My 65 Gallon Mixed Reef

[biggles]

Thanks Bello
I'll have to dig up some old pics but this one will do for starters. This is the green monster pretending to be yellowy looking and the blue and yellow tipped acro doing the pale thing when i got them back in March. Both were chopped up a bit to fit where i wanted to place them.

Not a good pic but it still shows that both look very different now. The monster turned green within a month and the tan branched acro tips colored up within about 6 weeks.

Edit: I meant to say that if you look at the branch on the far right of the tan acro you can see what i noticed right when i was taking pics. It was some goopy bacterial disease not tip burn or RTN. I cut that branch and the one next to it off at the base where they joined the rest of the branch and binned them.

 

[echopiece]

Looks great biggles, I love the new scape! I think it looks much cleaner with all those small frags tidied up. Where did that bloody US, green blob of a frag go to? :hmm5:

 

[moze229]

Hey biggles,

You may have already answered this in this thread but I can't find it. What are you using for substrate? The size looks perfect for what I'm going after.

 

[biggles]

Looks great biggles, I love the new scape! I think it looks much cleaner with all those small frags tidied up. Where did that bloody US, green blob of a frag go to?

Thanks buddy, i like it a lot more now i can actually see everything open and free of frag clutter. Which green blob do you mean mate ?

Here's a few pieces when i first got them starting with the red table.

Chopped and epoxied into place.

Likes the high light and high flow up top of the arch rock structure.

This is the blue tipped acro with fluoro polyps when i bought it, it's below the table in the pic above.

This is the SSC branch when i first got it, i think i've posted enough pics of that already for comparison lol.

No idea why this little beauty was ignored for a few weeks at the LFS, even though poopy it was easy to see it had great potential.

I took about 3 frags off it before sticking it down and they're in diff spots around the tank to see how they go in lower light.

This thing is stunning in real life but it's very hard to catch the colors it shows with the camera as it's super saturated with pigments all over. It's to the right of the blue stag in the pic below.

This one was close to crapping itself big time but it picked up very quickly once in good water.

Bottom left in this pic, it's very pretty and one of my favorites now.

The hot pink stylo was chopped up and i shoved bits all over for some color pop in places.

 

[biggles]

Hey biggles,

You may have already answered this in this thread but I can't find it. What are you using for substrate? The size looks perfect for what I'm going after.

Hi mate, i first added 1/8" grain size coral sand but it was a nightmare once i ramped up the flow so i pulled it all out and mixed it 50/50 with some sand that was 5mm or slightly less than 1/4". You can get a sand that says it's 3-5mm and that's the one i wanted but couldn't find.
I still get a few bald spots appearing on the bottom but i only have about 3/4" depth all over so it doesn't take much to shift it, having all the pumps pointing at upward angles is the key to a calm bed i think. :thumbsup:
The sand bed and how it looks always comes secondary to the flow for the acros so i don't stress too much about the odd bare patch lol.

 

[moze229]

Hi mate, i first added 1/8" grain size coral sand but it was a nightmare once i ramped up the flow so i pulled it all out and mixed it 50/50 with some sand that was 5mm or slightly less than 1/4". You can get a sand that says it's 3-5mm and that's the one i wanted but couldn't find.
I still get a few bald spots appearing on the bottom but i only have about 3/4" depth all over so it doesn't take much to shift it, having all the pumps pointing at upward angles is the key to a calm bed i think. :thumbsup:
The sand bed and how it looks always comes secondary to the flow for the acros so i don't stress too much about the odd bare patch lol.

Thanks, biggles. I've used the sugar sand oolite or whatever it's called in the past, and I just can't make myself like it. After some time it begins to all cake together under the rock work, I don't care how many sand dwellers you have. As far as bare patches - it doesn't bother me. I like the look of hills and valleys with an occassional bare patch. Looks more natural than just a flat bottom.

What sand dwellers do you have, if any?

EDIT - Isn't 5mm about the size of crushed coral? I can't tell for sure by your photos, but it sure doesn't look that big.

 

[biggles]

I have zero visible life in the sand as i run a plastic ruler through it a couple of times a week to stir any settled crap up and get it into the water column but there's not a lot that comes out. I had a 5" DSB in a previous tank and it was full of all manner of weird and wacky critters.
I like the rolling dunes of sand too as a flat sand bed looks a bit artificial to me. Just took a quick pic to show you what it looked like today, bare patches and the bloody snails booted some of the frags off the rack overnight........

Most of the heavy grains work their way to the bottom so the top stuff is mainly the 3mm grains.

 

[Quintis]

Looking amazing as always biggs! Gotta love the snails giving things a nudge here and there.

 

[biggles]

Thanks mate, won't be long now and you'll be wet
I don't love the little frag bulldozers, i want them to breed so i can remove all the big ones. They were 1/4" dia when i got them and now they're all over 1" dia at the base. The clown gets upset when one takes a nap in the top left corner where he likes to hang and almost smiles when i poke one off his 'spot'.

Here's my 'fuge' btw - the acro graveyard............ acros go in there but seldom return to the display lol. It's a tad full after yesterdays display cleanup.

 

[ormet]

So here's what happened. I went to move some frags up to take comparison shots for you ormet and i suddenly had a chisel in my hand and next thing i know it's on for young and old in the display...........:spin2:

........

I will take the comparison shots for you mate as soon as i get all this done and the tank settles down for a couple of days.

Glad to have had an impact in one of my fav threads

Its not important, the shots, just for curiosity. Do it when/if you feel like it!

I really dig the new scape!

 

[biggles]

Thanks ormet, you did indeed have an impact on my tank and the occupants. The mandarin wants to say thanks for all the microscopic food i stirred up as he's been going nuts all day the fat little piggy. The acro colony that was removed and dumped in the sump hates you now though but he's not very colorful so who cares what he thinks............
Here's another one you can take credit for mate that i only discovered tonight. Because i had to put so much stuff in the sump i moved the frag racks around and discovered a blue stag frag had fallen under a grey tinted rack a few months ago - i don't look in there too often lol. Anyway, there was one on the top of the rack about 3" higher up and getting direct LED light, it looks horrible and grey but the one that's been under the rack is twice as blue, not like under the radium but still it's passable color whereas the higher light dud frag is something i'd give to Bello ...........
I'm turning the LED's way down as i think i've been roasting everything since day one running blues 100% and whites at 75% - pretty sure i can blame Bello for this one even though he had no input at all.......
Glad you like the new layout too mate I'll still take some pics for you but it's pretty cruel as the radium acros tease the LED sump duds when they're up top for a visit..........

 

[troubadour11]

WOW!!!! Biggles.... what I wouldn't give just for your graveyard. Eh-hmm, I mean sump. :lol2: Especially after the purge of the main tank recently!

I do love the cleaned up look of new scape you accomplished. It looks spectacular! :thumbsup:

For now, I'm just glad to have something wet and alive in my system finally. Slowly but sure I'm suiting up for battle. :lmao::strooper::lmao:

 

[biggles]

WOW!!!! Biggles.... what I wouldn't give just for your graveyard. Eh-hmm, I mean sump. :lol2: Especially after the purge of the main tank recently!

I do love the cleaned up look of new scape you accomplished. It looks spectacular! :thumbsup:

For now, I'm just glad to have something wet and alive in my system finally. Slowly but sure I'm suiting up for battle. :lmao::strooper::lmao:

Hey Troub, thanks for the thumbs up on the cleaner looking display buddy
I decided to give that sump acro one last chance to color up beautifully so i dropped it onto the sand last night, caught the fish discussing the appearance of a new piece in the tank.........

YT - ' where the hell did this ugly thing come from, wasn't there when i went to bed. '

Clown - ' shhhh just pretend you like it and he might feed us more....'

No food was forthcoming so the clown went to plan B and blocked my view - i fed them then........

 

[Reef_Noob]

Hi biggles,
Awesome job!!
The colours you are getting on ur sticks are just dreamy man!!
Speaks volumes of ur husbandry skills.
I admire ur courage...chopping up those beautiful sticks and customizing them.
I think a lot and lot though I wanna chop and repaste...I'm scared to go that fearing il kill the coral.
But you are doin a great job and ur SPS don't mind ur "molestations"
The macro shots you took are class material!! And u did it with fraction of the cost of $$$ SLR cameras and macro lens tripod and what not!!
Thanks for sharing the abundance of knowledge!!

 

[biggles]

Hey Reef_Noob, thanks for saying hello and the wonderful sentiments, really appreciate them mate.
You should seriously give the acro butchery a go, it really is as simple as cutting a branch off from one place and super gluing it directly onto another branch on the same acro. You can seriously influence the growing style of many Acropora sp. especially those with stag like open growth. I've chopped up hundreds of SPS over the years experimenting and not one has ever died or done anything except sulk for maybe a week.
If your water and lighting are what the SPS need i don't think many people realise just how tough these things are and what you can put them through. The only time a coral might react badly is if it's already in a stressed state and i know yours certainly aren't mate so have a crack and take some pics for us to check out in your journal. I have two acros that don't sting when they meet but simply compete by growing over one another - i mean they're practically begging to become the 'Fluoro Frankenstein' acro.
I enjoy photographing the reef and would love to have a good RAW capable camera so i could show the corals colors more accurately, i'll borrow one from a friend who offered when the reef has grown in a lot more.

His name is Bob and he's a baby Tetralia sp. commensal crab about 1/5th the size you're used to seeing, his shell is 1/4" wide so he's really tiny and he lives in an acro frag i stuck upside down to see what it did. He's down in the sump so i turned the blues off and just had the cool whites on while i took a couple of videos, no added lenses just the phone. Bob will be included in all future updates of the upside down acro - i wonder if he'd walk around upside down if i put him in a normal acro..........:fun4:

If you watch the first video in HD you can see Bob happily eating whatever he eats off the acro tissue.



I had the TV on in the second one and you can hear me groaning occasionally as i was lying on the bloody floor to film him - prob best with no sound......... The acro in the left background is more of the same just not upside down lol. As you can see it's tricky sometimes to get the focus where you want it.




You can see now how i get some decent closeups simply by using the video camera and taking stills from the videos.

Bob swings both ways...........

The frag has been upside down for a few weeks now and if you look at the branch corallites in the last pic right above Bob you can see some of the newest corallites are now growing the right way up, i really want to see what the old upside down ones do tbh.

 

[Bello]

I'm turning the LED's way down as i think i've been roasting everything since day one running blues 100% and whites at 75% - pretty sure i can blame Bello for this one even though he had no input at all.......
Glad you like the new layout too mate I'll still take some pics for you but it's pretty cruel as the radium acros tease the LED sump duds when they're up top for a visit..........

Hahahahahahaha :blown:

Honestly right now biggles, I can't get over the freaking video....and THAT with a iPhone.... It's one thing to have a gorgeous reef, but its another, to capture its beauty :thumbsup:. I have a basic DSLR, and I can't get close to what you're able to pull off...... time to go :reading:

While we're on the LED discussion, do you remember the valida/secale tricolored acro I posted? I moved it to the deeperwater tank, lower intensity, and it turned a dull pinkish brown. Looks like you're spot on about the intensity aspect of leds. Needless to say, that coral is back in the acro tank

Thanks for the before and after pics of your brown bombers.... The change from ho hum to vibrant is stunning!

This one above is drool worthy!!!! I can see why its one of your favourites. Wish my IceFire had those colors.... BTW, you have to admit that the contrast with the fluoro green/yellow stag adds to its beauty . On a bit of a crap run today, just noticed that my CO2 cylinder is empty and alk has dropped to 6 dkh....So far, its ok..

 

[animalkingdom]

I have zero visible life in the sand as i run a plastic ruler through it a couple of times a week to stir any settled crap up and get it into the water column but there's not a lot that comes out. I had a 5" DSB in a previous tank and it was full of all manner of weird and wacky critters.
I like the rolling dunes of sand too as a flat sand bed looks a bit artificial to me. Just took a quick pic to show you what it looked like today, bare patches and the bloody snails booted some of the frags off the rack overnight........

Most of the heavy grains work their way to the bottom so the top stuff is mainly the 3mm grains.

blaming it on the snails now...I think your baby acros were up for a swim again

 

[biggles]

Hey Bello, good to hear from you as always mate. I'm glad you put that tri colored acro back in better lighting quick, we both know colors fade a lot quicker than they return so taking action quickly is always a good move in regards to colors.
Your mate the green monster took a big hit yesterday, a chisel, bonsai cutters and 30 mins of slash and burn and i tamed the beast.........:strooper:

blaming it on the snails now...I think your baby acros were up for a swim again

Well i think you may be right buddy because they're giving swimming lessons apparently, now 8 frags on the bottom so i'm going to sort that problem out over the weekend by attaching the plastic spikes that came with the rack to the underside of those plugs so they stay put.


Before i gave the green monster a chisel back scratch......

After his attitude adjustment, the water is a tad cloudy from all his crying and carrying on - i chopped that blue and yellow tipped acro while i was at it so those two both cried slime for ages lol. Also threw that blue polyped acro in the sump while i was at it, got more of that bloody acro than i know what to do with.

The top of a blue stag frag i cut the top off, you can see it's encrusted over and the formation of an axial tip is beginning.

Acro frag, removed the colony months ago due to lack luster performance but i always keep a frag or two just in case.........

Encrusting base tissue often shows you the tip pigments long before they show on the actual tip

Turned the lights back on in the sump 30 mins after lights out so i could show you the 'war' filaments getting ready to burn the algae etc on the plug overnight prior to the encrusting troops moving forward the next day.

I picked this green frag up by the tips to move it for a macro and you can clearly see the bluey colored areas reflecting the blue LED - that's the tissue damage just from a light touch of my fingers where the fluoro tissue has been rubbed off so to speak.

Time to go to work - notice i said i'm going to work, not going to 'do' work............:lol2:

 

[Bello]

Fantastic shots biggles!!

I love the war filament pic, I didn't even know what was the case. Could you elaborate more on that?

Sometimes I wonder if you're malformed with an iPhone + Macro lens for an appendage instead of an arm

 

[biggles]

Fantastic shots biggles!!

I love the war filament pic, I didn't even know what was the case. Could you elaborate more on that?

Sometimes I wonder if you're malformed with an iPhone + Macro lens for an appendage instead of an arm

Thanks Bello

Asking me to explain something seriously is pushing it but i'll have a crack for you mate - i'm sure you know of sweeper tentacles which are just very elongated tentacles loaded up with nematocysts typically used for longer range attacks when a coral gets a sniff of another coral getting too close.
The bundles of white filaments in that pic are called acontia which are very agro mesenterial filaments normally contained in the corals digestive system. Unlike the sniper sweepers that kill from afar these things are expelled most times when an acro comes into contact with another or wants to burn anything such as algae which is in the path of encrusting. Up close and personal the acontia literally digest the other corals tissue on contact - good stuff hey :thumbsup: Nothing like a bit of biffo in the reef at times to keep things interesting........

Now i did this purely in the interests of science and if anyone is upset at me inciting acro reef violence please address your concerns to Bello as i did this for him..........

Rule 1. We don't talk about acro fight club..............

I moved the blue polyped frag on the left next to the green one on the right so he shut down and withdrew his polyps - literally 5 mins later (made a coffee) i checked and the dirty little rat bastard green acro had already expelled acontia while the other frag was still sleeping.
You can see the filaments have got hold of the lower corallite and the one above, both are white at the bottom from being partially digested. At this point the blue polyped acro noticed something was up and came out for a look see and the cowardly green acro withdrew his filaments. 30 mins later they appeared to be tolerating each other. I'll leave them overnight and see what's what in the morning, who knows they might be pals by then...........

Be the iPhone Bello................