Pinhigh1886 90 Gallon Mixed Reef

[tcp316]

Very nice

[pinhigh1886]

Coral

[MizTanks]

Tank looks awesome! Great pictures! Are those AI's your using and if so what are you running them at?

[pinhigh1886]

Chris - Yeah thanks for the instructions. Much easier now. I was adding one photo at a time before. How do I quote someone so I can respond?

MizTanks - Yes they are AI Vega. I was set to 90% on all Blues, 45% on White, and 5% on Red & Green. Acros were loving it but softies were wasting away. I am now set to:

50% All Blues
20% Whites
2% Green & Red
8AM Sunrise
8PM Sunset
2hr Ramp up and down
Sunset Left to Right
Lunar Cycle ON - Royal Blue 3%

I really dislike the Red and Green LED's. Any higher than 5% and you get really bad disco effect and Green and Red Spot light effect. I am buying (2) new pucks this week to eliminate (1) Green and (1) Red. The new pucks will have the new AI colors Ultraviolet (UV) and Violet (V) that come standard on the new Hydra. I am currently using easy set-up but I am also going to buy the AI Director (Beta) so I can customize each individual LED.

[pinhigh1886]

To quote simply hit the quote button on the post that you would like to quote (I don't think this can be done if your using tapatalk). If you want to quote more then one person, hit the button that says multi for as many posts as you want to quote but the last post hit the quote button. For example if I wanted to quote 3 people, I would hit multi twice and then the third post I would hit quote. Hopefully that makes sense.


Also, if you find it easier for linking pictures you could use the direct link on photobucket then hit the little picture that shows a mountain at the top of your posts where you can edit the text,color,bold etc. but for me the way I told you the other day works quite easily.

Thanks Chris!!

[pinhigh1886]

I was running a MP40 Vortech on one side of the tank and a Hydor Kor 1400 on the other side. I have now replaced the Kor 1400 with a MP10 Vortech. This does a few nice things. It allows me to close my lids completely. No wires hanging out of the top of the tank. It also eliminates the clicking noise when my Wave Maker comes on and off. This also allows more control of all of the flow from my APEX Controller.

[Jim Z.]

Your tank is looking very nice. I'm thinking about switching to LED's from T5's. The AI products seem to be working well for you............................Jim

[pinhigh1886]

Thanks Jim! Yeah I switched from T5's to AI LED's last Christmas. The AI Vegas are very easy to use and have great features. I have had great growth on my corals and more consistency. I struggled with bulb replacement on my T5 fixture. I always waited too long and couldn't get a good schedule down. They really need to be replaced long before you notice issues in the corals. I do not know the long term effects of LEDS on corals but I would say I am getting double the growth rate that I was getting with the T5 fixture I used. As you know the color of the coral comes from the zooxanthellae which is believed to be a defense against the suns UV rays. Well LED has no UV so the thought is that eventually the coral could lose it's color because it has no reason to protect itself. I have not experience that at all but my tank is still young. I would like to see someone who has a mature system full of SPS switch from MH or T5 to LED's and see their results.

[pinhigh1886]

Just wanted to share this mini crash I had a week ago that I am still in the process of resolving...

So I was sitting at work and my wife called to say an alarm was going off on my Apex. I jumped on my phone to shut it off and see why it was on and all of my programs had gone from AUTO to ON?? I was watching it live on my phone. Heater, Dosers, Skimmer, Vortechs, everything switched to ON. I had to have my wife unplug some stuff to keep from screwing up the tank. When I got home my entire program was switched around and the Display Module was not working. Also both of my Vortech pumps would not turn on. Needless to say with MACNA last weekend I could not get through to Neptune. I tried everything. Finally yesterday I got an email from Paul Jansen at Neptune Systems and he scheduled and appointment with me for 6:00 PM last night. He called, logged into my computer, and fixed everything. Helped me re install Firmware and update to the latest Firmware. Fixed all of my settings and showed me how to get my Vortechs back up and running. We discovered that I had used the same IP address for my Apex and Netgear Gaming Adapter. Apparently that is a big no no. It had been running fine but most likely caused my crash. The Display Module was fried so he gave me an RMA# to send it back. It is running better than ever now and remote log in is solid. It used to be touchy! I was so impressed with Paul's knowledge and patients as I asked him a 1000 questions. Great customer service. Just thought I would share that for those that have Apex controllers just in case you are running the same way.

[pinhigh1886]

So I originally bought 2 AI Vega Color's for 90 gallon. Right away I disliked the Red and Green LED's. I basically had to run them at 2% to eliminate green and red spot lighting and disco effect. Anyway I purchased (2) to pucks from AI and basically replaced (1) Red and (1) Green LED with their new Ultraviolet and Violet LED's. The rest of the LED's on those pucks remained the same as factory. I put them in on Friday and for some reason thought of those colors as blues and set them to 62%. This is the value that my Blue, Royal Blue, and Dark Blue run at. By Saturday night my 1.5 year old very large pink birds nest (size of bowling ball) was dead, bleached, toast!! Also the red Montipora next to it was 30% bleached. I checked all other parameters and everything is perfect or at least where I have been running for over a year. At this point I attribute the bleaching and dying to the new LED's. Has anyone else experienced this? Could those LED's do this that fast? If you look at my tank shots you can see this birds nest when it was smaller. Super bummed but as long as I learn something I keep moving along.