A Splash of Color
- Thread starter biggles
- Start date
biggles
Premium Member
You're getting a biggles warning for posting broken links on my journal mate........:thumbdown Macro algae's are swamp weeds and steal trace elements along with nutrients.
I love the fact that whenever i come to your thread there are beautiful pics and awesome corals to see:inlove:
The vids where nice too
....hey i just saw the sock pics....now your right foot is bigger
Hey Mike, i do post a lot of pics lol. I have no idea what's going on with my feet tbh...... :spin3:
Andrew,
The tank is looking ever so lovely, the white sand really does your reef well mate, the contrast of colors really makes your acros pop. Great balance of coloration throughout the tank, the signs of a skilled reefer
Thanks Perry, i turned the four jebao pumps from else mode to W1 mode and pretty much solved my sand blowing around issue instantly. The acros are now adjusting to less surging flow but overall seem happy still.
Thanks Mike, it still needs tweaking with some more flubber around the bottom so it doesn't look so artificial - i have some waste of space zoa's i can use. The sand staying put makes the display look much 'poppier' if you know what i mean lol.
The pukeful looking flubber thing refuses to look good for me so will be relegated to the back when i find something not gross looking to replace it with........... the pretty little acro is encrusting and shooting new growth - the glowy looking tips on the right.
On the left side you can see the white cut healing with blue tissue starting to cover the area. I cut a slightly bigger frag for Dom a week ago as i need the first one for the xmas tree. I cut the tip off the other acro as it was pointing at my little blue acro. That white skin acro looks like shimmering yellow gold in person in case you're wondering why it's at the front of the right island. When i have less filthy water all those growing tips turn baby blue and it looks rather tasty lol.
JB NY
Active member
A little PSA. For the filters people are using with their cell phones. You can buy a swatch of all filters they make and choose the filter that looks best with your lighting. They cost about $10 with shipping.
This is the one I bought a while back to play with the different filters for my iPhone.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002ER2YG
The filters themselves are more than large enough to use over your camera phone lens.
I went through the filters and settled on one that is called "Rosco Roscolux Pale Gold"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B7824
It's 24"x24" so if you bought it you could make lots of filters for other reefers in your areas, you only need a little strip for the phone.
MichaelW
New member
It's always fun times when biggles gets the scaping tools out. Looks great, shows the thought for getting color combos together that really pop.
Last pictures, do you know the species? Maybe rosaria? It looks similar to something I picked up a week ago. Are you keeping it a little lower light and flow? That's where mine is but wanted to know what the color master does.
Last pictures, do you know the species? Maybe rosaria? It looks similar to something I picked up a week ago. Are you keeping it a little lower light and flow? That's where mine is but wanted to know what the color master does.
biggles
Premium Member
Thanks for sharing that info Joe, the filters aren't perfect but they do give you shots that at least show reefers colors much better rather than total blue washout. :thumbsup:
Thanks Dan, most of the acros are happy little campers and rewarding me with bright colors.
Hey Michael, i'm not sure what the little tabling acro is yet but it's not rosaria. Gentle flow and medium light is a good bet when placing anything that looks like mine. Delicate growth basically tells you the acro was not getting belted with strong flow in the ocean. Even though many of my acros are less than 1" off the sand they are all in medium light not low light. Remember i have 2 x 400W Radiums and 11 T5's running over an 18" deep display so the only low light areas are those in the shade of overhanging acros. Where the halides run out of punch out wide near the edges and in the corners the T5's take up the slack.
Ran out of bloody bicarb so i went for a drive to the supermarket but they were doing road works on a Sat morning so i had no choice but to go to Deer Park aquarium for my bicarb............... i hate it when that happens but what can you do.....
'Can i have a bag of bicarb please'
'Not unless you buy a couple of acros'
'But i don't want any acros'
'Too bad Andrew, you want the bicarb you buy some acros'
That conversation is typical of the bullying that goes on at my LFS, if they didn't have the best bicarb in Aus i wouldn't put up with it. :twitch:
Because i know you guys like backyard sun shots. Both pieces were collected on the GBR less than 48hrs ago and had good PE within 5 mins of hitting my water
M007
Acro Whore
Couple more beauties from the GBR. Tell me, those are cut from a massive colony, what is the best wait to mount them? My go to guy for GBR, RR Canada, recently got a rather large shipment, some of which had some reef still attached, those are easy. What about the snapped off pieces?
biggles
Premium Member
Hey Mike, i always super glue the base to a small flat bottomed rock out of the tank and place it in the sump to set. That way i can test it for hold and add more glue if needed, doing it on the kitchen bench is a lot easier than trying to hold something still for 30-60secs in the display.
I do this for several very handy reasons. Both those acros have been growing almost horizontally and that's how i will mount them. They have a lot of leverage when you try to mount them in such a way and want to fall down. I used to use heaps of glue and putty and prop them while the putty dried for 20-30 mins. You end up with a huge blob of ugly putty and cover much more of the branch base than you want most times.
Just super gluing means nearly no tissue is covered and the much larger flat rock base means you have a lot of surface area for the glue and putty to hold onto when you attach the piece to your rocks. I use a small amount of putty and super glue to attach the rock to the reef but if you wait until the putty starts to firm up a bit before gluing you don't even need probs - it grabs hard with the flat base. I don't attach the rock to the base until i know where it is going so i can even adjust and allow for the angle the rock base will be mounted at in relation to the reef scape. You won't get it perfect but the small amount of putty you use when finally mounting it lets you make those small adjustments.
This method also means if you decide it needs to go somewhere else you don't lose any of the encrusting etc that has taken place because you pry the rock base off with a chisel or knife - not the acro piece. You can simply hold the piece upside down in the display water and add more glue and putty and stick it back down in the new spot. The acro never leaves the water and once re attached it hardly knows anything has even happened and resumes it's life.
If i decided to move that echi onto the reef somewhere i would simply take the little rock pedestal out again and use the dremel to slice the top off the rock - i wouldn't have to disturb any of the base growth that might be underway. If i had attached that piece to the main reef rocks i would have used the small flat rock base method i discussed above since i wouldn't be able to take the rock out for cutting.
iphone6 with the gel filter again, i may have miscounted btw - they made me buy three acros to get the bicarb............. should be consumer rights laws to stop this sort of thing. The yellow tang went for me when i was putting the third piece in as by then he'd worked out i wasn't giving him nori lol.
You can see a few blue tips appearing on the lower branches of my yellow/white looking acro. I cut that piece into two and planted them next to each other which is why it looks like two colonies side by side. Had that acro for about 18 months from memory. There's another piece under the blue tenuis you never see in FTS's.
biggles
Premium Member
Thanks mate, yes they were in a fresh shipment that came in a day ago. Half these acros only look so stunning because they're part bleached. I have spent many years learning what to buy and what not to buy when looking at a tank full of this sort of porn.......... they'll all hold color and be pretty but atm you are seeing many of them without zoa and in a zeo copper poisoned look state of pigmentation for want of a better description. Personal taste also plays a big part, because i'm not a big fan of millis i ignore some stunning red and pink branches routinely. The one in the second row is a red milli and the piece further back to it's left is a pink milli.
Bottom right is one of my bits and the other was a smaller piece of the same acro that you can see left of my pearl skin. The other piece was from the original massive shipment a few weeks back and was in the discounted section for $35-
The most expensive piece in the shot was $50- in case anyone is wondering and was the SSC behind the red milli branch. I paid $45- each for the two pieces i chose out of the fresh shipment.
Sorry Andrew, noticed it after I posted.
Congrats on some more stellar corals.
I may have to try the gel filters and see if I can make it take some decent shots.
Thanks buddy, you should get some filters as for the price they're good value imo.
biggles
Premium Member
The prices are too cheap for the quality, you don't get stuff that looks like this for those prices at any other LFS in aus. I'm pretty sure Dave is just doubling the price charged for the acro only and not passing on the large shipping fee - at least $10 more per acro would cover that i reckon. So instead of $45- i think $55- to $60- would have been more realistic and i would still be over the moon at coming home with what i did.
Dave was home sick today but Mark who minds the shop at these times informed me that people from Italy and other parts of the world have suddenly started requesting acros to be sent overseas and Dave can't work out why he's now getting so many requests to ship..........:reading:
NO ONE INTERSTATE IS GETTING MY ACROS LET ALONE OVERSEAS ACRO THIEVES SO STOP BOTHERING MY MATE DAVE - IT'S NOT HAPPENING NOW OR EVER !
How can you recognize ill corals?but atm you are seeing many of them without zoa and in a zeo copper poisoned look state of pigmentation for want of a better description.
Andrew if Dave doesn't ship overseas we all have to come to Melbourne and buy corals"¦.:dance:
DiscusHeckel
Acropora Gardener
Even worse (from your perspective), we may even decide to settle there. I personally would not mind that because this season's first snowfall happened last night in where I live.
nemodan
New member
So there you go, if Dave can not ship, you can !!!. You can pay your hobby by selling you to us......
I will have to pay at my LFS a piece like the 2 you got (the smaller ) at least $200 and I never saw that Acro. For the other (the big one) no less than $300 (US Dollars). But could be more because I have never seen acros at the LFS around Boston with such colors.
Definitely , you are lucky with that store and by living in Australia.
Enjoy them !!!!! And we enjoy too with your pictures and all your stories !!!
Cheers
Daniel
I will have to pay at my LFS a piece like the 2 you got (the smaller ) at least $200 and I never saw that Acro. For the other (the big one) no less than $300 (US Dollars). But could be more because I have never seen acros at the LFS around Boston with such colors.
Definitely , you are lucky with that store and by living in Australia.
Enjoy them !!!!! And we enjoy too with your pictures and all your stories !!!
Cheers
Daniel
M007
Acro Whore
Wow, 45 to 60 for acro from Aus would be outstanding. I pay 150 to 200 which is still very fair considering the shipping and potential DOAs, which on occasion can be really brutal. I picked up a nice piece of Spath yesterday and the cut end has started to regenerate after only a week. Would you glue it on that cut end or lay it down on its side?
