A Splash of Color

I was going to suggest those. I lean toward building wall around your house, like the Vatican did. Or, go to Wrangy, explain to him that your going to make SPS Keeping Great again. Show him the piece and let him know that it has a Huge potential, but your not positive where the coral comes from. You need to use Extreme vetting to properly find out where this coral is from. Which could take awhile. When properly vetted, you will be more than happy to release the piece to him.

Marty




No Marty, we can't shoot, invade or nuke him mate............ or build a bloody wall around him........:uhoh3:
 
Ahh, now I see it. Thanks for that :beer:

No worries buddy :)

I like it...biggles acro humour.

How's it going Kevin :)


Wouldn't it be cool if what you see in that pic was something close to what the real colors will be Ryan......... be so much easier lol. :rollface:

Ok Andrew, let's see how good you are. What color is this guy turning into?
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It's this, it's a SSC variant and you will see faint green return in low shaded areas after a few months. I ignore that particular acro color variant nowdays because i tried 3 or 4 and they all end up like red SSC without the green obvious.

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I was going to suggest those. I lean toward building wall around your house, like the Vatican did. Or, go to Wrangy, explain to him that your going to make SPS Keeping Great again. Show him the piece and let him know that it has a Huge potential, but your not positive where the coral comes from. You need to use Extreme vetting to properly find out where this coral is from. Which could take awhile. When properly vetted, you will be more than happy to release the piece to him.

Marty

Dom knows all my acros come from Christian.............. like everyone in the bloody world knows that Marty............

' You can't have it until i know where it came from Dom '

' You got it from Christian in Cairns '

' Thanks for nothing Marty '

' Who's Marty ? '

' He's the bastard that just cost me that frag Dom....... '


Do you see now Marty............
 
Domshop will be operating from 10:30am till probably 2pm when I decide I should go home :lol:

Prepare to have your minds blown by all the green pieces I'm going to buy!
 
I just sent Dave a text putting all the acros with no green on hold.........

' I'm still in bed....... '

What kind of reply is that - very un-bloody professional way to answer a customers text if you ask me.......... :hammer:

I'm going to work now - because i'm not lying in bed bludging like a certain LFS owner...........
 
I just sent Dave a text putting all the acros with no green on hold.........

' I'm still in bed....... '

What kind of reply is that - very un-bloody professional way to answer a customers text if you ask me.......... :hammer:

I'm going to work now - because i'm not lying in bed bludging like a certain LFS owner...........

:love1: precious :fish1:
 
Dave opens the shop at 10.30am on a Friday. At 10.43am whilst pretending to work hard i received this text...........

' That's one piece chosen lol '

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Mister ' i got five ' can tell you all about his little visit to Deer Park aquarium today on his stinking journal - ' The Stolen Acro Shallows '

You stole my acros Dom............ and Dave helped you do it......... :mad2:
 
It's this, it's a SSC variant and you will see faint green return in low shaded areas after a few months. I ignore that particular acro color variant nowdays because i tried 3 or 4 and they all end up like red SSC without the green obvious.

You're pretty good Andrew! It IS turning green! I didn't want to buy it either, but the LFS "special ordered" me a wild Aussie blue Echinata, and this one showed up. I felt like I had to buy it. At least he cut in half, so I only had to buy half. :lol: Everything turns green in my tank, but I was pretty sure this one wouldn't. DAMMIT.

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You're pretty good Andrew! It IS turning green! I didn't want to buy it either, but the LFS "special ordered" me a wild Aussie blue Echinata, and this one showed up. I felt like I had to buy it. At least he cut in half, so I only had to buy half. :lol: Everything turns green in my tank, but I was pretty sure this one wouldn't. DAMMIT.

Lol everything 'yellow' turns green in my tank too Mindy, it's just nutrient levels we keep. Stuffed if i can see how any idiot would ship that under the name echinata but i would do the same as you if i ordered something and my LFS guy wasn't to blame for what turned up - good on you :)

In reality Dave would tell me it didn't turn up and he'd wear the cost if no one else bought it - that's why i never ask him to ask Christian for anything in particular even though he always asks me what i really want...... it's my regular battle to stop Dave doing nice things for me....... and yes i know it's a weird situation but it is what it is :spin1:

Pigment ramble........

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The polyps in your pic told me you had a green/pink/red/white color variant no matter what the colors looked like at the time. The long central white polyp stays glowing white on SCC and it is what gives the actual polyps the bright pop characteristic of this color combo. The outer rosette of much shorter polyps is white and brown banded - white center, pale brown mid polyp 'petal' and then back to white at the ends. This rosette part of the polyp structure will turn pink/red but the long center polyp will stay white. Only the axial tips remain all white and glowy.

The 'after' pic of one of my failed attempts to keep a white and pink acro - there are green hints down low in the dark......... green likes the dark because it's an evil pigment..........:reading:

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Those polyps in combination with ANY pink highlight as in Mindy's pic tells you that the acro is green/pink/red tissue and the polyps will be very bright. It doesn't matter if you are looking at bone white all over with delicious pastel pink highlights - it is a SSC color variant. I'm not saying it can't do something crazy as a one off but if you are looking to avoid that particular common color group then those polyps are your 'don't touch' easy to spot giveaway. To maintain the pastel pigments you see in the pic requires forcing the acro to keep the stressed out low zoa count it has due to shipping etc. That piece would do exactly what it did for you if i had bought it :beer:


I was talking to Ken and asked him how my frags were going after many months under his silly DIY LED giggle lights. I had given him a piece of my blue tennuis which has baby blue branches with dark blue polyps. The branch tips get bluer as you get closer to the axial tips and when growing the tips are ink blue rather than pale as in most growing tips. It's not your run of the mill blue tennuis, had it about 3 years now and it came over from the 65gal.
I made a big frag for you today Domster in case you lost your piece to space worms :beer:

I was quite blown away tbh when i saw had identical pigments to the ones it shows under my Radiums which are real lights obviously. Ken must be using witchcraft or something because we all know LED's don't work........

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While my mate has been away on holidays with his lady, their dog Mannie has been living with me under much bluer lighting than he's accustomed to lol......

Radium pooch waking from a nap - on his queen sized doona cover that i have to put on one end of the couch because i was told he 'needs it to sleep'..........

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Lol everything 'yellow' turns green in my tank too Mindy, it's just nutrient levels we keep. Stuffed if i can see how any idiot would ship that under the name echinata but i would do the same as you if i ordered something and my LFS guy wasn't to blame for what turned up - good on you :)

I didn't want another pink/red Acro, and I'm pretty sure it's a Spath, and I don't like Spaths either. Oh well. I'll color it up and send it back for him to re-sell. He doesn't have an Acro-friendly setup, so they just brown out there. Cultured frags aren't too bad, but anything wild or maricultured is an issue. I'll keep trying for a blue Echinata. :lol:

That pooch is quite the looker! He's pretty cute! Is he well behaved?
 
I didn't want another pink/red Acro, and I'm pretty sure it's a Spath, and I don't like Spaths either. Oh well. I'll color it up and send it back for him to re-sell. He doesn't have an Acro-friendly setup, so they just brown out there. Cultured frags aren't too bad, but anything wild or maricultured is an issue. I'll keep trying for a blue Echinata. :lol:

That pooch is quite the looker! He's pretty cute! Is he well behaved?

You won't have a prob getting that piece looking its best for another reefer to buy Mindy :)

I think many people make the mistake of treating spath like chunky milli. Spath color up best in much lower light than milli and their multi colored pigments are best revealed when you orient the piece so it grows towards the viewing glass. Milli's on the other hand always reveal much more of their beautiful colored scale like corallite lips if you have them growing away from your viewing window. When i say away and forwards i don't mean they have to be dead straight, i just mean you will see more colored tissue that is ALWAYS on the acro if you place them in a general sweeping arc one way or another. Sideways left or right will always give you a decent view of the pigments so that's generally a good place to start if you're unsure.

The best thing to do if you get a new wild or mari piece is sit it on a bit of pipe on the sand and turn it all different directions whilst checking out which way looks best to your eye for showing the most amount of visible pigment color on the piece. When you decide what looks best move it to a place on the sand where the flow direction is also friendly - a delicate little pastelled out table branch will thin and lose tip tissue overnight if you have the flow blowing head on - always turn them so the flow is following their growth for the first few days so they don't freak out on you. You won't see any PE even at night which will be a giveaway.
Anyway, it doesn't matter that the polyps are in while you're moving the piece around as it makes no difference to the outcome unless you have ugly polyps in which case it's a dog in any direction........

When you then find a spot just right you discover the flow is opposite to what the acro likes.......... welcome to the joys of acro scaping with branches - small frags will adapt to flow but branch ends snapped off the end of a twenty year old delicate table will most definitely spit the dummy if you upset them with bad flow when they're already upset about collection and transport ..........

I'm sure you'll get a nice echi branch sooner or later Mindy, i love echi's :thumbsup:

I think i'll have an echi ramble shortly because there's a lot more color variants out there than bloody icefire and while we're at it there is real icefire and then there's overexposed pic icefire which most have. In general there are four blue echi color variants i have seen over the years, might be more but these are what i've personally come across.

Classic icefire blue/white we all know
Light pastel blues with deeper pastel blue tips
Deep blue skin with intensely ink blue tips
All deep solid blue with fluoro polyps

The first three i can tell you exactly how to pick from each other even when pale and washed out. The fourth is down to pure arse and you get to see it if you come and visit me in person - my close inner circle of acro friends all have special pieces that we only share among each other and never show online. It's like acro fight club and the rarer or more one off the piece is, the better :thumbsup:

John is coming by Friday night to conduct some acro fight club business - only dusk lighting is permitted when trading fight club frags....... i will get in trouble for talking about it as much as i have off John so i'm not talking about it again.......... i actually made it all up......... i have no hidden pieces.......

............these are not the acros you're looking for........... :strooper:


Mannie spends all day with my mate and i working, if it's hot we leave the ute running with the aircon going and Mannie sleeps on the seat while we sweat........ yesterday i opened the ute door and said come on out for a while. He jumped down and did a wee on the bush at the rear of the ute and then walked around to the front where i was and just stared at me. I said ' what ? ' and he simply walked to the ute door and waited for me to come open it so he could get back in out of the heat. I then had to tell him to move off the drivers seat so i could get in to start the motor again for his aircon. I felt a bit used after that but we treat him like a small child tbh lol.
He's part kelpy so insane about fetching things. He drops stuff at your feet and stares at you with this insanely intense ' PICK IT UP AND THROW ITTTTTTTTTT !!!!!!!!!! ' look....... i constantly yell at him ' stop that bloody staring Mannie, i'm not a #$#@$# sheep ! '

When mom was visiting last year she thought it was cute how Mannie constantly liked to be so close to her at times when she took him for a walk that he was rubbing against her leg whilst walking. After i explained to her that Mannie was in fact treating her like a sheep and herding her in the direction he wanted her to go on their walk she didn't think it was so cute lol. When i asked her how it felt to be a sheep she reminded me i was talking to my mother........... her never ending ace in the hole comment........:deadhorse1:

I finally have 2 days off now as Mannie's pack leader came home tonight :celeb1: I will tell you why my nitrates test at 40 and phos is 0.06 suddenly due to me removing almost a third of the bio filtration in one day - pure biggles stupidity yet again........... the stuff i keep putting my acros through is why they never grow lol........:hmm4:

My sump is a disaster but i'll do a video of that so you can see exactly what i mean. I'm waiting for a bucket of red sea blue to arrive so i can take all the matrix out and wash it along with draining the sump. The display water actually smells 'green' - ever so slightly swampy or rotten sea weedy.... i have it under control i think but a few frags in the sump RTN'd which is what made me realise something was up about a week ago. They RTN'd as soon as the lights came on the morning after i swished around a bed of matrix and smelled sulphur - everything shut down and i killed the lights down to dusk only all day but the poison was in the water.
I did this right after removing all the LR in the sump - about 1/3 system total i now realise and the 1" sand bed which was about 1/4 of the system sand.

None of the matrix will be doing much at all to reduce nutrients as it's blocked with algae and filth and alive with worms. Then i drastically removed a large amount of bio surface media that was actually helping with nitrates especially and put a lot of filth in the water while i did it. I've been nursing the acros through the crazy high level nitrates until i get my hands on salt for many planned water changes.

The glass is green a few hours after cleaning and the sand has cyano and or algae on it for the first time in years......... but the acros aren't dying :)
 
Before you go off at me about acro fight club btw John just know this mate.

Ken sent me a pic of his fight club rosaria the other day despite the strict ' no pic ' rule you yourself entered into the club charter.

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That's way worse than what i did because now it's all over the internet thanks to bloody Ken starting the piccy snowball that culminated in a fight club acro being seen........

And before you try the whole ' you bastard Andrew ' thing Ken, you brought this on yourself mate - YOU took the pic, not bloody me Ken. It's not dobbing either - fight club is bigger than any one individual and i'd expect you to do the same thing if i was stupid enough to trust another member with proof of a clear breach of a serious AFC rule.........

Anyway, i'll be sure to speak up on your behalf when John and I discuss your punishment Friday night.......... as i'm also the star witness i doubt anything i say is going to help you tbh Ken, i sing like a canary under cross examination........ :smokin:

What i did was nothing........... :)
 
Biggles, has this situation been resolved yet? Also Dom hasn't posted for two weeks. Do you have anything to do with this?

Marty


I just remembered how i acquired the acro in question.............. you guys really need to put your thinking hats on if i'm going to get out of this tricky situation. :(
 
Biggles, has this situation been resolved yet? Also Dom hasn't posted for two weeks. Do you have anything to do with this?

Marty

I made another frag for Dom so that's sorted Marty :wave:

OH!, and the five blue frags Dave was holding for you.

Marty

I actually spent 3 hours hanging with Dave and Mark at the shop today. Dave always takes me for a walk around the fish tanks in case i spot something crazy pretty - there is always a reason i can't have anything i like :(
Today he said no for the third time on the blueface angel - i always ask even though i know they eat acros just in case.......... i mean have you seen a blueface angel up close.......... just too pretty for words - typical.

Anyway i hate wrasse as everyone knows but today i saw some that i had to ask about as i want to get more fish and they were sooooooooo pretty. Dave had two male Lineatus Fairy Wrasse (Cirrhilabrus lineatus) that were about 4" long and both displaying their colors even though in different tanks, i started rethinking my no wrasse policy immediately....:reading:
After he told me i could actually have one if i wanted, i was getting that happy ' i'm getting a new fish ' feeling - you know what i mean :)...... Dave says, ' i like these guys more personally ' and pointed to a wrasse i hadn't seen further down the tank row.

All i said was ' OOOOOOOOOO............MMMMMMMMMMM...........GGGGGGGG Dave..... can i have that whatever it is ? '

' It's a Labouti wrasse and yes you can, they can jump like the lineatus but it won't spit sand on your acros ' followed by a smile.

You had me at won't spit sand on my acros Dave.......... :)

So i came home with a three inch male Labout's Fairy Wrasse (Cirrhilabrus laboutei)

He's asleep in the scolly patch right now so hopefully i won't find him on the floor in the morning. The clowns chase him away anytime he tries to hang out up near the top of the display under the braces so that won't hurt.

Dave's $2000- alk monitoring dosing machine has kept the alk at 8 for weeks and all the acros are growing after being in the shop for weeks. Even though i could never afford equipment like that i saw with my own eyes today the dramatic difference it has made to Dave's ability to NOT lose money on browned out or rtn'ing acros from his constant battle to keep the shop tank stable, good stuff Dave :beer:
 
Hi Andrew,

I hope you are well.

How is your zinc dosing going? I temporarily halted my zinc experiment, which I started on 24th January, yesterday after noticing some dullness and lightning of colouration on some of my corals. I want to see if it is due to zinc dosing or due to interference from other "things".

Regards

Bülent
 
Very nice new addition Andrew , I love Labouti wrasses.

Thanks Jess, i'm not good with fish so fingers crossed.

Hi Andrew,

I hope you are well.

How is your zinc dosing going? I temporarily halted my zinc experiment, which I started on 24th January, yesterday after noticing some dullness and lightning of colouration on some of my corals. I want to see if it is due to zinc dosing or due to interference from other "things".

Regards

Bülent

Hi Bulent,

I'm just doing water changes and dosing lugols with some koral color atm mate but when i used the zinc the tank was in a mess anyway so i can't really give a decent opinion on it's visual effects. I doubt i will use it again so i think you should just stop and watch for the next two weeks. Do a couple of water changes as well and evaluate colors as you should know by then with no other changes.

Going to bed but before i go i thought i'd leave you something to ponder and it might be interesting to see what takes peoples fancy and why. There are eight acros to choose from and you can only take one home from Dave's today. I actually bought one of the eight which is why you only get to choose a single piece as well. They are $45- and i'm not bagging them up for you ! :p

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Remember ONE only !
 
Thanks Jess, i'm not good with fish so fingers crossed.



Hi Bulent,

I'm just doing water changes and dosing lugols with some koral color atm mate but when i used the zinc the tank was in a mess anyway so i can't really give a decent opinion on it's visual effects. I doubt i will use it again so i think you should just stop and watch for the next two weeks. Do a couple of water changes as well and evaluate colors as you should know by then with no other changes.

Going to bed but before i go i thought i'd leave you something to ponder and it might be interesting to see what takes peoples fancy and why. There are eight acros to choose from and you can only take one home from Dave's today. I actually bought one of the eight which is why you only get to choose a single piece as well. They are $45- and i'm not bagging them up for you ! [emoji14]

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Remember ONE only !
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[emoji16]
 
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