trueblackpercula
New member
Well I hope this is a typographical erro. Your ph is 7 and your alk is is 6? Your ph should be at least 8 and your alk between 7 min to 9
Wild and Maricultured SPS Reefers Thread
- Thread starter biggles
- Start date
Well I hope this is a typographical erro. Your ph is 7 and your alk is is 6? Your ph should be at least 8 and your alk between 7 min to 9
How to raise my ph I am rally having hard tine
1500 sorry
I am adding around 2 ml alk to my tank daily bow am oncreasing it so I hope itll be better...
When tge ph increase so ur saying my sps will get better right
trueblackpercula
New member
reefmutt
Active member
I'm not making any promises, but it will help get you closer to success, imo.
trueblackpercula
New member
I use a dosing pump and it's been working very well for me.
Coral Head
New member
reeflover62
New member
Nice Video and corals! I love starting my morning with some sps porn
greg1786
Active member
I gotta say this is one of my favorite threads on RC. I just found it last night and I read the entire thing. I know its a couple months old, but I just started to collect wild caught pieces. Up until recently I was really into named aquacultured pieces, ie oregon tort, ssc, ora red planet etc etc. I found a company who was having an unbeliebale sale a few months back something crazy like 4.95$ for wild frags so I decided to give it a shot. Now I am addicted to wild caught pieces. I enjoy the fact that I am picking out acros based on their shape and growth pattern, getting them in the tank and seeing what they color up to be. Ive gotten 13 wild caught frags over the past few months and every one has had a different variation in color once it settled in. I feel that the colors are not quite as deep and rich as some of my aquacultured pieces but I tend to like the color combos I get from the wild caught frags a bit better.
It has been a bit of a learning curve for me as they require a little different care to get them happy and healthy compared to the aquacultured stuff. There is so much info out there on each named aquacultured piece that its easy to buy for example an ora orange digi, look up its care requirements for light and flow, put it in an area of my tank that meets its needs and sort of set and forget it so to speak. The wild caught pieces on the other hand come with no instructions on what they like so it takes a little longer to find their happy place. Ive gotten a ton of good advice from this thread so it is definitely serving the purpose it was intended for. After reading this thread last night, I had taken the wild acros I just recieved from ups earlier in the day and cut a branch or two off of each one so I could place them in different spots in the tank under different light and flow. I owe that to biggles so thanks!!
It has been a bit of a learning curve for me as they require a little different care to get them happy and healthy compared to the aquacultured stuff. There is so much info out there on each named aquacultured piece that its easy to buy for example an ora orange digi, look up its care requirements for light and flow, put it in an area of my tank that meets its needs and sort of set and forget it so to speak. The wild caught pieces on the other hand come with no instructions on what they like so it takes a little longer to find their happy place. Ive gotten a ton of good advice from this thread so it is definitely serving the purpose it was intended for. After reading this thread last night, I had taken the wild acros I just recieved from ups earlier in the day and cut a branch or two off of each one so I could place them in different spots in the tank under different light and flow. I owe that to biggles so thanks!!
biggles
Premium Member
Hey guys, thanks for the kind words and sorry for neglecting the thread.
Hey Greg, glad to hear you've gotten something useful out of the thread mate. I'd urge everyone to try fragging their wild stuff and placing pieces in a few other light/flow spots because i have corals in the tank that are very colorful but you wouldn't think they were the same acro due to the large color shifts from vastly different lighting levels. If you have a tank full of aquacultured acros and the colors are great on them all but your couple of wild pieces look poopy and drab then you have them in the wrong flow and or PAR levels, it's that simple.
From my personal experience with about 200 wild acros over the years i'd say only 5% at most failed to color despite all my efforts. I put this down to some acros requiring very, very specific conditions mimicking their wild locations on a reef. Some of my acros really poop if the flow isn't right where others are tolerant of low to high flow. Some are more tolerant of differing PAR levels whilst others need just the right amount to look how i want them to - other than the actual colors we really have no idea what a particular wild piece looked like on the reef in regards to saturation and subtle color hues etc. As long as you like the colors then that's all that matters.
Here's a good tip for anyone looking at wild sourced stuff in LFS's - ive looked at thousands so i have a pretty good eye now, take it or leave it but i might save you some needless heartache lol.
If the acros are all very brown like turds then the stores water is bad AND the lighting is inadequate either in spectrum and/or PAR.
If they are pale brown the water is bad, the lighting is ok PAR wise but can still be poor spectrum.
If the acros are pale washed out but you can still see the hints of color on the branches even after a couple of weeks then that's your store to buy your wild acros. If the store can keep them from browning or tanning and you can still tell at a glance what the colors might be then the water is clean and the light is good enough in PAR and spectrum. Don't be fooled into thinking the colors you're seeing are always going to stay the same but just improve in saturation, most times they will stay pretty true but some times they end up nothing like the colors you thought you were going to get - no matter what the case i can assure you that you will like the colors because nearly every time this happens you end up with something way cooler than you thought you were going to get.
Anyway here's two acros and a stylo when i bought them two and a half months ago. The stylo was very dark but had purple hues and i didn't want just another hot pink stylo so i grabbed it hoping for purple - nope. The acro at the front had pale purple tips and white branches which looked great - nope. The table at the back was a pale grey browny nothing color but i love anything tabling and with wishful thinking i thought i saw a tiny hint of red - YES
I have to do big color corrections using the phone camera but i try to show you what the corals really look like in regards to colors.
After trying it on the bottom for two weeks the hopefully red table looked no better so i glued a magnet to it's arse and stuck it half way up the end wall where it receives medium light and flow. It's been up there two months and i know it needs more light and flow but for now it's red with a satin green base and the new tips have a faint purple hue which is fine by me. I stick SSC frags everywhere btw, 33 at last count spread around the reef lol.
I had to under saturate the buggery out of this pic otherwise the blue table that was the purple tipped white branched acro months ago just blows out as does the almost yellow SSC pieces below it. All in high light now that i swapped the 250W for a 400W Radium. They all glow brightly so the phone is hopeless for capturing any subtle things like that. The frags of SSC in the red table pic are the same SSC but in very low light - this is why you spread them around and if i want green and dark pink SCC i go with moderate to low light. If i want yellow and light pink SSC then i just put it in high light. You can get a lot of bang for your buck with acros if you experiment with new purchases - chop 'em up ! The pink stylo near the blue table is a bit of the stupid NOT purple stylo.
See the pink stylo frag on the sand, i left it on the kitchen bench for an hour and a half when i forgot about gluing it and sat down to watch TV lol. It was as dry as a coral can get and looked dead but i chucked it back in anyway and over a month it turned pale brown and then slowly pink'd back up, you can still see damage on the top lol - SPS are a lot tougher than most give them credit for.
YOU keep the acros - don't get caught up trying to pamper them, just give them good water and light with decent flow and lots of food and they'll be happy campers for you. Sorry for rambling on but i do that............ oh i got a couple of these anthias today, the cleaner shrimp is in love because they let him molest them. The SSC frag just returned from under the stupid blue white LED for 2 weeks - i knew it would crap out but might as well try, it will be yummy within a couple of weeks back in the display
Hey Greg, glad to hear you've gotten something useful out of the thread mate. I'd urge everyone to try fragging their wild stuff and placing pieces in a few other light/flow spots because i have corals in the tank that are very colorful but you wouldn't think they were the same acro due to the large color shifts from vastly different lighting levels. If you have a tank full of aquacultured acros and the colors are great on them all but your couple of wild pieces look poopy and drab then you have them in the wrong flow and or PAR levels, it's that simple.
From my personal experience with about 200 wild acros over the years i'd say only 5% at most failed to color despite all my efforts. I put this down to some acros requiring very, very specific conditions mimicking their wild locations on a reef. Some of my acros really poop if the flow isn't right where others are tolerant of low to high flow. Some are more tolerant of differing PAR levels whilst others need just the right amount to look how i want them to - other than the actual colors we really have no idea what a particular wild piece looked like on the reef in regards to saturation and subtle color hues etc. As long as you like the colors then that's all that matters.
Here's a good tip for anyone looking at wild sourced stuff in LFS's - ive looked at thousands so i have a pretty good eye now, take it or leave it but i might save you some needless heartache lol.
If the acros are all very brown like turds then the stores water is bad AND the lighting is inadequate either in spectrum and/or PAR.
If they are pale brown the water is bad, the lighting is ok PAR wise but can still be poor spectrum.
If the acros are pale washed out but you can still see the hints of color on the branches even after a couple of weeks then that's your store to buy your wild acros. If the store can keep them from browning or tanning and you can still tell at a glance what the colors might be then the water is clean and the light is good enough in PAR and spectrum. Don't be fooled into thinking the colors you're seeing are always going to stay the same but just improve in saturation, most times they will stay pretty true but some times they end up nothing like the colors you thought you were going to get - no matter what the case i can assure you that you will like the colors because nearly every time this happens you end up with something way cooler than you thought you were going to get.
Anyway here's two acros and a stylo when i bought them two and a half months ago. The stylo was very dark but had purple hues and i didn't want just another hot pink stylo so i grabbed it hoping for purple - nope. The acro at the front had pale purple tips and white branches which looked great - nope. The table at the back was a pale grey browny nothing color but i love anything tabling and with wishful thinking i thought i saw a tiny hint of red - YES
I have to do big color corrections using the phone camera but i try to show you what the corals really look like in regards to colors.
After trying it on the bottom for two weeks the hopefully red table looked no better so i glued a magnet to it's arse and stuck it half way up the end wall where it receives medium light and flow. It's been up there two months and i know it needs more light and flow but for now it's red with a satin green base and the new tips have a faint purple hue which is fine by me. I stick SSC frags everywhere btw, 33 at last count spread around the reef lol.
I had to under saturate the buggery out of this pic otherwise the blue table that was the purple tipped white branched acro months ago just blows out as does the almost yellow SSC pieces below it. All in high light now that i swapped the 250W for a 400W Radium. They all glow brightly so the phone is hopeless for capturing any subtle things like that. The frags of SSC in the red table pic are the same SSC but in very low light - this is why you spread them around and if i want green and dark pink SCC i go with moderate to low light. If i want yellow and light pink SSC then i just put it in high light. You can get a lot of bang for your buck with acros if you experiment with new purchases - chop 'em up ! The pink stylo near the blue table is a bit of the stupid NOT purple stylo.
See the pink stylo frag on the sand, i left it on the kitchen bench for an hour and a half when i forgot about gluing it and sat down to watch TV lol. It was as dry as a coral can get and looked dead but i chucked it back in anyway and over a month it turned pale brown and then slowly pink'd back up, you can still see damage on the top lol - SPS are a lot tougher than most give them credit for.
YOU keep the acros - don't get caught up trying to pamper them, just give them good water and light with decent flow and lots of food and they'll be happy campers for you. Sorry for rambling on but i do that............ oh i got a couple of these anthias today, the cleaner shrimp is in love because they let him molest them. The SSC frag just returned from under the stupid blue white LED for 2 weeks - i knew it would crap out but might as well try, it will be yummy within a couple of weeks back in the display
trueblackpercula
New member
And this is why I call you Mr. Big lol amazing information and I just may try this on my next purchase. That red table and your SSC look amazing.
Thank you so much for your post
Thank you so much for your post
