live sand?

I have been there soooo many times myself. We all started off listening to our LFS for advice and find out most of the time it is bad advice (they are in it for $). I have changed my lights out at least 5 times now, changed filters out a few times, changed skimmers out 4 times now... so ya, I feel your pain.

Just think, look at my tank in the sig, and tell me how much you think it would cost to setup new.. around $3000. I have now dumped over $13,600 on my tank. Most of that money lost was because of bad decisions. The Prism skimmer has got to be one of the worst skimmers on the market (and I went with the Pro with all the upgrades). I changed out my Instant Ocean skimmer for a prism thinking I was upgrading.. not so, big downgrade. Then I got an "ok" generic skimmer with my sump, and just last month I finally bit the bullet and bought a Remora skimmer and let me tell you.. night and day difference.

As far as lights and filter.. if your only doing FOWLR then I think your LFS was correct. I ran 2 FOWLR tanks on normal floros for 6 years without problems.. Also used cheap hang on canister filters and Penguin 400s with the Instant Ocean skimmer. It seemed to work just fine. I also ran crushed coral the entire 6 years of FOWLR, but this was back in 1996-2001.. no one at that time was saying crushed coral was bad. Now I know better.
 
the prism skimmer isnt that good? i read some good reviews on it. i know the seaclone skimmer is terrible from every review ive read so i stayed away from them. my prism skimmer has been doing quite a good job. the main reason i went for the compact florescent lighting is because i want to eventually upgrade to things that need the better lighting. im gonna put in some macro algae too because i like the different colors. But anyway, like i said, i gotta take care of my ich problem b4 i do anything else. My whole tank got infected. Its not that bad but i cant move my inverts to my qt so i can do hypo because i had to mix new water and cycle it all over again, but that makes for a whole other topic. lol so ive been using kordon ich attack. it seems to be working. the algae is growing crazy but thats a small price to pay. I wish SW tanks were as easy as my little 5 gallon fw tank. i barely have to do anything with it other than clean the filter and feed the fish. lol
 
We must have read the same reviews, lol. I read the same thing at the time. I had the seaclone and the reviews online were saying the Prism was so much better so I switched. Big mistake. My seaclone150 did probably 2x the amount of skimming than the prism did and without constant messing with the valve. That is from 1st hand experience, not reviews. Granted, I only tried one, and it is entirely possible it was defective, but I doubt it from what I read now a days about it.

Also, CFL lights are TERRIBLE for reefs and overkill for FOWLR. They do not put out enough PAR watts to grow any real corals. Some corals will survive under CFL, but most wont actually grow. Softies like mushrooms and leathers seem to do ok under CFL though.
 
another lfs i have been to has a great display tank running cf and they got corals in it that are doing amazing. and they have another small fowlr tank running cfs and that does better than my tank. im not saying your wrong or anything im just saying their tanks are doing great running the same lighting i have
 
Well, I am speaking from experience and coutless hours of research on PAR wattage output. That is what really matters for corals.

Are you sure they are running CFLs and not T5HOs or VHOs?

When your talking about a 65w CFL putting out only 40-50 PAR watts and a 24w T5HO on an Icecap ballast puts out 90+ PAR watts, you quickly see the difference even though the bulbs look somewhat similar.

Right now, I am running 6 T5HO's on normal ballast and I am getting around 400 PAR watts. When I had my 2x65w CLF fixture I couldn't keep corals for anything and lost a lot of $ trying. Since changing out my 2x65w CFL to a 4x24w T5HO now I can sucessfully GROW SPS corals.
 
Well we will just leave it at that then. I can't say anything about a LFS/tank that I haven't seen myself. I know alot of LFS change out corals weekly so they really don't have time to "grow". Like I said, most corals will survive, just barely, under CF lighting, but you would be hard pressed to get a frogspawn to branch under them.

There is someone in the DIY forum asking if 1044watts of CF light was too much.. Here were the numbers I came up with for him. These are just averaged #s, some bulbs are better than others, some cheap ones a lot worse.

16 65w PCs = 640 Par watts for 1044w of power used
16 24w T5HO = 1280 Par watts 384w of power used

As you can see, you can get much better results for a lot less power by going with something like T5HOs.

Again though, I know where your coming from because I have been there myself. I had a normal floro for a short time, a 2x55w CF fixture, a 2x65w CF fixture, then added a 2x24w T5HO to my 2x65w fixture, and just recently finally replaced my 2x65w fixture with a 4x24w T5HO fixture with individual reflectors giving me a total of 6x24w t5HO running UV brand bulbs and WOW what a difference it makes to the corals.
 
i have 2 65 watt cf. it is brand new. the next time i upgrade my lighting ill do T5, but like i said, my lighting is new so im gonna stick with that for now. anyway, thank you for your help.
 
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