My Little Piece of Reef

[westreef]

This is a half year update.
Because of STN I have lost good sizes of pink lemonade, miami orchid and bali green slimer. I do save a few small frags of them (not slimer) and hope they will grow back to nice size of colonies.

I do have a few photos to share with you:
Red planet is my favorite.
Nasuta? and Pink Milli? are small colonies. (Sorry I am not sure about their names, but they are pretty.)
The rest are just small frags.

Red Planet

Red Planet -- Magnified view

Setosa

Surf N Turf

Ice Tort

Borealis

Nasuta ?

Miyagi Tort

Pink Milli ?

 

[sahin]

Sucks about the STN. But at least you got some nice frags still. What T5 bulbs are you currently using? I am going to buy some of the ATI Coral+ tubes next month. They looked really nice at the LFS. I think together with the Royal Blue LED's, they will be popping those SPS colours.

I believe your Nasuta is a Nasuta, and my god, those blue polyps look tasty!

 

[westreef]

Hi Sahin, I have redone my LEDs. Now I have 2 x12 royal blue strips.
The arrangement is:

Back
ATI Blue+
12 3w Creed Royal Blue leds
Giesemann Lagoon Blue
12 3w Creed Royal Blue leds
ATI Coral+
Front

I like the end results of this combination. It is kind of crispy white with a tint of blue.


Bernie

 

[sahin]

Hi Sahin, I have redone my LEDs. Now I have 2 x12 royal blue strips.
The arrangement is:

Back
ATI Blue+
12 3w Creed Royal Blue leds
Giesemann Lagoon Blue
12 3w Creed Royal Blue leds
ATI Coral+
Front

I like the end results of this combination. It is kind of crispy white with a tint of blue.


Bernie

I've never seen the Giesemann Lagoon Blue... how does it compare in looks to the ATI Coral+ and ATI ABSpecial?

 

[Pink Dolphin]

great looking tank

 

[jroovers]

Wow, nice shots Bernie! Looking good on my end, well done.

 

[westreef]

Hi Sahin,
Lagoon Blue is a new bulb from Giesemann, not too many vendors carry it. In fact, I only found one vendor during Thanksgiving and it was on sale for promotion sake. Few days ago, I found my favorite LFS also using it in one of his new display tanks. In general, it is very close to ATI AquaBlue Special or Giesemann AquaBlue+ in look. Compared to Coral+, it is crispy white. Coral + has a tint of purplish color.
It is difficult to get a good picture to show the difference. Finally, I shot it in RAW and got a better but not perfect color comparision. If you want the vendor's name, please pm me. It even has the light spectrum for most of the bulbs for comparison.

Top to bottom (Front to back):
Coral +
RB (redone using solderless connections, all royal blues, better heat sink and shorter spacing)
Lagoon Blue
RB
Blue +

 

[sahin]

Many thanks for the very useful info and photo. I think I will buy Coral+ tubes next time. I did look at the spectral plot of the Lagoonblue and thought it might look similar to the ABSpecial.

 

[westreef]

great looking tank

Thanks for the comments.

Wow, nice shots Bernie! Looking good on my end, well done.

Hi Jordan, you are one of the best in shooting corals. I am just learning how to do a decent job. I am still trying. Thanks for the tips you gave me. I find them very useful.

Bernie

 

[westreef]

Many thanks for the very useful info and photo. I think I will buy Coral+ tubes next time. I did look at the spectral plot of the Lagoonblue and thought it might look similar to the ABSpecial.

Sahin, you wouldn't go wrong with Coral+. I have seen colorful corals with just Coral+ and Blue + tubes.

 

[westreef]

My son took these two cute pictures while he visited me during Christmas. Just want to share with you. Enjoy!

 

[jroovers]

Two terrific shots - kudos to your son! Both are composed fantasticly.

 

[westreef]

Thanks, Jordan. My son loves to take photos.:dance:

 

[William_916]

I really like your sps just beautful

 

[westreef]

I really like your sps just beautful

Thanks.

Recently I had a mini-crash with some SPS corals having STN. So some nice size corals now reduced to small frags. It is better now. :sad1:

 

[BryceHS]

Your tank is looking great, the STN is a bit depressing, but glad it's over now, your SPS look great

 

[sahin]

How are the corals doing? Hope all is well enough for some new photos.

 

[westreef]

Hi Sahin, as you know I had STN in my tank. Many colonies became small frags. So far I still have a little bit of STN in one coral. I think I will wait for a few more months to post some photos.
I love your recent new thread -- beautiful corals. Your water parameters must be close to perfect. Make sure you record the parameters for future reference.

 

[sahin]

Hi Sahin, as you know I had STN in my tank. Many colonies became small frags. So far I still have a little bit of STN in one coral. I think I will wait for a few more months to post some photos.
I love your recent new thread -- beautiful corals. Your water parameters must be close to perfect. Make sure you record the parameters for future reference.

Hi, where you mentioned some colonies reduced to frags, I imagined a few (3-4), but it sounds like a bit more than that.

Do you know what caused the crash? I had one or two base recession some months ago when I tried to use GAC again...I quickly took it offline, fed my tank a bit more and things recovered quickly within two weeks.

Whenever I have SPS troubles, I have always found that the one thing that works wonders is a simple water change. I start carrying out 20% water changes at least twice a week. That sorts issues out for me always.

I have at least 6 empty salt buckets which hold about 18 litres each. My tank is about 180 litres. So its easy to mix up 10% in each bucket. With the remaining empty ones old water goes in them so its easy to do the water changes without too much measuring etc.

At times I have carried out 40% when things are really bad. The way I have done my plumbing from display to sump is that I can isolate each and have water flowing in each. So I remove 40% water, let the display continue for 8 hours or so by itself and the sump gets the newly mixed water, which I further let it get mixed by the action of the skimmer etc.

Never had issues from doing such large water changes this way.

Perhaps you can try something like this?

As for my tank, NO3=2ppm and PO4=0.04ppm, nothing special there. I think its because the tank is 1 year old now that colours are coming through on the SPS.

 

[westreef]

Thanks for the advice.
I did accelerate water change frequency to 20% water volume each week for about 4 weeks and indeed it gradually slow down the problem. I still don't know exactly why the STN started. Even my favorite lfs could not give me a satisfactory answer.
The colonies affected were Red Planet, Miami Orchid, Nesuta, Pink Lemonade, Cali Tort and Bali Slimer. Now looks like it is almost stop -- have my fingers crossed.