Beware the Shallows

[richgoose]

you have alot of good looking fish, but my favorite is the lovebird neons...

[hypostatic]

 

 

 

you have alot of good looking fish, but my favorite is the lovebird neons...

 

 

seriously those things are too cute

[ArabTanker]

Congrats on the new skimmer, bud.

[metrokat]

Awww

[Tamberav]

Grats on skimmer!

[jedimasterben]

Tried to get some pics today, failed miserably. Took around a hundred, only these were halfway decent, and most still out of focus. I really need a better lens to try and make up for my crap skills.

 

FTS

 

 

Six of the nine maxis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm still fully unable to get a decent picture of this fish, the camera just cannot figure out what do with the purple color.

 

 

But look at it going after pellets! That thing has a massive mouth.

 

 

Peek a boo

[jedimasterben]

Tank is still covered in cyano mats. Not sure if I want to tempt fate (well, dinoflagellates) with carbon dosing or what. I've got 100mL of Phosguard that's been in the tank a week with no end in sight. I've moved one of the MP40s up a bit (it had drooped down almost two inches) and I was able to successfully up my return pump to 50% capacity without any additional noise, so I hope that the higher turnover rate will increase particles getting to the skimmer. I've been using KZ Coral Snow almost daily.

 

For losses, the stylophora and montipora from Reefgardener bit the dust. They both weren't looking so hot on the rack, so I moved them to the rocks, still went downhill. The birdsnest has lost color intensity, but has no tissue recession and has full polyp extension. The brain coral is almost fully gone now. It only has a couple of bits of flesh holding on to the skeleton and has almost no extension. Cyano has matted it and immediately afterward is when the recession sped up, so I am thinking that it is the ultimate cause of its demise.

 

For fish, I have not seen the royal gramma or the dispar anthias in a couple of days. The royal gramma may be hiding (I didn't see it for a week after putting it in), but the anthias was always out and about, so I fear that didn't make it, it was only interested in frozen foods and I was not able to keep up with it (as I feed almost exclusively pellets).

 

All other fish and corals seem to be doing pretty well, despite the cyano matting issues.

[markalot]

What post processing program are you using for the pictures?

 

Light looks damn bright, did you post somewhere how much PAR is going into the tank? I would reduce it to 300 tops on the top of the rocks, and hopefully that would do 150 or so on the sandbed?

 

I have cyano for the very first time in my reefing career. Not much, but I'm damn happy about it.

[jedimasterben]

What post processing program are you using for the pictures?

Lightroom.

 

Light looks damn bright, did you post somewhere how much PAR is going into the tank? I would reduce it to 300 tops on the top of the rocks, and hopefully that would do 150 or so on the sandbed?

Peak is 30-50% on the LEDs (each LED is different) on a parabolic lighting scheme, lately has been around 11.5 hours total photoperiod. T5 tubes on for 8 hours.

 

All LED at 1A (except B/R at 700mA)

 

2x Blue Plus

 

I have cyano for the very first time in my reefing career. Not much, but I'm damn happy about it.

This is really my first bout with it, as well. At first I thought it was dinos, but then realized it wasn't, phew!

[markalot]

Did you do the 20% correction for LED's on those numbers?

 

I have been unable to kill stylos, which means they should be pretty easy ... unless this as a pink or rainbow, I hear those are hard as hell to keep alive.

 

My goal would be to acclimate on the sandbed, then move everything up and make sure it lives, and then start cranking the light way up to see if you can coax the really high par colors out of some of these corals. Sounds like a 2 year process.

[jedimasterben]

Did you do the 20% correction for LED's on those numbers?

It's not 20%. Each is different (the worst is almost a 70% correction) and were calculated accordingly.

 

I have been unable to kill stylos, which means they should be pretty easy ... unless this as a pink or rainbow, I hear those are hard as hell to keep alive.

I kept a beautiful rainbow/purple stylo for the longest time before dinos crept in and started their killing spree.

 

 

It started from the single stalk and had just started splitting into two a few months before this picture was taken.

 

My goal would be to acclimate on the sandbed, then move everything up and make sure it lives, and then start cranking the light way up to see if you can coax the really high par colors out of some of these corals. Sounds like a 2 year process.

Usually I've got a frag rack that is low in PAR (around 120 or so peak) and that's where they were kept for the first couple of weeks and went downhill. Figured I didn't have much to lose moving them around since they were gonna croak anyway.

 

And to find that pic above I got really really sad reminiscing.

 

 

from this array

 

 

 

[jedimasterben]

Found the PAR for that first array.

 

 

[DrVENKMAN]

All of your fish look great. I am regretting not going with a bigger tank for my upgrade to accomodate a Kole and some anthias.

[Tamberav]

I bleached my rainbow stylo moved it up slowly under t5's but it stilled bleached to hell. I had it directly under a par38 like 2 inches down and it was fine. Has great polyp extension, hopefully its color comes back.

[jedimasterben]

I'm surprised that I had such explosive growth under such little total DLI. The numbers above are the peak numbers with all LEDs at 100% intensity, and I didn't run them at 100%, and they were run on a sloped ramp with a four hour ramp up and down, four hour peak.

[SouthFlorida_Tron]

Can you post a picture of the damage?

[jedimasterben]

Can you post a picture of the damage?

Of the stylo and monti? They're completely toast. Slow bleaching on the stylo from the bottom and then it RTNd, the monti just RTNd.

[markalot]

Can't hurt to back everything off to, say, 300 max and see what happens. /shrug

 

I'm sure you thought about all of this, just bouncing ideas ti see if anything sticks. That rainbow stylo was beautiful.

[jedimasterben]

And after uploading to Picasa, that image is insanely dark. Yippee.

[Nano sapiens]

Sorry to hear about the on-going algae/cyano issues. I have a few recurring cyano/diatom pockets on the SB, but nothing like what you are dealing with.

 

The cyano and diatoms problems seems to be more widespread in the summer/warmer months this year. I've seen a few posts lately from experienced reefers who normally don't have blooms and are scratching their heads a bit.

[jedimasterben]

Never thought of this til now.

 

[1.0reef]

That Tilefish is amazing!

[jedimasterben]

just got home, both my neons and both my tangs are nowhere to be found. just when I was actually having good luck with fish again

 

 

and though it doesn't mean much since they're so small and blend in so well with the rocks, I can't see the two sailfin blennies, either.

[Arkayology]

just got home, both my neons and both my tangs are nowhere to be found. just when I was actually having good luck with fish again

 

 

and though it doesn't mean much since they're so small and blend in so well with the rocks, I can't see the two sailfin blennies, either.

Sorry man. I hope they are just hiding really well.

[jedimasterben]

Sorry man. I hope they are just hiding really well.

Unfortunately tangs and neons both don't really ever hide, especially not at length

 

maybe i should just fill the tank with chromis, those have always historically done well for me