My first saltwater tank - Aqueon Frameless Cube Aquarium, 3 Gallon

Little update, corals still doin' good. The mushroom coral as sprouted a small head near the base. The zoas have retracted a bit more but still haven't opened up as much as they where why I first bought them. A few zoas have disconnected and floated elsewhere. There is one that floated away from the main colony. It's in the center rock just below the mushroom coral and appears to be doing well.

Got a new zoa frag colony yesterday

I've been doing weekly water changes to keep the nitrates around 5ppm. They go up to around 10ppm usually but last time was 20ppm. I haven't been adding anything extra other then Seachem Reef Carbonate once, usually after the water change. pH stays around 8.4 to 8.5. Recently lost the trochus snail I believe due to no more to eat. The tank has been clean of cyanobacteria for a while. There is a small amount of green algae growth on the rocks in a couple spots, but not cyano.

Oh, and just installed new Hygger 10w heater. The one I had before broke on the glass (there was no rubber to protect it). This one has the rubber protecters and is smaller profile.

The toadstool leather coral has all but retracted from the original rock it was attached to when I bought it. It's now firmly girpping the rock it was rested on when put in the tank. I assume the smaller head that has been growing will take over the rock eventually.

The zoa I had before wasn't doing so well, I did a coral dip solution on it and placed it in a different location, on the sand bed under the rocks. Seems to be doing bettter but more time will tell.






The newer zoa added has started to create new head on the rock, off of the frag plug it came on.


Also, have a single small starfish hanging out in the tank.

Added new Scoly coral today, and 3 Astrea snails.





And the leather toadstool has completely detatched from original rock it came on.

Anyone happen to know what this is? It has grown since I've first spotted it, and it moves around.
New Trochus snails cameo in the pic too!

need better pictures from different angles

It's super small so hard to get a good focus in the pic. Here's a few more, which are prob of no help since the light is too blue atm compared to the previous since there was no light turned on at that time.

I've also reduced the light I'm using over the past couple of days.




Just recieved 2 new coral today. Purhcased from Tidal Gardens online. I'll try and get some better pics when the light hasn't started to dim due to night time.
Palythoa Colony Coral (Captain America)


Zoanthid Colony Coral (Pandora)

I've reduced the light by a bit over the course of a week. This has more blue and less white/cyan/purple.

Unless you are keeping deepwater corals, you want the light to be balanced and not have too much of one colour. The algae in the corals use red and blue light in equal parts so you need to either reduce the blue or increase the other colours.

So does this look better? I've never totally understood how to set the lights correctly. Is the amount good? I read recently that zoas size are determined by the light being less intense.




Or perhaps this is better (higher % of light)?

For the first hour of sunlight in the morning on Earth near the equator, we get mostly yellow light and then the red starts to kick in after that. An hour or so after that the blue and ultraviolet light starts to build up and peaks during the middle of the day for about 6-8 hours. After that the blue decreases and red becomes more noticeable for a few hours before sunset, and then we get about 1 hour of yellow light at dusk.

With programmable LED lights you have two options.
1) You can start off with yellow and red coming on for an hour in the morning. Then add blue and UV if you have UV. During the main part of the lighting cycle you have equal parts of blue, red, green and any other colour you have on the light. About an hour or two before lights out you decrease the blue and run red and yellow for the final hour.

2) You have all the colours set to the same level and have them on 5% intensity for the first 15 minutes. Every 15 minutes after that you increase the intensity by 10-15% until you hit maximum intensity. Then have all colours at maximum level until 2 hours before lights out and gradually reduce the intensity in the opposite way you increased it (reduce intensity by 10-15% every 15 minutes until it gets dull). Then wait 15 minutes and lights off.

With other lights that aren't programmable, you turn the room light on or open the curtain at least 30 minutes before turning the tank light on. Then turn the tank light on.
At night before lights out, you turn the room light on, then turn the tank light off. Wait 30 minutes or more before turning the room light out.

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Sunrise and sunset normally only last about 1 hour. This is mainly yellow light for the first 30-45 minutes and then red light starts to show.

Blue and UV light is most intense during the middle of the day between 9am and 4pm.

There shouldn't be any light at night after the lights have gone off. The only exception to this is moonlight and that can be white light set at a very low intensity, or better still, have a low wattage light on in the room for a few hours at night, for one week each month. No light at night for the other 3 weeks of the month.

During the main lighting phase the light should appear white, the water should look clear, and there shouldn't be any colour in the water.

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Any time I have had Zoanthids they get bigger when fed and shrink a bit after they have finished eating. It has been a long time since I had any so maybe things have changed but we always had them under good light so they coloured up from the symbiotic algae.

Thanks Colin, I'll give it a try. Based on the 2nd option you provided I came up with this. I do have multiple windows that let sun in but it's indirect.




The app for the light does have a Pro setting that allow configuring specific colors during specific times of the day but I've found it to be buggy. I've seen it where the lights don't follow the timing when using the Pro mode and turn on when I didn't tell it to.