markalot Posted October 17, 2014 Author Share Posted October 17, 2014 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. 1 Quote Link to comment
Sk8n Reefer Posted October 17, 2014 Share Posted October 17, 2014 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. 1 Quote Link to comment
latteslave Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 Colors looking good! 1 Quote Link to comment
Spenseriana Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 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.) 1 Quote Link to comment
atrox Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 Damn nice setup you got there. What camera are you using? 1 Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 18, 2014 Author Share Posted October 18, 2014 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. 1 Quote Link to comment
Spenseriana Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 Yeah, that's it. What a cool piece! 1 Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 18, 2014 Author Share Posted October 18, 2014 Yeah, that's it. What a cool piece! By far the easiest Acropora to grow if you are thinking of trying acros. Quote Link to comment
Spenseriana Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 I definitely am. It will be a few months, though, before I'm ready for one. Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 19, 2014 Author Share Posted October 19, 2014 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. 5 Quote Link to comment
Cameron6796 Posted October 19, 2014 Share Posted October 19, 2014 Very nice love them nem Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 20, 2014 Author Share Posted October 20, 2014 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. 5 Quote Link to comment
latteslave Posted October 20, 2014 Share Posted October 20, 2014 Good fts. I don't care for the way my straight on shots are coming out. Yours look sharper. 1 Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 20, 2014 Author Share Posted October 20, 2014 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. 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. 2 Quote Link to comment
latteslave Posted October 20, 2014 Share Posted October 20, 2014 That's the same issue I am having but I haven't really been able to nail down the white balance and keep it from getting grainy. 1 Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 20, 2014 Author Share Posted October 20, 2014 So my Alk has slowly crept up to 9.3 over 3 weeks. Dropped dosing by 3 ml a day to see if I can creep back down to 8.5. Quote Link to comment
Arkayology Posted October 20, 2014 Share Posted October 20, 2014 You have some nice looking new frags in there. I like the top downs especially. Your coral from Kat is looking nice. I hope to get a frag some day. 2 Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 21, 2014 Author Share Posted October 21, 2014 I'm losing this little acro, which has not grown much since I got it as a random frag 6 months ago. 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. 1 Quote Link to comment
latteslave Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 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? Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 21, 2014 Author Share Posted October 21, 2014 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 Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 Top down photo dump. I am amazed and confused by these clors. Even my brown milli looks like it has color. UC Rainbow Milli Unknown Milli Purple Stylo Unknown Green Acro My favorite Poci, green and yellow. Ponape Red Robin stag Unknown blue tip ... the blue is spreading! Had to take at least one of the Slimer Strawberry Shortcake (SSC) is bright from the top. Joe the Coral A&M Fuzzy Purple New tiny $10 frag I could not resist with blue polyps. jacquelineae Katropora (wow) sarmentosa 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. I bleached then browned this poor thing and it's finally recovering. 6 Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 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. 1 Quote Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 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. 1 Quote Link to comment
MikeTR Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 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. Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 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. Quote Link to comment
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