Hello Mr. Miller,
Really nice web site. I' ve been reading your articles in MFM, and since I just got hooked up to the internet I had to see your site. Thanks to you, my tanks are coming along fine. I have a 30-g and a 140-g. In the 140 all the rocks are made the way you describe in your articles (MFM and web site), about 100 lbs. In my 30-g tank I have about 15 lbs of live rock from a local store, set up as a HANDY Reef, Skilter and all.
I hope you don't mind one question. I'm using 1 CoraLife 10,000 K and 1 actinic blue URI fluorescent. Would this light be enough to start adding corals? I would like to start with the easy corals first and work up. Thank you for your time , keep up the great work,
Robert Von Dullen
p.s. Both of my HANDY Reef tanks are easier than my discus tank. Thanks again.
Robert,
Thanks for sharing the info about your tanks! It's good to hear about your simple success, including making some of your own live rock. It's easy and fun, isn't it! You can start adding certain corals with just the two standard wattage flourescents you are now using on your 30-g tank. That's all some people use on these shorter 29 and 30-g tanks, but more light is usually better for a wider variety of corals and other reef animals. You may need to keep some corals fairly close to the lights, or at least in the upper half of the tank for best results. Once you add more lights, you should notice a positive difference in the ability to keep corals in most parts of the tank. Do try to add two more lights sometime soon, possibly two more 10,000 K or 50/50s, daylights, Tritons or comparable lights. Good starter corals for your current lighting include disc anemones, zoanthids, star polyps and tan leather corals. This is not a complete list, but actually you can keep many many corals if you just consider the water flow and lighting needs and place the light lovers up higher, close to your current lights. Also remember the balance between feeding and lighting, many of the common photosynthetic "reef aquarium corals" derive nutrition from both light and plankton sources.
Another thing to consder is to use good reflectors over your lights. You may even want to add a real mirrored reflector above the lights to increase the light received by your tank. Some lighting supply houses carry, or can order for you, light weight, anodized, polished aluminum fluorescent lighting reflectors that reflect the light from your lights into your tank like a very good mirror without the thick glass that can cut down some of the light. Some aquarium stores may now be carrying forms of these aluminum reflectors too. The reason we want to use ANODIZED aluminum reflectors is that they are overcoated (anodized) with a thin quartz or silicon dioxide overcoating which protects these mirrored reflectors from scratching and also from tarnishing while still being so very thin as to not cut out any significant amount of light reflected by the aluminum. If the polished aluminum is not anodized or overcoated like this, salt splash on a bare aluminum reflector will corrode the aluminum which will decrease reflectivity and can eventually even poison your tank! Eventually the salt builds up on the bare aluminum reflector and eventually some starts dropping or gets knocked into your aquarium with some dissolved or corroded aluminum in this salt. This aluminum buildup in your aquarium becomes toxic, killing snails and then other things. For this reason DO NOT USE ALUMINUM FOIL OVER YOUR LIGHTS AS A REFLECTOR! Glossy white reflectors are also quite effective. A very glossy enameled white reflector can come very close to the same reflectivity of a good mirrored reflector - such as polished and anodized aluminum. Flat white reflectors are less reflective than glossy white reflectors. Non-mirrored aluminum reflectors likewise are not as reflective as highly polished mirrored aluminum. Aluminum is very reflective when polished and protected from corrosion. Aluminum is a very common, less expensive, and high reflectivity coating used on many astronomical telescope mirrors as well.
Tangs-
Tom Miller
