@wsoldier

Excluding hot summers when the windows need to be closed, my pH is usually between 8.2-8.5. I use All For Reef and run a skimmer which is all I usually need. Kalk is also a good solution. Are you running a calcium reactor? Or have a lot of pets/humans in your household and/or poor ventilation?

Pretty cool article. Thanks for sharing!

I threw out my apex salinity probe the first week. Refractometer and the hanna hand checker for relative sampling (ie tank and mixing container). I keep my tanks at 1.026.

> @Fog_King_Reefer wrote: > Question for @wsoldier, real or not real? >  Definitely real and one of AOP's nicer reef tanks. It's only the larger tanks usually where they use the artificial coral, which coincidentally were actually molded from dead coral skeleton.

I'm on the tail end of battling high nutrients so still pulling out/siphoning hair algae. Also testing some new frags to see how they'll do now that things have stabilized a bit, and wondering how long it will take some of my corals to bounce back after being stressed for a few months.

Happy belated Birthday @BackbayReef

> @janiners305 wrote: > That’s super cool!! We have probably seen you in the tank without realizing. > > Some of those tangs are huge, and I’ve seen them bump into the artificial pieces, and seen them sitting on the bottom. I can only imagine what it would look like if they were real corals. For sure! I'm usually there Mondays but sometimes Saturdays. What's funny is sometimes I'll see people I know but have no way to communicate that I know them, and it just ends up being creepy when I try. haha.

I too love going to public aquariums all over the world. Monterey Bay will always be special since it was the first large aquarium I went to as a kid. Most recently I went to the one in Osaka and snapped the photo below. I'm a scuba diver at Aquarium of the Pacific and also volunteer with their Husbandry team. The reason why artificial corals are used in the larger exhibits is for a few reasons: - The divers have to go in and clean quite a bit with power scrubbers to get the algae off, and as you can imagine knocking into real coral would be devastating to the exhibit. - Other large animals like the Olive Ridley sea turtle also tends to thrash around in the exhibit. We are constantly picking up the artificial pieces that have been knocked around by the different inhabitants. Considering the amount of food we feed in the tanks as well, I would think water quality is also an issue at larger volumes.

I remember the shimmer from the round fixtures, but honestly this guy (IG: ambrizreef) had the best colors (in person). Looking at his vids I see he is more LPS than acros, and no large acro colonies (to John's point), but I think I'll take the color reproduction all day every day and either add more fixtures to help fill. https://www.instagram.com/p/DWUNmvlDL6y/

> @BackbayReef wrote: > I was running on the Kessil AP9X for a few months — very clean look and yes, awesome shimmer! However, way too much shimmer where I got a headache. I’ve swapped it out for 2 Radions 4 years ago. >  >  Thanks for the comparison photo!

> @Drexl wrote: > I think that’s my only issue with the Reefi’s, they weren’t white or full spectrum enough for my taste. But I know a few people who use them with Quanta tropic sun bars and are very happy with that combo. Oh really? The creator suggests that the light spectrum is wider than radions and I thought that was the conclusion on R2R a while back when they first came out. Thanks for the tip about the Quanta tropic sun bars. I'll have to look into them, but also have an aversion to having a Frankenstein looking light bar above the tank.

I upgraded about 2 years ago to Reefi Uno 2.x units. Love the power, spread, cost, support, and warranty... supposedly a wider spectrum, but honestly have not been nearly as happy with the red reproduction in corals. Just can't get the same look out of my acros compared to my old Hydra 26s. Seems like the best solution is perhaps a combination of lights (in theory), and that the other guy's setup is always better. 😅

https://media.giphy.com/media/HTjcWZwMtHpyhuCGKZ/giphy.gif

I used BRS 2 part for years and always had CA drift. Once I switched to AFR a few years ago coloration improved and stability improved. I supplement Mag and likely need to do more trace as sps colonies get larger. As for cost, I usually wait until Black Friday or other big sales and buy a bunch of tubs of powder at once. Saltwateraquarium.com would do further discounts when you buy 5+ or so.

Welcome! Hope all is well.

Awesome all of these changes are great and really improve the usability. Thanks @ktran for tackling these features so quickly!

Thanks @BackbayReef ! From my perspective I'm looking at "Recent threads" from the main page to check to see what the latest updates are on the site. So, when looking at the top level view of all threads, I would expect to see hyperlinks for viewed threads as darker and links that are unread as bold/brighter to differentiate if there are updates to a thread that I haven't read. As of now I have to remember myself if I viewed a thread since the last posted time, and have no visual indicator of unread threads. Hopefully that makes sense.

> @Drexl wrote: > Hey, nice having you here. How’s the little one? Getting any sleep yet? Give your wife my best. Thanks man! He's doing good but we're still on his schedule for what I assume is the foreseeable future. Definitely getting more sleep than were a month ago. He just turned 2 months! Will do!

I agree that flow is way more important than lighting. It's why we keep our power heads on backup battery and not our lights (and the obvious power consumption difference) since corals will die sooner without the flow yet the lights can be off for days or longer. In terms of patterns, I've been struggling with flow in my tank since I have a ton of rock work and an internal overflow box. I just switched from 2 gyre style to the MP40 style pulsing on each end, but I'm still playing around with it. Most corals seemed happy either way but my acro colonies would always give out before with the gyres once they reached a larger size.

I've been feeding extra lettuce and other macroalgae (dragon's breath, pom pom). I'll even pull bubble algae from my frag tank and feed it to the display for my yellow tang.

I'm going to feel sorry for #101 who joins the site.

Great work Ben and everyone else involved getting the site up. Looks great so far!

Good to see you!

> @BackbayReef wrote: > Good to see you again, John. Hope jumping online to this site is a shorter commute for you? 😁 > > I love your tanks - do start a Build Thread so the rest of us can help contribute (ok, drool over)? lol Thanks I have a 2 month old now so my time has been limited, but I'll get one going soonish. When's the tour of your tanks?? I'll commute for that.

Dave I said this last time at your house but your current build is my favorite yet. Always stunning!