Light Demo

I thought I would show you a quick light demo. The lights have a preview setting that shows the lights going from off to moonlight to sunrise to midday then to sunset and back to moonlight.
as everything is speeded up it might look a bit "jerky" but in its normal cycle the transitions are much smoother, plus you can tailor make the transitions, the vid shows the factory setting

The Lights in action

I hope you like them

new lights

Well I thought if Im going to be spending money on new wave makers in order to make a more natural environment then I may aswell upgrade the lighting to. Now I have been using three aquaray LED strip lights which were a mix of blue and white lights, they have been working good, give a nice shimmer effect, but using them limited me to keeping just fish and a few basic corals. So I decided to go again with LED but this time something more powerful so that I could keep any typ of corals that I wanted to. I also decided that if Im going to do this I may aswell get something that like the wave maker makes things more natural for the fish. This means something programmable and something with a full spectrum light spread. This means the corals get something more sun like than normal LED's and some florescent lights. The lighting system I decided to get is called a IT2080, it is fully programmable so I can set different light lvls every half an hour and I can set the intensity of the moonlight, sunrise, midday and sunset and back to moonlight again.
It is also full spectrum so it has three different typs of white light and blue lights, it has both red and green lights also.
So I guess I should show you a few of the pics ive taken so far

clingfish!!

I got my new fish today a clingfish !!
They are really strange, they look like a mix between a very big tadpole and a pleco/louch combo but its a meat eating marine fish.... It also her a "sucker" like a pleco but instead of it being part of its mouth like a pleco its made from fused pelvic fins...

Its a very shy fish so far tho thats to be expected as its in a new environment but it has eaten its first meal in my tank so im very happy with that.
I also took a small vid of him eating brine shrimp ( thats the small things floating through the tank)

clingfish eating his first meal ( click here)

new additions

I have as the post title says a few new additions to my tank. I bought a few snails, some hermit crabs and a sand sifting starfish. I have a few pics and also two small vids, one of it walking along the sand ( so cool) the other of it sinking into the sand like magic ( even cooler!!)

 I also found a hitch hiker that must have come in on the live rock that I bought. A cute little starfish !!

And here are the two vids I mentioned

Starfish walking (click me)

Now you see it.. Now you dont !! (click me)

wavemaker update

Well its been a little while since my last update so here goes
In my last update I said about the new wavemaker that I had bought, well its been a month or so now since ive had it and im still playing with its settings lol, but I have had some good flow through the tank and as you will see from the pic its made some interesting designs on my sand bed lol. To me it looks like I would imagin the sand in the sea would look like from the wave action

new wave maker

I  got my new wave maker the other day, it only took 4 days for delivery from hongkong !! so I was well pleased.
I took a few pics and some vids, unfortunately I lost the vid of the old power head working to show you the difference between the two. When I get some time I might hook up the old power head just to take a vid to show you ( there really is a big difference)

old power head on left new wave maker on right

As you can see the new wave maker is slightly smaller than the power head but the difference in water flow is amazing. The reason I wanted the wave maker is because in the sea the water moves around randomly and not in a constant straight line like you get with a power head style pump. The wave maker has 7 different settings that you can use and different power lvls for thoes settings and you can even adjust the pulses of the pump to get the wave action that you want.

very short vid- click me please

I will also make a longer vid and show you some of the other settings. Not only is it making waves on top of the tank, its making better water flow though the whole of the tank which is the important part, because corals and fish prefer a more natural and random typ of water flow

some sand pics

I thought I would add some pics of the sand that im using. As I said before its "special" live sand that already contains all the good bacteria that a healthy tank needs to thrive. As its sand from the sea bed it has bits of coral and sea shells making everything more natural. In one of the pics you can see where something has been moving across the sand but I have no idea what it is yet lol. You can also see the "shimmer" effect that you get from using led lights, something you cant get from the light tubes alot of people use.