10 Years and starting over.

saintsreturn

Well-Known Member
AI's wont let you down. I have two black boxes sitting in the garage that my buddy had on the tank i just picked up. I wont be using them since i love my XR's. I use to grow mushrooms like crazy with just a marineland light when i first started. I never paid for anything in the hobby as i was trading them in for store credit faster than i could consume salt.

When i went to the 75, i added primes and had the same "problem." with the new tank, my mushrooms are all going out, except a select few slow growing ones. The main one i loved grows like a darn weed and looks awesome. But i ended up picking up to much high end coral with this tank buy and cannot handle the mushrooms fighting them for room in the tank.

In my opinion, and this is only my opinion.... I would "cheap out" on your lights, get the setup you want and grow mushrooms! They are fun, beautiful, and easy going. Grow them out and bank store credit if your LFS allows it. When you are ready to move onto other corals, use that credit for something else and keep your "cheap lights" for a QT, secondary tank or gift to a friend who is starting. As sexy as AI's, XR's, Kessils... etc, would look, they will be overkill and costly for this venture.

That said, depending on the shrooms and your timeline, it may be just as easy sticking with what you want in the future. I hardly ever recommend buying something to get by, but low end shrooms do not require much. So your money could go to better filtration or other things for now.

The only other thing i would consider before making your decision is the look of the tank. If you have the lights out in the open or under a canopy, this could drive the model you buy. If you want shimmers, cloud cover, or other effects, this will also drive the decision. If you look at my 29 and 75 build thread, you can see the evolution of cheap lights to AI's to Radions and the amount of mushrooms i have moved through those systems. The red/orange grow rapidly, the blues slower but steady and the green finally split after 6 months. Next it will be all slow growing or none at all, but that was years in the making :D

Good luck
 
I decided to go with Viparspectra... I may eventually upgrade!

I will do mushrooms. But for now i want to enhance my set up.

@Uncle99 what settings do you keep your lights on?
 
Hello all, Just touching bases with you all. I need to figure out how to get pics uploaded from my phone through the tapatalk app. I had the tank set up and running. had it plumbed and all since october and it has been running. I have added a few things into it.. if someone knows how to get pictures uploaded I will get them on here.
 
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