosing. I don't want to sound like the mad scientist here (too late, yeti has already got me pin pointed)... but the dosing products do appear to be effecting a few things. First of all, a few colors. The most notable change over the last week are a few of the zoas. My goblin fire zoas are a darker color, as well as my Lord of the Rings zoas. I haven't had the rainbow palys for very long, but they're darker as well. My pink jade appears to be getting lighter, and my blue tort's base is getting lighter as well. Second, I'm getting better polyp extension. The most noted is the GARF Bonsai Acro. It's bright green polyps are extending further than ever... sadly I liked it more with less polyp extension to show the deep purple base! Haha. My pink milli, green slimer and pink jade are also extending more. The new corals in my tank are changing as well, but they haven't been in long enough for me to attribute that to the dosing.

Alright guys, sorry for the epic long update... just had a lot going on! :-)

You and Jenny are both "Nesting" huh?

Alright,

Here's a full tank shot. This is basically like taking a picture of your house in the middle of a remodel. Haha. I've got a lot more to do, but the frag tank appears to be doing great. I placed a red monti cap frag in it after putting in the live rock that I transferred from my tank and it's doing well. Might be ready sooner than I thought! That's what I'm hoping anyways. I've got several things that I'd love to move into that tank yesterday!

Here's the full tank shot! (taken incorrectly by an amateur photographer... I should have slowed my shutter speed and closed my aperture so that more of the tank was in focus!)

Man! That small purple Acro back left, you got a couple of weeks ago sure has grown well, are you using Kryptonite in there too?

Nope... just common sugar and I switched to table salt.