A Splash of Color

[markalot]

Best wishes to your mom, these things can be very stressful.

 

[reefmutt]

Good to hear things are looking better in the water and out!
Good luck, Andrew!
Your 'test' acros always kill me!

 

[tripdad]

Glad your mom is better, she has to be a tough cookie. Good luck with the reef and yes...stop it already with the "test" acros, they're just too much.

 

[troubadour11]

How is this year's Acro tree doing? Getting overtaken with colorful corals yet?

 

[biggles]

The test acro is awesooooomeeee andrew
A new acro is always a good way to test things and bump a bit your love for the tank

Hey buddy don't be sad,colors are not that bad.I know you have big expectations from yourself and your tank but even so,you will make them colourful again in no time

Have you come to a conclusion regarding what caused it(or did i miss something in the previous pages)?

Give you mom many many get well wishes:thumbsup:
I'm sure now she is under your wing she'll get much better.

Thanks Mike, i've given up trying to work out what it was that did so much harm so quickly and seemed to be gone a few days after it all began. Most of the death and destruction happened in the week following due to species differing tolerances of what ever i poisoned the water with. Some of what i considered my most delicate pieces seemed the least affected whereas all the SSC took the hit very badly and i consider that acro as easy to keep and it looks ok even when poopy.

This is one of the SSC colonies RTN'ing from the base and the green stag also going from STN to RTN - lost about 90% of the green stag that was in my little stag forest.

Thanks God your Mom is OK and I am very happy to read that your tank is recovering.

Men that test Acro is AMAZING. I also have some STN in my Aussi SSC after I upgraded the fuge. But superglue stopped it. Are all Aussie soooo delicate ? ..... LOL

Cheers
Daniel

Thanks Daniel, they're only delicate when you poison them mate........

Glad to read things are on the mend Andrew

Thanks Mike, lots of stuff has areas of STN but it all appears to have stopped and will heal over time i'm sure. Believe it or not but this little blue acro is one of my precious favorites - like i would stab you if you tried to steal it when visiting Dom............ it is the only true baby blue all over piece i've ever had that didn't turn too blue, i've had it 3 months i think and the color is well and truly set, it will look very cool when it grows up and contrasts against all the intense blue colonies i seem to have.

Touch it and the rusty chisel will come out Dom..........

Glad your Mom is doing better! When she feels a little better, take her to Dave's place and let her pick out some acro's.

Marty

She'll be back for a week in early Feb so we'll go for a drive to see Dave I ran the idea of adding four more yellow tangs to the 9ft display next year and he went quiet before giving me the 'how do i say no to this idea without upsetting him' look...... i don't think i've actually told him about Moby Dick yet as i know he'll take it better when the whale is in a bigger tank.
I'm going to tell him over the phone i think...........:twitch:

Why do your "test acros" look better than everyone else's non test acros?

All jokes aside , glad everything is ok with your mom, family comes first.
Tank will come around !

I had a good giggle when i saw that pic, thanks Arlin.

Best wishes to your mom, these things can be very stressful.

Thanks Mark.

Good to hear things are looking better in the water and out!
Good luck, Andrew!
Your 'test' acros always kill me!

Thanks buddy

Glad your mom is better, she has to be a tough cookie. Good luck with the reef and yes...stop it already with the "test" acros, they're just too much.

Thanks mate, i only bought the two test acros i showed you so you're safe.

How is this year's Acro tree doing? Getting overtaken with colorful corals yet?

Sorry Troubster but i had to cancel the tree this year due to the dramas in and out of the tank.

I cut this off about 1/4" below the tissue loss line - next morning it had started again and lost another 3/4" after the first 1" dead bit i removed. I took a cut 1.5" below the new RTN line which seems to have stopped the rot, i only did this 3 days ago so you can see how the effects on some things are still happening here and there - its like putting out the little spot fires left over after a bush fire goes through lol.

This was about to totally explode so i took it out and cut a 2" frag of safe tissue, the rest went in the bin. You can see where the first bout of RTN had stopped and algae started to grow, i posted a pic of this piece losing the flesh a few pages back. It just suddenly went downhill again when all the SSC were RTN'ing.

This closeup shows you the detail of the tips on the living branches at varying stages of tissue loss - this is what the start of RTN looks like just before you actually see the stuff that makes you really freak out - tissue shedding in large enough pieces to be visible.
If you see the tip tissue disintegrating like this AND the acro still has decent PE then it's highly likely you're in deep doo doo rather than seeing the same thing with zero PE - that's actually better to see because it will be 'tip burn' as we call it due to such things as alk spikes, too much light too quickly when raising a new piece. You raise an acro and you see that kind of tip reaction you drop it to the sand and don't give it too much flow. Many with BB have crazy fast flow along the bottom glass so it can actually stress a new piece if you don't bare that in mind. I discovered that when i was BB for a few months.

I know most of you already know all this stuff but pics of bad stuff helps those who don't do idiotic things to their reefs know what to look for when they do eventually do something stupid. I also felt rambly..........

 

[glaukos]

I'm not happy,not at all,that this happened buddy but i'm really glad you go into all this trouble of sharing it!
The most help i got/get from the internet and RC in particular,is when something bad happens-ed to my tank.
So when you share something like that or other misfortunes/mistakes,you simultaneously offer to another reefer great help:beer:
So thanks for sharing it:thumbsup:

I bet an achilles
,your tank will be back in "wow" state in no time

 

[mhucasey]

Thats brutal man, i feel for you. Hopefully things will stabilize. The thing that sucks the most about Acro troubles is that they take so long to run their course.

 

[cugly]

Well wishes for your mom bud ,

 

[sahin]

Andrew mate, I hope your mum makes full recovery. Family always come first.

With regards to the "disgusting looking corals"; they still look better than mine. :thumbsup: Hopefully the bout of STN will stop and the stunning colours will return.

Good luck to mummy Biggles and the tank.

 

[afernandez]

Ouch !! Just devastating.. Hopefully what ever got in your water will
Flush out and things start to heal and recover.

I'm sure you will wip the tank back into shape in no time .
I admire your dedication and attitude during this time .

Happy holidays !

 

[cFloor]

I hope your mom makes a full and speedy recovery. You Aussies are tough as nails, so I'm sure she will buddy

As for the tank, sorry you're having troubles. It's so frustrating when something happens to our corals and we don't know why. It makes learning that much more difficult. With your acro thumb, I have no doubt you'll reach your goals for the tank in no time.



And PS, those "test acros" let me know just one thing. You, my friend, do not play fair!

 

[Volcano1]

Andrew,
Well wishes for your Mom.
Hope all to be well.
I think the bad luck bug has bite alot of us hard this year.

 

[biggles]

I'm not happy,not at all,that this happened buddy but i'm really glad you go into all this trouble of sharing it!
The most help i got/get from the internet and RC in particular,is when something bad happens-ed to my tank.
So when you share something like that or other misfortunes/mistakes,you simultaneously offer to another reefer great help:beer:
So thanks for sharing it.

I bet an achilles
,your tank will be back in "wow" state in no time

Thanks Mike, once you get the whole how to keep acros thing under your belt like you and most of my good mates on RC have i find we all then switch to a higher interest in pest and disaster management lol. It doesn't matter how good you are at this game, sooner or later you are going to get knocked onto your arse and reminded just how close to the wind you're really sailing in regards to pushing colors to the limits.

If you think about it, keeping browned out or crappy colored acros isn't hard at all. The reason acro keeping has remained consistently hard for many to achieve is we are constantly raising the bar in regards to what an acro needs to look like for us to go ooh arrr wow. The margin for error in many of our new and popular methods is much smaller than when we just used LR and carbon and hoped for the best lol.

Thats brutal man, i feel for you. Hopefully things will stabilize. The thing that sucks the most about Acro troubles is that they take so long to run their course.

Thanks Matt, the water is spot on again as most of the acros have good PE during lights on now and the colors look brighter every day. Alk was about 190ml a day and is back to 150ml now.

My 'yellow gold' and white acro looks very green now as it recovers. The little tables idea of sulking was to turn purpley all over and lose the ink blue tips. You can see the blue highlights just beginning to return on a few tips now and the polyps are orange so i'll show you some closeups when it brightens back up. This is what i meant by being surprised at how well the newer delicate looking pieces handled whatever nuked most of my established pieces. I gotta put that ugly flubber blob around the back where i don't see it............

Well wishes for your mom bud ,

Thank you Dan

Andrew mate, I hope your mum makes full recovery. Family always come first.

With regards to the "disgusting looking corals"; they still look better than mine. :thumbsup: Hopefully the bout of STN will stop and the stunning colours will return.

Good luck to mummy Biggles and the tank.

Thanks buddy, i appreciate your kind words a great deal mate. I'm getting the acros two new 400W Radiums to replace the year old ones over the display atm. I normally replace them every six months but i got very slack this year. The T5's are all over 20 months old as well so eleven new Geisemann tubes will be replacing the ATI tubes.
I'll need to do this process over a few weeks and shorter halide times for a while due to the drastic age of the current lights.

Ouch !! Just devastating.. Hopefully what ever got in your water will
Flush out and things start to heal and recover.

I'm sure you will wip the tank back into shape in no time .
I admire your dedication and attitude during this time .

Happy holidays !

Thanks Arlin, all is well with the water now mate and the corals are doing very well. I hope you and your loved ones have a great holiday season and keep safe.

I hope your mom makes a full and speedy recovery. You Aussies are tough as nails, so I'm sure she will buddy

As for the tank, sorry you're having troubles. It's so frustrating when something happens to our corals and we don't know why. It makes learning that much more difficult. With your acro thumb, I have no doubt you'll reach your goals for the tank in no time.



And PS, those "test acros" let me know just one thing. You, my friend, do not play fair!

Thanks buddy, this is not a pic of a test acro - it's a fish pic of the yellow troll..........

Andrew,
Well wishes for your Mom.
Hope all to be well.
I think the bad luck bug has bite alot of us hard this year.

Thanks mate, i have noticed a lot of us have dramas in the last couple of months but we all keep keeping on don't we. :thumbsup:

 

[MichaelW]

Glad it sounds like things are sorted out now. Hopefully mine has 2. December must be a rough month for sps with all the stuff ppl have had.
I can't believe your test acros... Those are stunning. Show pieces more like it. I love the soft pinks and purples like that.... Of course for me those are the hardest colors to keep for some reason.

 

[DiscusHeckel]

Thanks mate, i have noticed a lot of us have dramas in the last couple of months but we all keep keeping on don't we. :thumbsup:

Yes we do. I felt your pain and salute your resilience.

 

[biggles]

Glad it sounds like things are sorted out now. Hopefully mine has 2. December must be a rough month for sps with all the stuff ppl have had.
I can't believe your test acros... Those are stunning. Show pieces more like it. I love the soft pinks and purples like that.... Of course for me those are the hardest colors to keep for some reason.

I've run potassium from 370-420 and seen no diff with pinks, i once let it drop to 350 and the pinks on the SSC were fading. In short the whole 'potassium is the magic pink parameter' idea is a load of garbage and was probably made up by Sahin years ago, it's the sorta thing he would do.
Get some Lugols and dose 1 drop per 75gal a day which is a light dose so you won't overdo anything. You should see a nice shift in all your pigments within a couple of weeks Mike :thumbsup:

Yes we do. I felt your pain and salute your resilience.

Thanks Bulent

This is my attempt to get a top down vid with the iphone and gel filter. There's no sound because i was cutting loose big time with the expletives at Moby........:deadhorse1:

<iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yU2klN6gcH0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


The forecast high is 108 today so i'm bunkering in with the acros and the aircon all day. That means TOP DOWN PORN SATURDAY !!!!!!!!!

 

[markalot]

Oooo, those are looking good! Cute fish.

 

[bibarassa]

Hi Andrew, I hope things are going well from now to on"¦.and glad to hear your mummy is doing better...:wavehand:

 

[MichaelW]

I have never tested potassium so have no idea of my level, but I change water weekly and I'm sure there is some in the fauna marin balling light trace element stuff and you say you hadn't noticed much difference unless it's really low.
After my stn I have stopped dosing all other stuff outside the balling lite. I was using sponge power, acro power, and fauna marin color elements (but hadn't been using long) I was wondering if it all contributed to stn so I'm hesitant to add other stuff. Is lugols likely to be in other trace elemt things I have been dosing? Do you mean the Kent lugols stuff or the not meant for aquarium stuff?
Do you dose?

 

[sahin]

Wow, the one on the left looks awesome!!! :beer:

Nice video too. Watch it on YT soon as it went online.

PS why is there a "Matt" video? That mad me laugh so much!!! :lol: Hahaha