Mark's 150 gallon

markalot said:
Thanks all for the nice comments!


Not everything has improved color. Cousin It is, well ... not really sure.
4qAheOuh.jpg
Click to expand...

We all strive for beautiful colors, however there are many other qualities that make a coral beautiful. The shaggy polyps on this piece make it special in its own right.
 
chessmanmark said:
We all strive for beautiful colors, however there are many other qualities that make a coral beautiful. The shaggy polyps on this piece make it special in its own right.
Click to expand...

Ha, yep. I know the base can be a nice red, I've seen it, but I'm not sure I'll ever see it again. :D

So the colors of what I call an SSC are going off the chart. This is insane and is now the most colorful acro in the tank by far. It was just 10 days ago I was complaining about the pukish yellow and green coloration and now this.

-click for larger-



Can't quite capture it but the growth edge is a rich blue, so blue, pink, yellow, and red. I wish I knew the lineage as this is a no name picked up at a local store.



Also,

I put the purple cap to work, propping up a UC Wild Orchid frag to add some green to a sea of purple. Broke a 2 magnet mag rock in half with a rubber mallet and placed it in back to give the purple stylo a place to grow.

sgxJXuTh.jpg


MCb3EiZh.jpg
 
markalot said:
Ha, yep. I know the base can be a nice red, I've seen it, but I'm not sure I'll ever see it again. :D

So the colors of what I call an SSC are going off the chart. This is insane and is now the most colorful acro in the tank by far. It was just 10 days ago I was complaining about the pukish yellow and green coloration and now this.

-click for larger-



Can't quite capture it but the growth edge is a rich blue, so blue, pink, yellow, and red. I wish I knew the lineage as this is a no name picked up at a local store.



Also,

I put the purple cap to work, propping up a UC Wild Orchid frag to add some green to a sea of purple. Broke a 2 magnet mag rock in half with a rubber mallet and placed it in back to give the purple stylo a place to grow.

sgxJXuTh.jpg


MCb3EiZh.jpg
Click to expand...

Mark, things are looking really nice.
The LEDs seem to have increased the cri very well. They look like they have benefitted the acros nicely.
Those macros make me a bit warm and fuzzy inside with the level of detail.
Love it!
 
reefmutt said:
Mark, things are looking really nice.
The LEDs seem to have increased the cri very well. They look like they have benefitted the acros nicely.
Those macros make me a bit warm and fuzzy inside with the level of detail.
Love it!
Click to expand...

Thanks Matt. I still have a long way to go but the spectrum I chose to run the LED's at really seems to be improving things rapidly. Turn down the WHITE LED's, use Lime to fool the eye and add some shimmer, and attempt to mimic light hitting a real reef.

DsjoVYi.png


I am running the blue/cyan channel brighter than the Royal Blue, for example.

With LED's only I am neutral blue rather than purple blue, which looks fantastic and hopefully is also good for the acros. The majority of the light still comes from the two Coral+ and two Blue+ bulbs.

Regardless if this is helpful or not the goal is not to change for a while and see what happens.
 
reefmutt said:
Interesting use of the lime greens..
I'd never heard of that until now.
Click to expand...

I just learned of a newer color, mint (LUXEON), which is slightly higher nm than Lime, closer to Amber. NanoBox has used Lime for a while with the goal of trying to alter the visual color of the light without having to use too much white. I think with the proper spread and spectrum we might finally see LED's getting closer to T5 for acro coloration. I think ti will be a long time before LED equals or surpasses T5's but people are trying.
 
I've been thinking about those Eurosaquatics LED bulbs that fit into a T5 fixture, kind of want to pick up a couple of the blue ones to test out sometime in the future. There's just something about LEDs, they really enhance the overall look and balance T5 bulbs out well.
 
Well,

not the best of news to report but hopefully it won't get worse. Without really thinking about accuracy I've been using the Apex Fusion built in KH calculator for the Salifert test kit.

iDOLXFN.png


That right there is DEAD WRONG. I noticed it when, while testing my 40, it came back with the same .6 number which on the chart that comes with the kit reads 6.1 KH. oops. This means my Alk dropped below 6 for a few days last week and either I am seeing some damage now or something else happened. I would expect recession from low KH, based on experiences I've read from others, but instead I'm seeing a few random tip burns, some loss of color, and one frag of my blue stag up and dying. Oh, and I lost the red dragon (that's two now) while the ugly peach dragon is growing like crazy.

Like I always do when things take a turn for the worse I took a bunch of macros.

Here is one of the bad tips on Cousin It.
MbonSqyh.jpg


The right side of the coral looks fine though.
cPZMusrh.jpg


SSC looks fine
8KH1SKOh.jpg


A dozen or so tips of the big valida are showing deformation or loss of skin.
JixILRqh.jpg


The echinata lost some color but otherwise looks healthy.
XjeaslDh.jpg


One of my leftover frags of the blue stag has up and died. Loss of polyps and fading skin.
WgKBy5bh.jpg


Up on the rocks there is some browning and I can't tell if this skin is healthy or thin.
oJAE41Jh.jpg


Red Robin
Unxl4dqh.jpg


A top down I took Monday.
Fsb1TCwh.jpg
 
Mmmmm... Lokani..

The damage doesn't look so bad..
Have you done any waterchanges since the low kh? Maybe it's the alk swings from waterchanges causing the tip burn...
Question.. Did you dose regular interceptor or interceptor spectrum (which contains praziquantel..)
 
reefmutt said:
Mmmmm... Lokani..

The damage doesn't look so bad..
Have you done any waterchanges since the low kh? Maybe it's the alk swings from waterchanges causing the tip burn...
Question.. Did you dose regular interceptor or interceptor spectrum (which contains praziquantel..)
Click to expand...


Spectrum with the prazi stuff.

I've been doing small 5 gallon changes and testing, no Alk swings that I can measure. It might also be from the lighting, I'm pretty bad at running LED too bright and I may have induced some stress with the new lights.

I'm keeping my eye on everything, continuing to do some small water changes, and keeping everything else steady.
 
Thanks.
I would think you'd see light stress bleaching on big patches of the coral before burnt tips if it were the light..
 
reefmutt said:
Thanks.
I would think you'd see light stress bleaching on big patches of the coral before burnt tips if it were the light..
Click to expand...

Yea, my thoughts as well but nice to hear confirmation.

Things look much better today, more shine on the acros and the red robin is definitely showing more red. Even the tips of my maricultured frags are showing more color.

I looked at my KH chart and when correcting for the error it looks like I was drifting from 6.2 to 6.5 KH for at least the month of August, and in one instance I would have dropped to 6. Used more 2 part this evening to raise KH up to 6.5- 6.6 via the Salifert chart and will target 6.7 over the next few days. A reading of 6.7 using the chart will result in 7.0 via the Apex calculator.

Only casualty is my now bone white red dragon. RIP. I'll try again sometime this fall when weather is more favorable for shipping.
 
reefmutt said:
Red dragon.. So pretty but has to be the most rtn prone coral I've ever kept.
All the dragons, actually..
Click to expand...

I had it out of the water for maybe 5 seconds moving it to a location in lower light since it appeared to be bleaching. I knew better yet didn't think when I applied the glue to the base. Next day it was that dead red color and there's no going back from that it seems.

The other one with the not so great color is growing like crazy. This little thing has literally 1 inch polyp extension at night. Scary monster! Even though it's mostly brown this might look pretty cool if it gets large, a nice foil for a more colorful coral in front.

ktlJLmuh.jpg


In other news, color continues to bounce back and the big valida has extreme night time polyp extension again. I think I dodged a bullet.
 
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