Mhucasey's SPS obsession

mhucasey said:
My interest is only how they look:) I was super excited to get a pearlberry, its one of the corals I've wanted for quite a while.

Frankly a lot of the "Reef Raft" corals look too similar to each other. Its cool so see some special coloration in a macro shot but its cooler if you can see amazing color from the side, a couple of feet away.
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+1

High end designer corals have great color and growth forms.

Are people so brainwashed by marketing hype that they think price means high end?

Nice haul on the frags
 
mhucasey said:
I don't think that the aminos are the cause of the color change, I'm pretty sure I didn't state that but I may have given you that impression by accident. If I had to pin the color change on anything, it would be reducing the light intensity to try to keep the corals between 200 and 400PAR. Perhaps the slightly bluer spectrum sped it up as well.
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Since amino acids are a nitrogen source they can cause the intensification of coral colours. I have not used it, but some users of the KZ amino acids product have reported the darkening of their coral colours if they exceed recommended despite the fact that the manufacturer claim the opposite. I did not observe this when I used Salifert amino acids.

mhucasey said:
Thanks for the info. Maybe Ill spread the dose out even more. I'm pretty happy to give Salifert a try.
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If I remember correctly, during a conversation with Habib of Salifert on a UK forum about how to dose Salifert Amino Acids, he advised that the weekly dose be done at once rather than spreading it out. I cannot locate the thread anymore because entire set of threads in his sponsor sub-forum disappeared once he stopped his sponsorship.:sad2:

I used this product in the past with very good results. However, it encourages cyano if you overdose or makes it worse if you already have cyano in your water column. I would start with a very low percentage of the recommended amount and dose at once as explained above, and then increase the dose very slowly every few weeks.
 
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Nice score, Matt!
I wish we had such an abundance of quality frags like that in Canada..
I would go nuts at an event like that..
Looking forward to seeing them grow out!
 
Those are some fantastic looking frags! I agree with your comment about some of the RR corals, there are about a dozen or so with different names that pretty much look to me to be about the same.
 
Thanks guys, I was pretty happy with my haul as well. The other thing I was looking for was the new "E5" bulbs from Euroquatics. These are direct replacements for T5s using LEDs.
T5.108.png


These literally look exactly like a T5 bulb, and use the ballast power as the power supply, so you can swap out one or more T5s with a very diffuse LED "Bulb". It uses a ton of chips and a white frosted cover so there isn't any LED hotspotting. They will come out at the end of the year, and are less than 3X the cost of one T% bulb with a 3 Year warranty and 8 year projected life, and use about half the watts of the T5 bulb they replace.

I can replace my dawn dusk blue bulbs with some of these with Royal Blue LEDs. In the demo they had a tank with T5s on one side and these on the other and you couldn't tell the difference.
 
DiscusHeckel said:
Since amino acids are a nitrogen source they can cause the intensification of coral colours. I have not used it, but some users of the KZ amino acids product have reported the darkening of their coral colours if they exceed recommended despite the fact that the manufacturer claim the opposite. I did not observe this when I used Salifert amino acids.



If I remember correctly, during a conversation with Habib of Salifert on a UK forum about how to dose Salifert Amino Acids, he advised that the weekly dose be done at once rather than spreading it out. I cannot locate the thread anymore because entire set of threads in his sponsor sub-forum disappeared once he stopped his sponsorship.:sad2:

I used this product in the past with very good results. However, it encourages cyano if you overdose or makes it worse if you already have cyano in your water column. I would start with a very low percentage of the recommended amount and dose at once as explained above, and then increase the dose very slowly every few weeks.
Click to expand...

I was using a quite high dose of Acropower(14mL per day for a 195Gallon system) and had some Cyano. It wasn't an extreme amount, just a little in the very lowest flow areas. I switched over to the salifert AAs and dose 6.6 mL per day now spread out over 6 doses. The Cyano has retreated noticeably and what is left isn't really concerning.

I would love to know the rationale behind a large bolus dose once a week before I change it up, Ill do a little research to see if I can find out why.
 
Big E said:
+1

High end designer corals have great color and growth forms.

Are people so brainwashed by marketing hype that they think price means high end?

Nice haul on the frags
Click to expand...

That's what they call them, I guess I should have added quotes around the high end designer coral piece. The smarmy look on my face while i typed it out obviously didn't translate through the post.

My corals are all brown turds purchased from my lfs's that I try to color up. Occasionally someone will drop off a frag of something aquacultured that I can get my hands on.

The pearlberry will always be at the top of my list for corals to own. One of the few pieces that I'd be willing to shell out some cash for.
 
pstank1 said:
That's what they call them, I guess I should have added quotes around the high end designer coral piece. The smarmy look on my face while i typed it out obviously didn't translate through the post.

My corals are all brown turds purchased from my lfs's that I try to color up. Occasionally someone will drop off a frag of something aquacultured that I can get my hands on.

The pearlberry will always be at the top of my list for corals to own. One of the few pieces that I'd be willing to shell out some cash for.
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I understood what you meant without the quotes:)
 
Love your new purchases. They are indeed preciouses :D

I've always read really good stuff about Steve Garret. We need a Steve Garret here in the UK. :D
 
pstank1 said:
That's what they call them, I guess I should have added quotes around the high end designer coral piece. The smarmy look on my face while i typed it out obviously didn't translate through the post.

My corals are all brown turds purchased from my lfs's that I try to color up. Occasionally someone will drop off a frag of something aquacultured that I can get my hands on.

The pearlberry will always be at the top of my list for corals to own. One of the few pieces that I'd be willing to shell out some cash for.
Click to expand...

It's just funny I guess, because a Red Dragon was high end when it was 250 an inch. Now that it's 15 an inch it's not "high end".............the color and growth form of the coral never changed.
 
It took 3 or 4 days but I went through your entire thread. Lots of great stuff and interesting lessons. I raised my lights (ATI powermodule) after reading your thread and the related links. My current tank is fairly new and running with lower nutrients than planned and I am seeing pale colors in several acros. I am slowly raising nutrients but maybe it's too much light. I'll see in a few days.

I may have missed it, but why do you keep your Alk so low? Whatever the reason it seems to be working. I'd be very happy if I had colors close to yours.
 
Big E said:
It's just funny I guess, because a Red Dragon was high end when it was 250 an inch. Now that it's 15 an inch it's not "high end".............the color and growth form of the coral never changed.
Click to expand...

Red Dragon will always be "high end" in my book!
 
seaguy7 said:
It took 3 or 4 days but I went through your entire thread. Lots of great stuff and interesting lessons. I raised my lights (ATI powermodule) after reading your thread and the related links. My current tank is fairly new and running with lower nutrients than planned and I am seeing pale colors in several acros. I am slowly raising nutrients but maybe it's too much light. I'll see in a few days.

I may have missed it, but why do you keep your Alk so low? Whatever the reason it seems to be working. I'd be very happy if I had colors close to yours.
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for spending the time reading through all this, welcome to the thread! As far as Alk is concerned, some of the best tanks I've seen have had alkalinity between 6.5 and 7.5, so I know it works. Andrew Graham actually was below 6 in his "Reef in the Sky". His growth rates were pretty amazing at that low ALk.

It's easier to maintain the lower levels, at least in my experience, and I don't have to worry about Alk higher than 8 causing tip burn. In general I never saw the need to pump up the value to numbers well above sea water and it's worked well for me.
 
mhucasey said:
It's easier to maintain the lower levels, at least in my experience, and I don't have to worry about Alk higher than 8 causing tip burn. In general I never saw the need to pump up the value to numbers well above sea water and it's worked well for me.
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These are nuggets of gold. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience. BTW, love your build!!
 
mhucasey said:
Thanks guys, I was pretty happy with my haul as well. The other thing I was looking for was the new "E5" bulbs from Euroquatics. These are direct replacements for T5s using LEDs.
T5.108.png
Click to expand...

I am really interested to see how these work out for the hobby. I have used a few of these LED replacements for my normal florescent bulbs in my shop lights and they work amazingly well.
 
I'm curious to see how those leds work out as well..
Matt, can you take a photo of an led tube next to a blue t5 for comparison?
 
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