Anyone Actually Keeping Sps Corals, Lighting ?

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

From what Ive read, it seems that montiporas in general are a little easier to maintain than acroporas. All acroporas Ive read about require high lighting, high flow and are rated as difficult to keep. But with the montiporas, they have medium lighting, medium flow, and some are rated as a moderate level of care.

Also currently, I have 3.46 watts per gallon with power compacts, and actinics 50/50. Ive read that montiporas will thrive under the PCs and actinics, but that acros need metal halides. Is this true?

And what is the general scale for low, med. and high lighting? My impresion was like 1-2.5 low, 2.6-3.5 medium, 3.6-4 med/high and up to around 5 or 6 was high. I dont know if there is a scale, or if my generalization is good enough. So please reply if you keep SPS corals, and have any info. on the amount of lighting and what kind for keeping them thriving.

 

[Fish Fingers]

Whn talking about low and high lighting I don't talk about wpg, I talk about the unit themselves. Thats with fluros being lowest, then power compacts, then t5's and with MH's being the highest. So when your talking about high lighting for acros you really need something like MH's or T5's. You can do it with the others but it you'll need a lot more of it. It also depends on the depth of your tank too. I am keeping one acro at the moment which seems to be doing ok(I had two but one died from RTN(though I did manage to frag it and give it to my friend)). It's under a 150w halide and in 18x turnover of flow. 18x isn't really enough (I only bought the acro to see if it would live), I would reccomend at least 20x flow, 30x would be much better. My bud has a lot of acros and acro frags in his tank which are doing great. He's got them under two 150w MH's + 2 65w PC's + an actinic and the tank has about 20 x turnover.

I hope this made sense. I just woke up and I can't really focus on what im doing

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

Yeah it made sense. What exactly is the turnover rate? I know its about how much flow you get from powerheads and the volume of the tank, but I dont remember how they relate

 

[Fish Fingers]

20x turnover means my tank volume gets pumped out 20x an hour. SO that means the powerhead in my 150L tank does just under 3000lph.

 

[Aquascaper]

I have a 400w Metal Halide with 2 x 54w White T5's and 2 x 54w Actinic T5's. The lights are set for 12 hours of Actinic, 9 hours of White and 6 hours of Halide per day so at full power i'm running 616w over my 4'x2'x2' (100g UK)
I have a flow rate of around 5320gph (20,000lph) when everythings running which is directed at different areas of the tank to try and achieve different 'zones'.

With this setup I can keep various different corals, placing them in a particular 'zone' according to their requirements and i've found this works quite well. Most of my research was taken from 'Aquarium Corals' by Bourneman, a fantastic book and well worth buying if you're serious about keeping corals.

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

Ok thanks everyone, and i was planning on getting that book within the next week or so. But how do you get all that flow? A wave maker? It seems to me that it would blow the sand around a bunch and itd never be clear in there.

 

[superman]

strategic direction of flow is key, if aimed incorrectly you will get a sand storm, if aimed wisely you will have happy corals AND no sand storm. Tunze is a great option when wanting a lot of turover, Seios are less expensive competitor to the tunze pumps.

 

[Fish Fingers]

Ok thanks everyone, and i was planning on getting that book within the next week or so. But how do you get all that flow? A wave maker? It seems to me that it would blow the sand around a bunch and itd never be clear in there.

You get the flow from your powerheads. And like said before it doesn't cause any hassles if you place the powerheads in the right position. The only thin gthat migth happen is you get more floating detritus.

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

Ok thanks everyone, and i was planning on getting that book within the next week or so. But how do you get all that flow? A wave maker? It seems to me that it would blow the sand around a bunch and itd never be clear in there.

You get the flow from your powerheads. And like said before it doesn't cause any hassles if you place the powerheads in the right position. The only thin gthat migth happen is you get more floating detritus.

Thats a lot of powerheads.
And Im guessing Tunze and Seios are brands of wavemakers?

 

[Aquascaper]

I have an assortment of submersible pumps, inline pumps and powerheads to achieve my flow rate. I have about 5 powerheads on show in the tank but I would love just a pair of Tunze Streams.
I also don't see the pioint of a wave maker as you lose a lot of the tanks depth to allow for the water sloshing back and forth.

 

[Fish Fingers]

Tunze and seio are powerheads, butinstead of shooting the water in a straight line they spread the water out so it covers the whole tank (I can;t explain it any good ). I only have one big powerhead on my 3ft but I'm looking into getting another one.

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

O ok yeah that makes sense

 

[Aquascaper]

The beauty of Tunze and Seio powerheads is that, as Fish Fingers said, they flow differently to normal powerheads.
A standard powerhead will eject water in a concentrated 'tube' which extends from the nozzle anything up to 18", This means that the flow is kept in a very small area, therefore there is little disturbance outside the 'tube'.
A Tunze or Seio powerhead will eject water in a broader 'cylinder' which extends about the same as a standard powerhead, this means that the flow is spread out , therefore there is more disturbance in the tank but you get the same flow rate.

It's a little hard to explain but think of it like an adjustable torch. The torch has a 10w bulb, for example, but the light can either be concentrated on a point or spread over a large area, there's still the same 10w of light which ever way you set it.

HTH

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

So about how many of these at the highest gallon per hour rating, would I need for 75 gallons?

 

[Aquascaper]

All depends on your stock