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Mark's 150 (NanoBox Retro)


markalot

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Everything is looking really good Mark- how much Alk are you dosing in a 24hr. period and what do you try to keep it at. Also what are you running your Mg. value at?

 

Thanks!

 

95ml alk a day along with Kalk. Alk is 8.5, Mag is around 1300.

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Thanks!

 

95ml alk a day along with Kalk. Alk is 8.5, Mag is around 1300.

 

Cool- thx- I've been around 30ml day with Alk- running 9-8 . I've been struggling getting Mg. Over 1300- finally last few days have been coming in at 1350. Gotta get a doser to keep it more steady- been dosing smaller amounts morning and night to keep the swings down.

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Great looking tank, my friend. Do you mind my asking, is that a yellow acro in the center-left of the latest full tank shot? It has a vivid color that one doesn't often see in that shape. (At least this philistine is unfamiliar with it.)

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Great looking tank, my friend. Do you mind my asking, is that a yellow acro in the center-left of the latest full tank shot? It has a vivid color that one doesn't often see in that shape. (At least this philistine is unfamiliar with it.)
The green slimer? The one with multiple small branches forming at the tips? The slimer grows fast and random. Thank for the compliment. :)

 

Damn nice setup you got there. What camera are you using?
Thanks. Its a Nikon D3100. Get a Canon IMO, same quality, more options.
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Took some bad topdowns. I ordered a topdown portal thing from Avast Marine which should arrive this week. When working on the tank Saturday I noticed a few corals look simply incredible from the top but not so much from the sides. Got a couple of good shots between the silly clown trying to splash me.

 

TzWz1F.jpg

 

 

Pfs3Rk.jpg

 

 

Xg7bLX.jpg

 

QLynkg.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

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It was time to mount most of my new frags, so I had to trim both the slimer and the big purple stylo. Slimer was easy, stylo took two hands on the cutters ... and .... snap. Could be worse, but I have a few frags now I hope I can give away.

 

y2crd6.jpg

 

EY6Hbe.jpg

 

KfniRr.jpg

 

UH7hP4.jpg

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Good fts. I don't care for the way my straight on shots are coming out. Yours look sharper.

 

Thanks, but it's taken a lot of trial and error and I'm still no consistent. I even tried Adobe lightroom and ended up going back to the free Raw Therapee and learning some of the options.

 

RAW files

Noise reduction applied

Saturation boosted +30

White Balance 18,000

Green/Red Hue +300 green

Red reduction on the blue channel by 10% (my blue fish kept coming out purple, this fixed it)

Auto Chromatic aberration correction

Unsharp mask applied when saving to JPEG

Exposure etc set based on photo.

 

What really bothers me is the requirement to bump up saturation just to get it to look like my eyes see the tank. I don't know if this is a problem with the Nikon RAW files, or what. The pics look great when I view them on the Nikon LCD after taking them but are washed out when I view the RAW file. :rant:

 

The frag photos above the FTS are probably the best photos I've ever processed. The color balance and saturation are perfect and match what I see exactly. The other photos are too dark in some areas, over saturated in others and yet under saturated in still other locations. BAH. :)

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You have some nice looking new frags in there. I like the top downs especially.

 

Pfs3Rk.jpg

Your coral from Kat is looking nice. I hope to get a frag some day.

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I'm losing this little acro, which has not grown much since I got it as a random frag 6 months ago.

 

ccEynx.jpg

 

Ran tests ...

 

Alk 9.6 -- this has been slowly creeping up from 9.1 over a week ago and my goal is 8.5 so I reduced the daily dose another 5ml for both 2 parts. I measured 9.3 yesterday but that's probably a testing or timing issue.

 

Calcium 450 -- I always dose equal two parts so I let this drift where it wants.

 

Magnesium ~ 1650 - woops I guess I'll stop adding it weekly and let it drift down.

 

I've also started adding 25ml/gallon of vinegar to my topoff Kalk mixture to increase the potency and save me $$ and this might be the reason Alk is rising.

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Are you noticing anything else not doing well? Your corals all look like they are thriving. MG is high but that's the only thing out of line - CA is a little high in comparison to Alk but not anything that would be an issue. Do you do weekly water changes? How's Strontium?

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Are you noticing anything else not doing well? Your corals all look like they are thriving. MG is high but that's the only thing out of line - CA is a little high in comparison to Alk but not anything that would be an issue. Do you do weekly water changes? How's Strontium?

 

Everything else seems to be fine, and this coral didn't lose anymore skin last night. /shrug

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Top down photo dump. I am amazed and confused by these clors. Even my brown milli looks like it has color.

 

UC Rainbow Milli

jzhtUS.jpg

 

Unknown Milli

IMPdwE.jpg

 

Purple Stylo

QmRTGJ.jpg

 

Unknown Green Acro

1AZERX.jpg

 

f3QfkG.jpg

 

My favorite Poci, green and yellow.

 

1tgIMr.jpg

 

Ponape

8FM9RE.jpg

 

Red Robin stag

dQtXYL.jpg

 

Unknown blue tip ... the blue is spreading!

PWOWu3.jpg

 

Had to take at least one of the Slimer

WKnDYm.jpg

 

Strawberry Shortcake (SSC) is bright from the top.

zszCib.jpg

 

Joe the Coral

iSmZRT.jpg

 

A&M Fuzzy Purple

6YToaR.jpg

 

New tiny $10 frag I could not resist with blue polyps.

t1Tugk.jpg

 

 

jacquelineae

htcHHn.jpg

 

Katropora (wow)

Sw5uOo.jpg

 

sarmentosa

VKqQia.jpg

 

Plum Crazy. Now, I had one of these before in my 46 when I thought I introduced AEFW again and I tossed it and then dipped and scraped my poor rainbow milli. Um, well, ha, it appears this one has a nasty habit of producing coralites on the stem with white margins that to a newb might looks exactly like AEFW bites. :blush: I bleached then browned this poor thing and it's finally recovering.

 

MDP3jZ.jpg

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So I might have bought two 150W Current Outer Orbit pendants just because they were cheap. Not sure exactly what the heck I can do with them but at least i can say I have Halide in the house. These are spotlights rather than big quality reflectors but I'm hoping I can somehow combine with my LED fixture to give a better spread. Perhaps remove the smaller Razor and go with something like:

 

O ------------ O MH, Razor, MH

------------------ BML LED

 

My other thought it so somehow try to improve the lighting in the middle of the tank.

 

O O

------------- ------- Razors

--------------------- BML

 

Hmmm, or

 

--------------------- BML

------------- ------- Razors

O O MH, somehow angled back a bit.

 

 

Or perhaps they will simply collect dust like all my other lights. :D

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jedimasterben

The issue you're going to have is very uneven lighting unless you were to remove the LED PCB from the R420Rs and mount them around the halide pendants.

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One of my tricolors has corallites that look like AEFW nibbles.. it'd be toast by now if it was FW's. Had me lookin reaaaal hard for a bit. How you gettin your ponape to not grow so dense? Mine is like all nubbed out.

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The issue you're going to have is very uneven lighting unless you were to remove the LED PCB from the R420Rs and mount them around the halide pendants.

 

Yea, it's going to be a challenge. I can hang them in front of the LED fixtures as well, and I already have some uneven lighting due to the center brace combined with the gap between the Razors. It's not as noticeable with the BML providing fill but you can really see it when measuring PAR.

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