I am thinking about adding a more expensive coral to my pico, something i can point out and say, "that thing right there is ballin". I was wondering if a ricordea would be okay in a 10w 50/50 coralife screw in bulb. My zoas are doing fine in there, i wasnt sure if the ricordea would be happy with that though. I know they have similar requirements as shrooms, but im not going to drop 20 bucks for a couple of polyps if i know they arent going to be happy in there.

pushing it. But you can feed them directly for their energy needs.

so i can just spot feed it like once every other day with mysis?

Twice a week once shrimp each polyp should be good. You can increase but watch for what they spit out after a few hours. Corals are efficiant eaters, if they are spitting out chunks you are making them expend energy to expell the excess.

I do suggest keeping them as close to the surface as possible with that light. They are from realitivly shallow water. Same with zoa. Fortunatly they dont take all their energy from light

Cool, it is about 10 inches from the light. It opened up a few hours i put it in last night and it seems to be doing fine. It just doesnt look as nice as it did in the store because they were using HQI but its still pretty dang nice I will post pictures in my pico diary. Do you thinking putting the tank in sunlight will help much? Ive read that it helps a lot

FYI lighting upgrade should be high on your list.

Survive doesn't mean thrive

sunlight????


heck ya


Sunlight pwns them all. The critters may not look as psycodelic to our eyes, but they will still love u for it.

ill try to get the into the sun as soon as i get a heater. My roommate opens the window once in a while, so im worried about temperature drops.

plenty of light. Heck ive seen people keep sps in lower light, dunno how successful it was but i do know that people have successfully kept lps in 9wt PC light.

Ive always thought that it wasnt really about the wattage and color was more important

Unless it's extremely yellow (<5500K) or extremely blue (>20000K) intensity is the most important thing.

color may be importiant to the type of symbyotic hosts. Its also importiant to how their color protiens reacto to the light... because you care what it looks like. But they symbiotic hosts can acclimate or change or the coral can get other ones to adust to the different spectrums we are putting them under.

Watts means nothing without the full information, ballast, REFLECTOR, exact bulb, volts, Distance from top of the water, distance coral is under the surface, HOW CLEAN THE WATER IS.

You seriously need all these to get an idea what the PAR (PHOTOSYNTETIC AVAILAVLE RAIDIENCE)is lilkey to be.

PAR is the effectivly the only measurment you need for the HEALTH of the coral as it relates to light... though most reefers dont choose to get a PAR meeter.

.................

success is 2 years in my book. many of the animals in our tanks slowly die, over time the symbotic algae reduces in numbers, the flesh eats at it self. If some one tells you, "I had this mandarine for 6 months." or I had this X coral for 4 months"..."but then it suddenly just died." That means that the animal was slowly dying in their tank for the whole 6 months. Starvation of food and light may not be apparent untill its too late.

JIMO

This post has been edited by Adrinal: Nov 16 2007, 03:30 PM

Sad, but true...

yes the lps have been living and growing and has been fragged, that is why i would call it sucessfull, i had no comment on the success of the sps because i do not know of how long it had been in there.

Remember, watts = input electricity, not output light. Take this for example, a 60 watt incandescent has roughly the same amount of light as a 11-14 watt compact fluorescent light. So, lets say its a 10 gallon tank, 60 watt incandescent = 6 wpg, 11-14 watt PC = 1.1-1.4 wpg, yet its the same amount of light.

But there are even more variables that Adrinal mentioned, so those need to be taken into consideration as well.

Fish mythbusters, WPG is bunk.

We are such geeks up here in the tundra we ... not joking now... purchace new t-5 bulbs and equipment and test them for fun... hahah

couple years ago we tested the difference between an icecap parabolic reflector and the sunlight supplies old parabolic reflector(discontinued... and haven't tested the new one yet...but I have some).

the ice cap reflector is slightly larger and its nicer because they bend the metal on the edges so you dont cut your self... unlike the other. There might have been some other slight differences... but I'm not a detail guy, i just care about the PAR. Both reflectors were bent in a similar fation.

The ice cap consistantly tested 30% more PAR (the test was done with scientific standards in mind). if I recall it was something like shy of 300% more light than a naked bulb!

I never would have guessed I would play with my PAR meter more than my refractometer. hahaha

[quote name='Adrinal' date='Nov 17 2007, 03:47 PM' post='1824078']
We are such geeks up here in the tundra we ... not joking now... purchace new t-5 bulbs and equipment and test them for fun... hahah

couple years ago we tested the difference between an icecap parabolic reflector and the sunlight supplies old parabolic reflector(discontinued... and haven't tested the new one yet...but I have some).

the ice cap reflector is slightly larger and its nicer because they bend the metal on the edges so you dont cut your self... unlike the other. There might have been some other slight differences... but I'm not a detail guy, i just care about the PAR. Both reflectors were bent in a similar fation.

The ice cap consistantly tested 30% more PAR (the test was done with scientific standards in mind). if I recall it was something like shy of 300% more light than a naked bulb!

I never would have guessed I would play with my PAR meter more than my refractometer. hahaha
[/quote

Can you buy PAR meters?

yeah, but affording it means selling your tank.....

Yeah they're expensive. My local club owns a PAR meter, a basic cheap one, which if I remember correctly cost us $800.