albinosage

Mine is a chapalang mixed reef mah, a lot of aggressive tank mates and strong current, I guess the environment rubbed off on their personality.

I bought two of my seahorses separately, the first one didn't eat frozen mysis at first, so I started by feeding it live brine shrimp. Once it got used to my hand, and recognise it as a source of food, I start feeding it frozen mysis and brine shrimp, and it will eat happily. When buying delicate feeders like that I always ask the shop owner to test feed before I buy. Both my tigertails are so greedy now that they will spit water at me playfully when they want food. Edit: They are a bit slow and stupid, always lose out to other fish when feeding, cos the flow in my tank is quite strong. I off all pumps these days when feeding the tank, they now have a fair chance to get the food.

The topic header was very vague mah, exotic what? LOL

No reply from interested parties, up for sale again. Caught and isolated outside the tank now, can collect today, please PM me if interested.

I shall kick off this discussion by stating that I luuuuuuurrrve exotic girls!

Understatement of the year LOL! My previous pair of maroon clowns have been known to fight with new corals and live rocks that come within 1ft of their territory - yes, fight - and catch slower fishes to "sacrifice" to their host anemone. They were quite big lah, female was 4.5 inchs long, nevertheless, I will never recommend them to anyone, especially in such a small tank. Anyway Tino, if I recall correctly, someone was selling the quickstart at a reasonable price in pasar malam earlier this year, Patrick or something, his nick.

Any updates on your tank, bro?

How long has it been out of the tank? If it is not smelly, can put it back in as is.

Wow, very nice set up and scaping for a first try, can't wait to see what you have planned

Maybe I should start asking around for SPS frag donation to try out

Yup, it has made the anemone his home, but the anemone is somehow very stressed by it and went hiding in a hole. It curled up into a ball and went without light for 2 week, bleached now . It started opening and coming out into the open after I removed the crab, I guess the anemone has to be a willing party in the relationship after all haha.

Selling this porcelain crab as it is disturbing my anemone. About 5cm from claw to claw, bought from ML in December. $6, best to collect today, quite a houdini, escaped for the second time from the betta box this week and ran back into the anemone.

Yup, depends on your coral placement and where you point the wavemaker. I shield my mushrooms with live rock now, to block the flow.

Short answer: Yes. Mushies and other soft corals will be very unhappy with too much flow, may detach or close up and die... I think I killed some yumas when I went overboard with my 2100l/h return pump together with the K1 in my nano tank. Lesson learnt the hard way haha.

Maybe Aquabee, or maybe I'll stick with Rio. Still looking around for something that suits my requirement. My next challenge is to bring down the monthly bill for the tank set up to sub-$15 level hehehe.

Haha, the initial money to cough up is always a barrier. I didn't mind spending a bit more cos my plan all along was to create a nano tank that is as complete as possible, and yet remain energy efficient. My next plan is to change my pump to a lower consumption one, and insulate my chiller hose to minimise temperature gain.

Yup, I agree that $6 is not the actual savings, cos there are a lot of other factors in play, not just the LED lights, but chiller and pump may not run at the rated wattage too. The power rating of 48W was actually provided by Sherman who tested the completed unit with a wattmeter. Will be watching my bills closely Edit: This is the wattmeter reading sent to me upon completion of the job: This means that that's the wattage regardless of loss right? I'm quite bad at this one haha paiseh..

Okay, it's official, the LED light is 3.6 times more powerful than the stock JBJ lighting at half the electric consumption. LUX reading: The LED consumes 32 watts, or 48 watts including the fan, compared to the 72 watts of CF lights. Here's the savings in electric bills with the latest tariff of $0.1928, taking into account that my chiller runs for more than 2 hours less per day. $6 savings a month might not be a lot, but that is a 22% reduction! Anyway, besides leaving a smaller carbon footprint, I also have the added advantage of keeping my reefing expenses off the bill: no paper trail of evidence = no nagging from gf. A good way to stay off her radar... like a ninja!

Hahaha, I thought so too, I set white balance to 10,000 and that's what I got in the pictures.

Yes, and he did a great job! Hehehe.. Now my dream tank set is complete

A comparison shot: Okay, now a quick observation of the effects the light has on the tank. Previous light fixture from JBJ consumes 72 watts, the LED consumes 40 plus watts, but without the heat. The reduction in heat produced is really remarkable, it feels like a luke warm beverage -- you can even touch the LED without getting burnt (not advisable lah)! I don't have the time to sit in front of the tank all day and monitor the chiller, but I can say that the chilling time remains the same. The main difference is that chiller really kicks in less often, the time between kick in is increased greatly. I set my chiller at 26 degrees, and kick in at 28 degrees, with the ambient temperature at 29.5 degrees and all the lights on. It takes 55 minutes to chill down to 26 degrees with or without the LED. The main difference is that with the previous CF light set, it kicks in every 80 to 90 minutes, while it takes 120 or up to 180 minutes before kicking in with the LED on! (Will calculate my electric savings in $$$ terms later when I'm free.)

Finally... FTS! Full LED: Moonlight (notice the beam of light down the centre, that's the LED with lens):

Some pictures under moonlight: Anyone know what colour temp to adjust to while shooting blue light with dslr? Fiddled around whole night trying to capture the super luminous colours... The following pictures represent only 50% of the intensity seen with my eye. Shimmering water ripples!

Wah lau, damn sad... My RBTA was traumatised by the porcelain crab which decided to call it home for the last 3 weeks . The anemone curled up into a ball and hid in a hole and didn't see light 2 weeks while the crab treated it as a bouncy bed! This is the RBTA opening for the first time after I removed the crab... Very bleached right?

Weeee...... Got my LED modded canopy yesterday from Sherman! Sherman fiddled around with the layout and white/blue ratio after my feedback about the dark corners. Supposed to be more evenly distributed now. Although the LEDs mostly came with lens, I removed them gradually throughout the day when observing the corals. I asked for two separate power supplies so I can set the lights on timer, now I can utilise the royal blue as moonlight before and after the main photo period. I left behind one single lens on the blue LED right in the centre, for a beaming light effect when I use it as moon light. When fully switched on, this is bright enough to make a blind man cover his eyes!