maxxII
Super Housemonkey!
Maybe if Andrew wasnt so busy abusing Kevin, he'd have some back up.
A Splash of Color
- Thread starter biggles
- Start date
Maybe if Andrew wasnt so busy abusing Kevin, he'd have some back up.
reefmutt
Active member
Nice!
Barry White.. Andrew all duct taped up... Acro thieves, a koala and a chicken...
Where am I?????
Oh yeah, the 'splash of color' thread from Oz.
A Reddish-Orange with green/teal polyps and Army Green base? That's pretty sweet looking.
Thanks again for the tips on picking out the bleached & brown gems from the green dogs Andrew. When aussie colonies are shipped halfway around the world they're either bleached and ****ed off or poop brown and ****ed off. I've got a better idea which ones have that heart of gold though!
And Micro E should be here tomorrow. Can't wait to see what my mystery turd with the red polyps turns out to be lol..
Thanks again for the tips on picking out the bleached & brown gems from the green dogs Andrew. When aussie colonies are shipped halfway around the world they're either bleached and ****ed off or poop brown and ****ed off. I've got a better idea which ones have that heart of gold though!
And Micro E should be here tomorrow. Can't wait to see what my mystery turd with the red polyps turns out to be lol..
biggles
Premium Member
Thanks guys, i've had A.vermiculata before and it's definitely not that one.
Just to the left of that piece is where i moved my favorite spath to about two weeks ago so it got better flow, light and most importantly better exposure to my eyes !
Ken's piece sits between the two and is my little princess - she's very pretty in real life :love1:
What that acro looks like growing under the sun - i pinched one of Chris' photos...... i think it's a joke if you send any of those overseas btw Chris.......... a #$@ joke ! :hammer:
Just to the left of that piece is where i moved my favorite spath to about two weeks ago so it got better flow, light and most importantly better exposure to my eyes !
Ken's piece sits between the two and is my little princess - she's very pretty in real life :love1:
What that acro looks like growing under the sun - i pinched one of Chris' photos...... i think it's a joke if you send any of those overseas btw Chris.......... a #$@ joke ! :hammer:
biggles
Premium Member
Holy crap Andrew! I wouldn't even guess it to be the same coral! Even the growth pattern is significantly different. Thanks for posting!
The growth on mine is thicker than when i bought it due to the slow growth where the tips thicken slowly rather than extend in the classic shooting tip look. If you look at the last pic from front on you can see the tips starting to 'shoot' and as such they are thinner than back further into the colony where the original tips have been pretty much sitting blue and stagnant for many months.
These tips are the same diameter as the ones you see on the original piece and if you look closely you can see a violet tinge rather than pure blue on the new tips, i think the entire thing will return to a violet blue color when all the visible tips are growing. I think it's so crazy blue because it's been stagnant.
I've been chatting with Tim via PM about some of the things i look for in wild collected acros that results in me ending up with so many nice pieces. Not everything looks like fresh Christian collected pieces and over many years i've seen thousands of pieces and tried hundreds of colors and species so i have a very good idea of what most pigments will do in my systems. I always run 400W radiums with fluoro supplements and pretty simple water keeping techniques so i can rely on previous experience when i look at a batch of poopy acros.
Soooooooo, at the risk of sounding like a knowitall smart arse i will be having the odd ramble about a few things that will significantly increase your hit ratio when it comes to rolling the dice on wild Aus acros.
A. prostrata - A. millepora
These two acros look similar growth wise and the pigments are identical looking when you see them side by side in a tank. By pigments i mean the color of the polyps and skin tissue. It's only the longer whispier looking extended branch tips on the prostrata that gives it away. The prostrata will also shoot new tips in weird clumps on branch sides much like spath are known for.
If this piece had been A. millepora i would most likely have passed on it when i checked it out in person. If this was a milli and the polyps were red like they are and the lower branch skin tissue was yellowish as in the pic Dave took that is a good rep of what it looked like - it is 100% what you guys often keep but i can't remember the name of. The red tip with green base that most of you include on your must have acro list. What's it called...... Sahin has a cool one...... the dark reddish colored polyps are seen on red millis - electric pink milli's have white polyps when seen fresh from the ocean or in good condition - little tip
Anyway i don't much like most classic 'reds' and go for pink pigments always because i love 'em
I ignore milli branches almost every visit to Deer Park aquarium that look almost identical to the acro pictured.
Because it was actually a prostrata and from trial and error i know that the pigment colors on prostrata's react very differently to those i used to think were the same on milli's i was pleased as punch to get my hands on what Dave described as a pink tip yellow milli from memory.
A. prostrata are basically like spathulata, they both seem to have much more exotic and eye catching colors AFTER acclimating to our blue lighting and water. By that i mean when i saw those red polyps and what i thought would be some kind of green lower down on a prostrata i thought it was an unusual pattern for a prostrata. Most are green dogs......
You may wonder why i have a hairy brown frag top right in that last spath pic among all those other yummy colored pieces. It's a frag of the piece above that browned out in the sump frag tank. The main piece was moved about two weeks ago in the display when i discovered it was pointing the wrong way for best color viewing. There is a right and wrong way on just about every acro species for maximising the visible pigments seen front on viewing wise.
It was pointing about 45 degrees to the back, a bit like in the pic above at the back of the left island. After cleaning the back glass properly a couple of weeks ago i realised i could see twice as many colored corallite lips when the acro was oriented towards the viewing glass rather than away from it.
It's a bit poopy and browned from the 180 turn and different flow but 'Biggles Bonfire' is going to be a very one off colored piece under our conditions - a winner if you want to put it that way. In my opinion anyway, it is a very unusual pigment color in my experience. Nothing like a red milli and not classic pink either.
A few years ago i walked into Williamstown aquarium and nearly wet myself when i spotted a purple with blue polyps prostrata. I think it was $70- which is pricey for me but i would have dropped $200- if that's what it took. I killed it during a salinity debacle a couple of years ago but i have a little video of it i think i took with an iphone 4 that is a bit bright and i took a still from it and removed a lot of the blue hue to the pic.
When you see a nice colored prostrata it;s the same as seeing a rainbow colored jaw dropping milli - take the chance and buy it. I will never come across another one of these, this was a once a lifetime score
The #$@%! yellow tang suddenly decided to eat all my red dragon weed one day :mad2:
So that's my idea of trying to help some of you who haven't yet wasted the thousands of dollars i have discovering this stuff already. If it's coming across as 'biggles is up himself' i don't mean it, i just open the brain gate and let the inners flow out onto the keyboard un edited........:twitch:
If i didn't have a lisp that i'm self conscious of you have no idea how many rip roaring youtube videos you'd be subjected to detailing the nitty gritty of what makes acro porn in my opinion lol. Wouldn't be like those stuffy how to vids by the big guys, think like that tv show - cops unrated. Now swap the crims for acros and i'm driving the reef patrol car with all the disco gear on in hot pursuit .........
milsaltnewbie07
New member
Wow your corals keep getting better and better Andrew. You should start shipping frags and selling them in the US . Im sure you will be Ritch in no time lol.
. Im sure you will be Ritch in no time lol.The growth on mine is thicker than when i bought it due to the slow growth where the tips thicken slowly rather than extend in the classic shooting tip look. If you look at the last pic from front on you can see the tips starting to 'shoot' and as such they are thinner than back further into the colony where the original tips have been pretty much sitting blue and stagnant for many months.
These tips are the same diameter as the ones you see on the original piece and if you look closely you can see a violet tinge rather than pure blue on the new tips, i think the entire thing will return to a violet blue color when all the visible tips are growing. I think it's so crazy blue because it's been stagnant.
I've been chatting with Tim via PM about some of the things i look for in wild collected acros that results in me ending up with so many nice pieces. Not everything looks like fresh Christian collected pieces and over many years i've seen thousands of pieces and tried hundreds of colors and species so i have a very good idea of what most pigments will do in my systems. I always run 400W radiums with fluoro supplements and pretty simple water keeping techniques so i can rely on previous experience when i look at a batch of poopy acros.
Soooooooo, at the risk of sounding like a knowitall smart arse i will be having the odd ramble about a few things that will significantly increase your hit ratio when it comes to rolling the dice on wild Aus acros.
A. prostrata - A. millepora
These two acros look similar growth wise and the pigments are identical looking when you see them side by side in a tank. By pigments i mean the color of the polyps and skin tissue. It's only the longer whispier looking extended branch tips on the prostrata that gives it away. The prostrata will also shoot new tips in weird clumps on branch sides much like spath are known for.
If this piece had been A. millepora i would most likely have passed on it when i checked it out in person. If this was a milli and the polyps were red like they are and the lower branch skin tissue was yellowish as in the pic Dave took that is a good rep of what it looked like - it is 100% what you guys often keep but i can't remember the name of. The red tip with green base that most of you include on your must have acro list. What's it called...... Sahin has a cool one...... the dark reddish colored polyps are seen on red millis - electric pink milli's have white polyps when seen fresh from the ocean or in good condition - little tip
Anyway i don't much like most classic 'reds' and go for pink pigments always because i love 'em
Because it was actually a prostrata and from trial and error i know that the pigment colors on prostrata's react very differently to those i used to think were the same on milli's i was pleased as punch to get my hands on what Dave described as a pink tip yellow milli from memory.
A. prostrata are basically like spathulata, they both seem to have much more exotic and eye catching colors AFTER acclimating to our blue lighting and water. By that i mean when i saw those red polyps and what i thought would be some kind of green lower down on a prostrata i thought it was an unusual pattern for a prostrata. Most are green dogs......
You may wonder why i have a hairy brown frag top right in that last spath pic among all those other yummy colored pieces. It's a frag of the piece above that browned out in the sump frag tank. The main piece was moved about two weeks ago in the display when i discovered it was pointing the wrong way for best color viewing. There is a right and wrong way on just about every acro species for maximising the visible pigments seen front on viewing wise.
It was pointing about 45 degrees to the back, a bit like in the pic above at the back of the left island. After cleaning the back glass properly a couple of weeks ago i realised i could see twice as many colored corallite lips when the acro was oriented towards the viewing glass rather than away from it.
It's a bit poopy and browned from the 180 turn and different flow but 'Biggles Bonfire' is going to be a very one off colored piece under our conditions - a winner if you want to put it that way. In my opinion anyway, it is a very unusual pigment color in my experience. Nothing like a red milli and not classic pink either.
A few years ago i walked into Williamstown aquarium and nearly wet myself when i spotted a purple with blue polyps prostrata. I think it was $70- which is pricey for me but i would have dropped $200- if that's what it took. I killed it during a salinity debacle a couple of years ago but i have a little video of it i think i took with an iphone 4 that is a bit bright and i took a still from it and removed a lot of the blue hue to the pic.
When you see a nice colored prostrata it;s the same as seeing a rainbow colored jaw dropping milli - take the chance and buy it. I will never come across another one of these, this was a once a lifetime score
The #$@%! yellow tang suddenly decided to eat all my red dragon weed one day :mad2:
So that's my idea of trying to help some of you who haven't yet wasted the thousands of dollars i have discovering this stuff already. If it's coming across as 'biggles is up himself' i don't mean it, i just open the brain gate and let the inners flow out onto the keyboard un edited........:twitch:
If i didn't have a lisp that i'm self conscious of you have no idea how many rip roaring youtube videos you'd be subjected to detailing the nitty gritty of what makes acro porn in my opinion lol. Wouldn't be like those stuffy how to vids by the big guys, think like that tv show - cops unrated. Now swap the crims for acros and i'm driving the reef patrol car with all the disco gear on in hot pursuit .........
I think Biggles you tube videos would be the bomb I don't care what you sound like... Lol
martinphillip03
New member
biggles
Premium Member
Wow your corals keep getting better and better Andrew. You should start shipping frags and selling them in the US
Thanks mate, i'd go broke pretty quickly since i don't charge for frags lol.
I may do a few sneaky ones today while i'm at Dave's........
Nope, he'd try to bring up the magnetic stirrer as always and i'd have to sack him - and showing aussie acros whilst listening to a Pommie accent would give the false impression that the UK guys know what they're doing Marty.........
I'm going to Deer Park aquarium this morning to pick up my little blue tennuis Dave has been holding for me. I will likely hang around for hours since it's raining and a crappy Saturday for doing anything except SPS related stuff
biggles
Premium Member
Hey guys, whats the diminishing returns on Matrix?
I just added 1L to my 29g today, and I'm not sure I'll ever need more.. But I can fit another Liter easy
I have 16L in 200gal of system water. Put the other litre in Tim, when it kicks into gear you simply need to add more food daily if your nitrates etc bottom out.
I bought more cooper's anthias today and now i have nine - luv 'em !
I was perusing the shop tank, and let's get this right out of the way - yes it was full of silliness like it always is. I porn'd the pic up a bit so you can see the different shades and colors. Spending a few hours hanging out with Dave and Mark on a cold, wet Saturday arvo at the willy wonka acro factory is my idea of awesome
Last edited:
I have 16L in 200gal of system water. Put the other litre in Tim, when it kicks into gear you simply need to add more food daily if your nitrates etc bottom out.
I bought more cooper's anthias today and now i have nine - luv 'em !
I was perusing the shop tank, and let's get this right out of the way - yes it was full of silliness like it always is. I porn'd the pic up a bit so you can see the different shades and colors. Spending a few hours hanging out with Dave and Mark on a cold, wet Saturday arvo at the willy wonka acro factory is my idea of awesome
http://i1283.photobucket.com/albums/a553/BigglesRC/uuu_zpscbejejnc.jpg[/I
[IMG]http://i1283.photobucket.com/albums/a553/BigglesRC/1_zpsleuyy6td.jpg
My God. I think my nipples just got hard.
reefmutt
Active member
Just nipples??
You are more modest than me..
I'm going out for a smoke.
I live in an acro backwater....... Shoot me.
biggles
Premium Member
Ha ! It does look pretty amazing in real life, many of the pieces were there last visit and have started coloring up and forming new growth. I asked Dave if he had changed anything and he showed me the doser he has set up on the holding system now delivering AF comp a, b & c along with the calcium reactor he runs for stability on the alk etc.
Both Mark and Dave said there was a swift and dramatic positive change in the SPS system as soon as the AF potions went online - just some info i thought was interesting.
It's my acro lolly shop Mike
Ok, as i was saying earlier i was poking around the acro tank when a young guy comes in and asks Dave if 'the guy' is ever going to pick up the blue tennuis and tells him to sell it to him instead. Dave says it'll be gone from the shop in an hour actually and then i called out ' it'll be 2 or 3 hours Dave, i'm not going for ages '.
I normally don't let on ever in the shop who i am in regards to the whole 'biggles' from RC thing, and Dave and Mark both talk to customers who ask about getting hold of frags of some of my stuff in front of me as if i wasn't there because that's what i asked them to do. Told you i was shy.......... :fun4:
So anyway, after we shook hands across that spread of color, i accused him of being a thief - the ice was broken and we spent 30 mins talking acro secrets. I borrowed Dave's cordless dremmel - i'm getting a cordless after using that ! I cut a nice frag of the tennuis after asking Dave if he minded me doing it of course, and we mounted it on a tile and Dave stuck it on a piece of foam so it floated upside down in the bag. Took 2 mins and now there were two happy SPS reefers instead of one - i remember what it was like to be the one always seeing nice stuff on hold for others when i started out
Getting the cooper's wasn't just a matter of buying the bloody things btw.
' Can i get some more of those coopers Dave, my fish are all happy campers '
' Did you do the three day peroxide preventative when you added the first lot '
' Yes Dave, i did what you said and everything is great '
' No signs of ich ? '
' No Dave '
' No spots ? '
' Nope, nothing at all '
' You sure ? '
' Yes i promise you i'm not lying Dave, now can i please have those cooper's '
' Ok, let me know when you want them bagged '
Then he walked away slowly and after a few steps he sort of paused as if he had thought of something so i panicked and called out ' I'M GETTING THE $#@$@^ ANTHIAS DAVE SO KEEP WALKING '
He laughed and said it wasn't about the fish - this is what Dave brings out in me, he stresses me right out and i get fish flustered........... :spin2:
I looked at a pair of these which were rather beautiful and very expensive.........
Too much for you Dom new wrasse species
martinphillip03
New member
I can see where you could be quite the celebrity at Daves' store. If people knew who you were, Dave would have to let you in after hours. It was very nice you cut a frag off your prized SPS for the bloke. Nice job Andrew. I'm sure Kevin gave you crap when you brought the frag home. I just get sick looking at the prices and condition of Daves' corals. You are in Wonka land.
Marty
Marty
Ha ! It does look pretty amazing in real life, many of the pieces were there last visit and have started coloring up and forming new growth. I asked Dave if he had changed anything and he showed me the doser he has set up on the holding system now delivering AF comp a, b & c along with the calcium reactor he runs for stability on the alk etc.
Both Mark and Dave said there was a swift and dramatic positive change in the SPS system as soon as the AF potions went online - just some info i thought was interesting.
It's my acro lolly shop Mike
Ok, as i was saying earlier i was poking around the acro tank when a young guy comes in and asks Dave if 'the guy' is ever going to pick up the blue tennuis and tells him to sell it to him instead. Dave says it'll be gone from the shop in an hour actually and then i called out ' it'll be 2 or 3 hours Dave, i'm not going for ages '.
I normally don't let on ever in the shop who i am in regards to the whole 'biggles' from RC thing, and Dave and Mark both talk to customers who ask about getting hold of frags of some of my stuff in front of me as if i wasn't there because that's what i asked them to do. Told you i was shy.......... :fun4:
So anyway, after we shook hands across that spread of color, i accused him of being a thief - the ice was broken and we spent 30 mins talking acro secrets. I borrowed Dave's cordless dremmel - i'm getting a cordless after using that ! I cut a nice frag of the tennuis after asking Dave if he minded me doing it of course, and we mounted it on a tile and Dave stuck it on a piece of foam so it floated upside down in the bag. Took 2 mins and now there were two happy SPS reefers instead of one - i remember what it was like to be the one always seeing nice stuff on hold for others when i started out
Getting the cooper's wasn't just a matter of buying the bloody things btw.
' Can i get some more of those coopers Dave, my fish are all happy campers '
' Did you do the three day peroxide preventative when you added the first lot '
' Yes Dave, i did what you said and everything is great '
' No signs of ich ? '
' No Dave '
' No spots ? '
' Nope, nothing at all '
' You sure ? '
' Yes i promise you i'm not lying Dave, now can i please have those cooper's '
' Ok, let me know when you want them bagged '
Then he walked away slowly and after a few steps he sort of paused as if he had thought of something so i panicked and called out ' I'M GETTING THE $#@$@^ ANTHIAS DAVE SO KEEP WALKING '
He laughed and said it wasn't about the fish - this is what Dave brings out in me, he stresses me right out and i get fish flustered........... :spin2:
I looked at a pair of these which were rather beautiful and very expensive.........
Too much for you Dom new wrasse species
biggles
Premium Member
Hey Marty, i think you'll see more and more of this sort of stuff filtering through as aquacultured stock from Aus. The pink/red pastel hues that are coming through now are very pretty and in all manner of pigment color combos as you can see here.
I was going to buy the cute little 2" all blue thing if no one else wanted it before i left the shop but a guy walked in and snapped it up as it deserved to be. I already had a blue tennius and no idea where to fit it on the scape............ :uhoh3:
I was going to buy the cute little 2" all blue thing if no one else wanted it before i left the shop but a guy walked in and snapped it up as it deserved to be. I already had a blue tennius and no idea where to fit it on the scape............ :uhoh3:
