A Splash of Color

[biggles]

Thanks Flo, it is pretty unusual lol.

Those SPS should come with a warning. I see them, look at my own, take another look at yours and then suffer a bout of depression.

Simply stunning Andrew.

Thanks a lot Rich.

The actinics would be if I went with a ReefLux 10K or Ushio 10K to add strong blue and violet color. Why did everyone stop using them? I've been out of the hobby some years and they seem to have vanished. And do they look bad with the Radiums or just too blue? With a 20K I'd probably run Coral+ and Lagoon Blue like you suggested, I like a really white look.

Hi mate, the blue plus/actinic plus type bulbs have all the spectrum needed to add 'pop' to pigments - with good PAR. If you run 10-12K try blue plus with it. With radiums try the coral plus/lagoon blue if you want to whiten the look a bit. I think having a mix of just those two spectrum bulbs on hand to mix and match will be all you need buddy.

Biggles how do you gauge spacing for you corals? I often see corals spaced far apart to allow for maximum growth without war, but your placement is much tighter.

Reef keeping is life!

I place acros closer together than you should tbh, i'm not a good example to follow really. I think 3-4" spacing is a good general room if you were laying out frags on a new scape. Have a look at Nils new frag placement, i reckon he's got it spot on.
I have at least ten acros touching and fighting at the base but i keep an eye on things and take remedial action if i really have to.

Please send me a frag of the blue, the pink, and the purple.

Is that all.........

Now that is what I call blue, like totally, trippy, freaking badass blue!
That is the bombdiggity Andrew!!!

Thanks Perry, she's a beaut isn't she mate

Now that is some proper filth...you dog

Some has to do it mate......

You're a dirty, dirty man:lol:

Lol, says the man running a porn generator display........

Your corals are so beautiful and the best part is that their colors are well-kept and very intense! I'm a fan of maricultured and wild corals but my corals always lose color intensity after a couple of weeks. The intense blue & purple will go away and become pastel and beige; sometimes blue Aussie ones turn pink. The red and pink colors usually get pastel and become light brown. I don't really understand why. My tank is fallow and I have just started to dose potassium nitrate hoping to increase nitrate to 5ppm. Did you ever have corals paling slowly? What do you do to keep the rich color? Thanks!

Hi mate, what alk, calc and salinity etc do you keep your water at ?

Andrew,
Why did you buy lithium? I can't find a use for it as it is a impurities in calcium chloride. Probably more than you would want.
Please enlighten me on what that do.

I only bought it because it is one of the four listed ingredients of koral color. It may do nothing on it's own but it may interact with one or more of the others to do something...... you just never know.........

great to catch up last night Andrew and hope those frags do well for you. Tank is looking fantastic mate, inspiring really

Hey John

I had a great time hanging out with a fellow SPS freak and talking about secret acro stuff.......

I can't thank you enough for the stunning little gems you brought me mate. They're all beautiful and have good PE already :thumbsup:

Here are two of the acros John gave me yesterday, i mounted everything on a new frag rock with super glue gel. The cherry blossom frag got a shock losing his place on the perimeter brace shelf, caught the green acro up to no good with the acro eating fungia..........

 

[Ostri]

Hi mate, what alk, calc and salinity etc do you keep your water at ?

My alk is 8, swung frequently until doser installed recently. Ca is 420 relatively stable. Salinity is 1.026. I did have alk going from 6.5 to 8.5 frequently when I wasn't dosing for the new tank. It took me 2 - 3 months until I added the doser. In another setup where I had doser and a stable alk but my corals still went pale and after a while some will get the colors back and then after a few weeks they would go pale again. It's like a circulation of fading & gaining color. I did have fallow tanks most of the time. I run a biopellet reactor with 1/4 recommended volume of biopellets. Most of corals don't bleach but they just lose the intensity of their pigments.

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[slin1977]

Hi Andrew
With regard to this article ,
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-04/rhf/feature/index.htm
Any thoughts as to incorporate using Humic or Fulvic acids into the dosing scheme.
I know I would be interested in trying at least a drop or two. http://www.spraygro.com.au/Products/FulvicAcid-5.php
http://www.nutri-tech.com.au/humates

 

[biggles]

Oh what those racks would look like in my tank..........

They're starving mate, plain and simple. Nothing wrong with your parameters but you MUST keep the alk stable - sort of does not cut it.

Keeping nutrient levels at low levels is not the main point and it's missed by a lot of guys. It is the volume of food/nutrients you can cycle through the water daily WHILST keeping those low levels of phos and nitrates we run that feeds that acros and gives them what they need to produce the colors you want.

Are you using anything such as aminos etc or nothing at all.

 

[biggles]

Hi Andrew
With regard to this article ,
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-04/rhf/feature/index.htm
Any thoughts as to incorporate using Humic or Fulvic acids into the dosing scheme.
I know I would be interested in trying at least a drop or two. http://www.spraygro.com.au/Products/FulvicAcid-5.php
http://www.nutri-tech.com.au/humates

Hey Nils, for all we know the crap rotting every day from the huge amounts of food we try to push throu is producing those very things. No idea but i am going slowly with the dosing for now and seeing how things react.

 

[biggles]

Three weeks ago i dug this out from under the stags in low light where i stupidly placed it. It's just beginning to color up and is very dark pigmented atm. I'm pretty certain that when i bought it about 6 months back it was purple with purple polyps and blue tips so i have high hopes for it once it gets some sun.

It's next to the porny blue thing.......

 

[Ostri]

Oh what those racks would look like in my tank..........

They're starving mate, plain and simple. Nothing wrong with your parameters but you MUST keep the alk stable - sort of does not cut it.

Keeping nutrient levels at low levels is not the main point and it's missed by a lot of guys. It is the volume of food/nutrients you can cycle through the water daily WHILST keeping those low levels of phos and nitrates we run that feeds that acros and gives them what they need to produce the colors you want.

Are you using anything such as aminos etc or nothing at all.

Thanks! I'm using KZ amino acid, Pohl's Extra, and Coral Vitalizer. They seemed to keep some coral's colors and they got a green-ish pop. But red still went away so did most of blues. I've also started to dose potassium nitrate to increase nitrate to 5ppm. It's so hard to keep nutrients up when doing a fallow for disease control. There was green hair algae and then they lose the greenness and now dino started to grow.

 

[biggles]

Thanks! I'm using KZ amino acid, Pohl's Extra, and Coral Vitalizer. They seemed to keep some coral's colors and they got a green-ish pop. But red still went away so did most of blues. I've also started to dose potassium nitrate to increase nitrate to 5ppm. It's so hard to keep nutrients up when doing a fallow for disease control. There was green hair algae and then they lose the greenness and now dino started to grow.

Now here is the point i am trying to make my friend, you are making the whole thing way more complicated and prone to imbalance than needed.
I would urge you to throw a school of lyretails or chromis etc in the tank and just feed them three times a day and stop all other dosing of aminos etc - nothing. Make sure at least one cube of mysis goes in every day, i feed 3 at the moment.

If you have to run fallow start doing 20% water changes with good salt every weekend and stop all the other feedings to the tank except some nori which is soaked and mushed as fine as possible. Do it after lights out and get heaps more snails. Turn off the pellet reactor and fill it with matrix.

Simple, simple........ when you take away any dosing and additives we add lately messing around with pigments you will see that most guys are just using a skimmer, carbon and bacteria hosting media.
That's the bit you copy FIRST and then you start messing around with all the potions.
As John said when he was here, i could have a tank like mine even if i stopped everything except fish food and he's right. I hope you take my suggestions the right way matey, i can see a stunning collection in your pics and it's a shame you're not seeing the colors hiding away.

Less intense light is advisable when they are so pale, they have little protection from the light so i would give them about 75% intensity of what they get now. I've done what you have years ago and then tried forcing them to color up with more light which made things worse.........

You'll have color if you listen to all the guys around here, we're all starting to get a pretty good grip on what it takes to see success and i think a whole lot more guys like you are going to see cool colors. There's no excuse knowing what we know now days.........

A different perspective........ still porn........

I have had a table for over a year now that has been grey and sulking i think due to too much flow and too little light. I've gone out of my way to not show it because it looked like such a dog.
It had no PE at all in the middle area day or night for the last six months and bugger all on the edges at night only. Every few months it would show signs of life at the tips but a few weeks later they were dull again.
In the last 4 weeks or so it has sprung to life and started growing at the tips and encrusting faster at the base. I did move the rock it is on so it gets more radium light and softened the flow in the whole tank when i started using the gyre. Whatever the cause i wanted to show you guys the dramatic difference in color it has atm. It will end up just like the table above once the older section colors back up over the next few months hopefully. Older pieces can take ages to regain pigment even though lots of new growth is brightly colored. You just have to be patient unfortunately.

Check out the brightness of the base and tips and imagine the entire thing that color.......... :thumbsup:

 

[Chibils]

I'm convinced this is the best thread on RC mate. Regular heaps of porn, high level discussion with the wizards of the secret acro masters club, and Andrew personally replying to the multitude of questions.

You've given me more specific and direct help on your own build thread than I've been able to get off the rest of this forum and I thank you for that.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

 

[biggles]

I'm convinced this is the best thread on RC mate. Regular heaps of porn, high level discussion with the wizards of the secret acro masters club, and Andrew personally replying to the multitude of questions.

You've given me more specific and direct help on your own build thread than I've been able to get off the rest of this forum and I thank you for that.

Thanks a lot buddy, i'm glad you get some entertainment and info out of my journal


Remember the very pale piece top right in the pic back in March

It's barely growing at the tips but coloring up well. Even John noticed how good the PE is on everything now.

 

[Myka]

Dang Andrew that intense blue tabler is the BOMB! Any idea what species it is? I don't recognize it. That red one you got for $35 is just mean...

 

[mhucasey]

Thanks a lot buddy, i'm glad you get some entertainment and info out of my journal


Remember the very pale piece top right in the pic back in March

It's barely growing at the tips but coloring up well. Even John noticed how good the PE is on everything now.

So scrumptious! I love seeing what you do with the wild acros, and of course I love the pin-up pics of your beauties:inlove:

 

[Ostri]

That's wonderful Andrew thanks so much for the suggestions! I'll definitely listen to them and start implementing them. Once after fallow period is over I'll move the fish back. I'll keep you updated. Thank you again and your corals' colors are probably the best I've seen. Love that blue!

 

[joshky]

Just caught up on your acro porn.

I'm not looking anymore. :facepalm:

:lol:

 

[j_mazzy]

Is that all? I could ask for more but I wanted to leave some for the brothers of the reef.

Seriously though, if you do decide to frag please remember me and tell me what it will cost. Thank you.

 

[Wrangy]

I go away for two weeks and you pull out all the stops! Maybe I should go away more :lolspin:

Seriously just amazing Andrew, it gets better and better every time I see the tank and the acro's doing so well Good to see John brought you some nice goodies too! lol

 

[reefmutt]

Man oh man, Andrew.. I'm still breathing heavy from the last few pages..
Just crazy- as per usual. That blue tabler is just unreal.
Where's your general n and p these days?
Your corals aren't growing because they are too busy busting all the colors of the rainbow!!
I swear they are using all their energy producing pigments, they have nothing left for growth.
You are the acro porn master..... I bow to the porn master!!!!!


Hurt me again, porn master....

 

[markalot]

Loved all the new pics. That blue one is the poster child for why we grow acros!

 

[M007]

Hey Andrew, if you wanted to replicate the visual light output of a Raium lit tank with T5 and had 10 T5 tubes in one fixture, what tubes would you choose?

 

[slavetonet]

Andrew,
All those secret potion he is dosing LOOL
get some growth on those bad boys as well so I can get a frag from you.
Adelaide to Brisbane isn't that far to ship over.