Through the Looking Glass

reefmutt said:
Thanks for the run down on your system. We have extremely similar set ups..
T5/mh/led. Ca reactor. Fuge.
Do have any dsb?
What salt do you use?
How many fish and how much food do you add?
Is is pretty amazing how little algea you have on the rocks/ just as amazing as the intensity of your corraline algea.
How does the macro algea grow in your fuge? Cheato I assume?
You have quite the collection of RR Canada frags!
You have better pe on your pink Cadillac than I do.. Mine has encrusted well and has begun to push out a tiny bit but pe is basically not there at all.
I'm curious to see what your pink matrix does.. Mine took about 6 months of encrusting before it began to grow, now it's growing very well.. BUT! Almost no red in it at all... Kind of bugs me...
Click to expand...

Sorry for the late reply, my kids were in town ....

I have a Geissman unit with metal halides (3 x 250 Radiums) and t5's (3 x B+ and 1 x purple plus). I added reef brite xho's for dawn and dusk but I don't really know how to photograph very well with the led's.

I have a refugium with chaeto. I have been trying a bubbler under the chaeto to see if I could get a scrubber effect/increased growth rate but I haven't really seen that to be the case. I harvest about every 2-4 weeks.

I have a sand bed of about 2-4 inches probably more of the wrong zone to be in. Not quite deep or shallow.

I have a marine technical ca reactor. Two tubes of medium and very reliable

I have tried a variety of salts and currently using Marin Tropic pro and I like the dKh which is close to where I run my tank. Been impressed with the results some are seeing with Aqua forest pro but apparently once mixed, it needs to be used immediately which does not work for me. I tend to store 50 gallons in a storage container for a week or so.

I use a protein skimmer, bubble King. I added 7 liters of siporax about two months ago and just this week it seemed to kick in. Nitrates went from 5-10 ppm to .75-1 ppm. My phosphates remained elevated, so I just added gfo again. My phosphates with gfo are around .075, they were 1.2 last week tested with Hanna ulr.

I have a lot of fish, perhaps too many. Three Angels (majestic, imperator and regal), four tangs (regal blue, powder blue, yellow, purple), couple percula clowns, majestic fox face, bunch of wrasses (radiant, blue star, leopard, potters, melanarus, yellow coris) and a file fish and I think probably more. I feed sea veggies (algae) once a day, NLS pellets once a day and usually some LRS reef frenzy frozen most days.

I change 10-20 gallons weekly of my 180 gallon tank

I am concerned that I don't have more algae growing in the tank. Although it looks neat to see the coralline algae plating everywhere.

My coral seem to have been dormant for months but seem to be coming out of their hibernation. Many lps though are not thriving and have not for quite some time. I have had my nitrates at 5-10 ppm for a long time so they should have been doing ok. Something goofy going on.

I have been envious of many of the pretty rr Canada pieces and worked hard to acquire a few. I even found a jaw dropper but it is all of a 1/4 inch (6mm), it surprised me that it made the transition from another tank to mine. I've had it for months and there may be the hint of it encrusting finally but only a hint.
 
This frag had an all white body yet polyps extended when I first saw it about six or eight weeks ago. It was so ugly but interesting that I purchased it. Surprisingly it has colored up nicely so far. And although you can not tell from the photo, the branches are really, really thick just like a big stag horn. Hope it turns out to be brightl and different.



Hoping this small frag turns into something special. The tip got a bit roughened up, but oh well.




Just feeling a little blue.... And though it is hard to tell, this little mini colony is a couple inches across or so.




the cool thing about lots of megapixels, is you can crop pretty aggressively.

 
Last edited:
I would steal your roughed up frag if i visited............. it's going to be ridiculous - love your pics mate :thumbsup:
 
I'd cut a tiny frag off before Andrew takes it all. :lol:

Colours look great. I just put my Giessemann halide over my tank. They are nice units.

Which BubbleKing model are you running?
 
biggles said:
I would steal your roughed up frag if i visited............. it's going to be ridiculous - love your pics mate :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
Thanks. I look at your thread almost every day to look for another one of your many outlandishly crazy colored acros.
sahin said:
I'd cut a tiny frag off before Andrew takes it all. :lol:

Colours look great. I just put my Giessemann halide over my tank. They are nice units.

Which BubbleKing model are you running?
Click to expand...

Thank you, the tank is just on the slow mend but at least it is mending. I believe I run a BK 200 mini, I don't have a lot of vertical space in my sump.

You know how sometimes you stare and stare at your tank waiting for some growth. Well the first picture was taken in April, a few weeks ago (it is a tighter crop of the image in my most recent post above) and the second was taken this morning. Kind of cool to see the oregon tort branch I cut from the side and previously glued vertically next to the colony finally encrusting into each other. It is just a couple millimeters of growth but remarkable nonetheless. I did this because the oregon tort was growing out horizontally and I want vertical growth. Whether that actually happens or not, it was fun to try.





 
markalot said:
Good to see the tort growing. :)

Is this a typo?



1.2?
Click to expand...

Yes that is indeed a typo. Last week phosphates were at .12 ppm (not 1.2).

Interesting that I added about 250 ml of rowasphos in an MR1 reactor with just enough flow for slight GFO movement and after second day, I had a drop of about .02 to .03 ppm phosphates but then it stopped lowering. So I replaced it with another 250 ml of Rowaphos and ended up at .075 ppm this week. I usually leave the rowaphos in for a few weeks before I retest but someone had suggested that reduction usually takes place in day or two. I was surprised by this comment and my subsequent finding.

I hate the mess of GFO, going through the rinsing process when adding new and cleaning it out of a reactor when done. I had hoped the siporax when reducing nitrates would also kick in with phosphate reduction.
 
Wise words from mark regarding the greens...been there:beer:

Mark you have some serious corals in there and some even more serious photo skills man!
Can't wait too for that roughed up frag to grow:)
 
This last piece looks like RR triple treats....
I hate the mess of gfo as well... It is very effective, however.
Mark, no pressure but you may have no choice but to post a fts. :)
I know how you feel about having just small pieces but that fish list is pretty impressive.
Is the blue tort an Oregon? It's got the distinctive pure blue appearance...
 
reefmutt said:
This last piece looks like RR triple treats....
I hate the mess of gfo as well... It is very effective, however.
Mark, no pressure but you may have no choice but to post a fts. :)
I know how you feel about having just small pieces but that fish list is pretty impressive.
Is the blue tort an Oregon? It's got the distinctive pure blue appearance...
Click to expand...

Yes, that is the oregon tort. Amazing blue.

The next two pictures are interesting. I took a large frag of a colony that has been in my display for a long time and placed it in my frag tank yesterday. I also have a chunk of the same colony that has been living in my frag tank for a good while. My display runs 2-5ppm nitrates and about .08 or so ppm phosphates. My frag runs undetectable nutrients. Well look at the comparison in color with normal nutrients vs UNLS. Both pieces are sitting in my frag tank so the lighting is the same for the photos. Pretty stark contrast between pastel and deep/richer colors. They both are nice just so different.

ULNS



Display tank frag
 
Forgot to include this picture. I like this acro, the body color is more purple in the tank but I took the photo with T5's and XHO's. The body color in this image is reminiscent of the Blueberry Wine, but this is a different acro than that. And although it doesn't look it. The size of this frag is deceiving, this acro is about 2-3 inches tall and greater than 3 inches of encrusting across.


 
Time for some trimming. This colony is starting to encroach on some rock as well as other corals. A little bit fun and a little bit sad to trim this guy. Oh well, not really much of a choice.



On a very positive note, starting to see some brighter and more vivid colors pop out. At least that is what I keep telling myself. This vivid's rainbow is growing pretty fast and starting to show some of its potential. There is some color finally coming out. I took both these pictures with t5 and xho so the color is not quite right but at least it gives you an idea.

 
Those two corals are about as happy and healthy as corals get.
Great growth and really nice colour.
Can you attribute your tank turnaround to anything you did in particular?
 
markalot said:
Glad to see things doing well. Trimming is a good problem to have but also frustrating I'm sure.
Click to expand...

thank you, it is a good problem

reefmutt said:
Those two corals are about as happy and healthy as corals get.
Great growth and really nice colour.
Can you attribute your tank turnaround to anything you did in particular?
Click to expand...

I think the turn around in the tank has been a result of patience and persistence. I never was able to truly identify any single issue as a problem. I used triton labs as well as salifert, red sea and hanna checkers to track parameters and nothing really was out of range or unstable. Well, in terms of stability, I have had power outages, and an alk dump and assorted mishaps but no worse than the average bear. The simplest way I can put it is that my tank just got unhappy and stayed that way for a long time. I am still frustrated by lack of polyp extension so I will be removing my angels and some other fish that have been observed nipping. It is certainly easier for me to point a finger at some mysterious viral or bacterial infection as opposed to lousy reef keeping skills. This has been a difficult, expensive, frustrating experience. I was prepared to throw in the towel a number of times but I so enjoy reef keeping that I just stumbled along with regular water changes, routine light bulb changes, twice weekly parameter tests (alk, nitrate, salinity, and less frequent phosphates, calcium and mag testing) and occasional triton lab testing. I replaced much of the electric equipment that sat in the tank or sump, like my return pump, power heads, heaters, ato pump, etc. I really tried to look at all things that could possibly be causative but never found the smoking gun so to speak. And even though I am starting to see growth and color coming back, I certainly have been humbled and recognize that problems can return so darn easily.

Here is another picture of what I now call my yellow eyed jawdropper



And a couple pictures from different angles of my favorite acro, Z's Wonder. I think the growth and colors are extraordinary.






i apologize that many of these pictures are repetitive but these are my most photogenic coral. I will post some more pictures soon of some other coral. The pictures above were with radium metal halides and ATI t5's
 
That coral is awesome.

Have you thought about treating with interceptor? It was recommended I treat 6 months ago by various folks but I ignored it until last month. I could get corals in decent health and some would look great but most would suffer and just not get happy. Different tanks, different problems, but maybe worth consideration. I'm also a big believer in sponges and spongepower which does seem to accelerate their growth.

I hate to give suggestions because it's honestly all just guesswork for me but maybe something to think about. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
Do I need to take the glass apart on 300 Gallon glass tank
Replies
3
Views
156
griss
griss
IceyCream
New Tank Concerns
Replies
6
Views
249
IceyCream
IceyCream
M
Iam about to build my forever tank. Any advice? I want to migrate my current two tanks
Replies
3
Views
141
discotu
discotu
Form Blazing Sword!
Glass top/Hood/Mesh?
Replies
4
Views
269
Reefing102
Reefing102
V
Possible dorvilleidae worm with video and 1200x magnification
Replies
2
Views
202
vugrad07
V
Back
Top