180 reef build!

[tlgreve]

Ok, so I am "allowed" to use my 180 in the living room. We've decided that the living room carpet can be sacrificed I've cleaned out the tank, here is a "before" picture.
I'll have to reinforce the stand and fix the canopy to open in the front. (stand and canopy I'm going to use aren't in the picture)

I have decided to go with 6x80wT5 for lights, I will offset them so the whole tank is covered. I will leave some space so that I can add a couple more if needed. I really like the way Chris's (crvz) tank came out looking with the lighting and rockwork, I picked some bulbs to hopefully look about the same and I might stack my rock like he did.
My list of bulbs is:
1 80W 6500K GE Starcoat Daylight T5 HO 60inch
1 80W T5 Midday 6000K Giesemann PowerChrome Bulb 60inch
1 80W T5 Actinic Plus Giesemann PowerChrome Bulb 60inch
1 80W 12000K ATI Aquablue Special T5HO
2 80W ATI Blue Plus T5HO

that would be 2 days, 3 blus and one "mid range"

It looks like combining several different bulb types has worked well for others, so I would like to try my luck. I'd also like to take a look at how different bulbs affect the colors, and getting several different types is the best way of doing this. Since I'm going with 60" bulbs, my selection is somewhat limited - which is good and bad! I've got less choices to confuse me My goal is to get great fluorescence of the corals but not a REALLY blue look.

What do you guys think of my bulb combination? (I've never seen any of these bulbs, so I don't know what they really look like)

[dobejazz]

Congrats on the new set up !!

I unfortunately can't offer any advice on the bulb choices

[reefermike1]

not sure if youve seen this thread on rc, compares par outputs of various t5 bulbs.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...hreadid=918935
might help out your decision.

if u want sps, i would reccomend icecap ballasts based on my own experiance with a 24" tall tank. u can run 3 5ft bulbs on an icecap 660, so 2 of them and you would be all set. HTH

[hng]

Congrats on the new tank Traci! If it were me, I'd replace the 6000K with another aquablue special. Two daylights just seem too "yellow" to me. I would place the 6500K bulb in the middle of the tank too. BTW, how did you get that tank so clean? It looks brand new!

[crvz]

Hey, somebody read my thread? Weird!

I'd ditch the mid-day. If you look at the PAR measurements, they don't buy that much over the aquablues, etc. If you want blue, lose the yellow bulb. I got rid of my 6500k when I had the 58, and now the 3000k on the current setup.

Also, what are you hoping to keep in your tank? For a mixed reef, 6 bulbs should be great, but if you want to do mostly stonies, I'd just jump to 8 bulbs from the get go.

[crvz]

Oh, and good luck! I look forward to seeing this come together!!!

[Jflip2002]

what tank footprint is that? 72x24x24? I envy those of you with 72x24x24 180s lol.

[Jflip2002]

Also, I personally would run half of your bulbs daylights. It shows the ATI sunpro have the best par of all. But I also dont like blue tanks, so to each their own.

[bucky_338]

thats nice tracy if i can help let me know

[Loverotties]

Nice size tank!

[tlgreve]

Yeah, its a fairly new tank and has never had SW in it - it was pretty easy to clean. It is a 72x24x24, I'll take your advice and go with a couple more aquablues instead of the day bulbs. I am going to be going mixed reef, I love my softies too much! I am going to leave some room, just in case. (nervously ordering lights now, thats a LOT of money!)

I got some LR today. It was not kept under a lot of light, so I'm going go ahead and cook it. (not like I've got anything better do with it right now) I also got a bunch of aragocrete, it was supposedly cured but I want to make sure. How long do I need to have it in water to tell if the rock's pH is too high? I can soak/cure it in FW to see the affect on pH, right?

[tlgreve]

Ok, I'm not going to order my lights quite yet. I was about to press "submit" when I realized that I needed more than just lights! I'm going to need several other things, like a skimmer....

[hng]

Yeah, soak the LR in some FW and check the pH after a couple of days. After it's cured, you can put it in the same bin as the LR to let it get colonized with bacteria. For a skimmer, I'm a fan of the octopus skimmers. I haven't seen the new extremes but it sounds like a good upgrade.

[tlgreve]

I'm having a hard time finding a skimmer that will fit under my stand. I've only got 24.5 workable space Bucky found one that I might get, I'm going to go to Oceans Floor to see how much it would cost locally. http://www.aquacave.com/octopus-ps-2...mmer-1993.html I'd like to get one that doesn't have to go into my sump, but the ones that I see that don't are very tall.

Speaking of sumps, I was given a 33 long that I'm thinking of using. Questions:
Is it going to be big enough? Especially after having a large skimmer sitting in it? I plan to use it as a fuge with some Chaeto. Tank is 12x12x48

Its got a hold already drilled in the top (see pic) I could do some fancy pipe work and use this hole for the pump. OR I could plug that hole and have another hole drilled in the end where I drew in the pink spot to make the water flow directly into the pump. I think the flow would suffer a bit from going up, over, down and across to a pump, but would it be worth it to risk having it drilled? I'll be using an oceanrunner 6500.

[Brent Cone]

Very Nice!! looking great!!
B~