Mark's 150 (NanoBox Retro)

[markalot]

Pink one is nice.

 

Macro shots, pumps off, 200 ISO, lens on glass ... back hurts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tempted to do some surgery on this one. Maybe take a small pin and damage the worms enough for it to encrust over the holes.

 

 

 

Cousin It

[Mariaface]

Welp. There are my new rotating desktop wallpapers..

[teenyreef]

They are all great pictures, but that second shot is just fantastic. I have a really hard time getting good pictures of corals like that one from the side because the highlights usually get blown out no matter what I do. Nice job

[Mariaface]

They are all great pictures, but that second shot is just fantastic. I have a really hard time getting good pictures of corals like that one from the side because the highlights usually get blown out no matter what I do. Nice job

 

That's the one I saved first

[markalot]

They are all great pictures, but that second shot is just fantastic. I have a really hard time getting good pictures of corals like that one from the side because the highlights usually get blown out no matter what I do. Nice job

 

 

 

That's the one I saved first

 

Thanks. That's the peach dragon taken way under exposed, brightened just enough no to blow out the whites and then I dropped the shadows back to hide the back of the tank. The details on that little dragon are amazing.

[markalot]

Fish Pictures. Took 50, just a few worth showing. Imagine if we still had to buy film!

 

Female Lyretail Anthias

 

Jackass

 

 

These guys make taking good fish photos look easy.

 

Mama clown.

 

In those last two, look how red Cousin It looks (the blur on the right and top right). If I took a picture looking at it there's no way that much red shows up.

[Veng]

Imagine if we still had to buy film!

I'm glad I don't. I've slowed down the last year or so, but for the previous several years I was taking 18K? pictures a year. About 1K a month plus huge amounts on vacations. I probably called around 200 a year "keepers". I would spend about 10$ per 35 exposures if I had to buy film, that's about 5000$ a year in film and development costs. I know for sure I'd take less shots if it cost me that much!

[markalot]

Pulled out a much better lens. An older Nikon 50mm 1.8 that only supports manual focus on this camera. Equates to about 70mm using this camera body which means I would have to go to the neighbors house if I wanted to take a FTS.

 

Goal here as to adjust camera so brightest part was at max exposure but not over exposed to try and capture color detail. These are a lot darker than I usually like to take.

 

KBG is actually showing a little more blue on the branches. I named it Kentucky Bluegrass but i didn't expect it to show any blue.

 

 

 

 

Red Robin is not very red at the moment but this shot does capture the odd blue/green base.

 

The edge of the Undata is bright purple but I was unable to get a picture that showed it well.

 

Super dark to avoid blowing out the tips of the Miami Orchid. Much like the Undata I can't capture the intense light purple of the tips.

 

 

 

[markalot]

I forgot the most important picture.

 

BOTTLES!

 

$12 for 12 dropper bottles. Tried to give most to the wife but she only took 4.

 

First up will be AcroPower. Started dosing small amounts 4 days ago and the coral colors already look better. Perfect for a dropper. I forgot I had a giant bottle until it got in my way moving something else.

[markalot]

3 1/2 years, 2 tanks, one rock called home.

 

 

 

 

 

[markalot]

Trudging back through my first tank thread. Oh the corals lost to idiot newbie mistakes.

 

I did forget that the crazy bird will turn pink if you put 6 T5's on legs above a 40 breeder and wonder why all your corals are bleached.

 

.. and, sniff, one of my favorite lost acros. Really the first one besides the slimer I was able to get some colors on.

[RIP Sebastian]

That blenny is too cute!

[markalot]

Made some changes.

 

Lowered lights by an inch, increasing PAR by about 50 throughout the tank.

 

Created a mini pillar and moved the Palmers Blue milli from a frag rock out to the middle of the tank.

 

Booted the brown acro to the sandbed. It's tripled in size yet still brown, so bye. Replaced it with something that is similar to an SSC but more green. Badly damaged but has made a decent recovery so time to move it into the light.

 

I broke two more branches off the green digi by accident while shifting the peach dragon over and down. Not even going to talk about it. Grrrrr.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the acro that takes brownies place.

 

This little one was in worse shape but I moved it a month ago and it's done very well. Color under Halide is pink plus yellowish.

 

A few other shots.

 

Horrida

 

 

 

Montipora capitata

 

Setosa

 

A couple of blurry side shots

 

 

[markalot]

PAR

[HarryPotter]

PAR

 

 

 

 

Wooooooooowwwweeee things are looking amazing! Nice!

 

Edit:

 

I just realized that now that I use a T5 fixture, a par meter will work? Before I couldn't because of LED

[markalot]

 

 

 

 

Wooooooooowwwweeee things are looking amazing! Nice!

 

Edit:

 

I just realized that now that I use a T5 fixture, a par meter will work? Before I couldn't because of LED

 

Thanks Harry.

 

PAR meters always work, you just have to apply a small + correction if overly blue.

 

---

 

So you ever have one of those evenings where you are going to do one thing and everything goes wrong? I mean to tell you a quarter of my glue welds failed while trying to slightly move one rock. It took over an hour (ha, 4 hours) to fix everything and the Horrida is still carefully placed in the sandbed for now. Even my purple poci got knocked off after i brushed it with my hand, so it would have fallen in a few days anyway.

 

I also broke the top off one of the better blue stag pieces.

 

One good thing is that as I was wrapping up I noticed the Palmer's blue was wobbling in the flow. Good grief, the base had broken and was coming off the plug. Had I not been futzing around in the tank I might have lost it overnight.

 

This failure is my penchant for piling rocks to make a scape rather than carefully posting and gluing. For now everything seems to be stable, very stable, but I don't have a spot for the horrida. Going to figure that out tomorrow.

 

Oh, and the not so pretty milli that I moved to the bottom middle of the tank glows 14 karat gold with the blue lights on. Spectacular looking ... but still very drab with all the lights on. Silly thing. Yea, I broke a small branch off it as well. *sigh*

 

More 2 part epoxy and super glued hands are in my future.

[metrokat]

I forgot the most important picture.

 

BOTTLES!

 

$12 for 12 dropper bottles. Tried to give most to the wife but she only took 4.

 

First up will be AcroPower. Started dosing small amounts 4 days ago and the coral colors already look better. Perfect for a dropper. I forgot I had a giant bottle until it got in my way moving something else.

Link please

[markalot]

Link please

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018Y3QEJU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[markalot]

Gah, what a royal mess.

 

So in short here's what happened.

 

While working on the right side of the tank the big shelf shifted just enough to send the Lokani tumbling into the glass. Finally some frags ... no, wait, the damn thing put a scratch in the glass where it hit. Good grief. From that point on things just got worse. As I tried to fix it the SSC came loose and as I grabbed it to prevent damage I knocked the piece holding the horrida and it came loose. Is this some kind of cruel joke?

 

While the horrida was on the sandbed I took a picture. Look how blue the base is.

 

The left side rock structure has been an issue for a while now so since all hell was breaking loose, why not. It's basically a volcano like structure with the center being pieces of those fake rocks sticking up. None of it was glued and the structure was shifting so I did a lot of two part, shoving and gluing to get it fairly stable again. I broke a few pieces doing this but I have to say, now that things are done, I kind of like the results.

 

Mid reconstruction with the pumps off and the horrida base drying on the rock structure. I lifted and moved this branch piece to the right to make sure the horrida is getting the same PAR it was near the center of the tank.

 

 

After that was done it was time to reconstruct the blue stag. Here's the best growing tip that I managed to break but save.

 

And here is the new left side structure with the stag rocks glued in place. These are getting about 50 par more than they used to so hopefully they might decide to color back up.

 

 

One other benefit of moving the big branch over is the red planet like acro gets some extra space between it and the slimer beast.

 

Oh yea, when the shelf shifted the huge Valida came loose. I turned it completely around and was impressed to find a healthy base and really good color on the back side. It's jammed between two millis now but has room to continue growing in back and front.

 

No color loss detected after doing all of this.

 

Cousin It is not pink. It's a very strong orange at the moment, maybe a light red or peach, but not pink.

 

Ended up turning the SSC piece 45 degrees when remounting the rock it was on. Looking very nice from this angle.

 

 

 

Left Side

 

 

Right

 

Tested KH to make sure I didn't shake up the tank too much and end up with an Alk spike. I was surprised to find it pretty low, 6.5 or a little less. Dosed it up to 6.8 with 2 part.

[Mariaface]

So do you just like.. go diving in there, snorkel and all?

[markalot]

So do you just like.. go diving in there, snorkel and all?

 

The tank is a pain in the butt to work in and I'm regularly soaking my short sleeve shirt reaching for the bottom. Not to mention it's cold in the basement. Just relieved it's done .. but now I need to take some big frags into the LFS.

[metrokat]

The joys of a big reef

And exactly why I have the no armpit soaking rule. 18 inches tall, that's my line in the sand.

[Veng]

18 inches tall, that's my line in the sand.

18 inches? That sounds like a very deep sandbed.

[jedimasterben]

18 inches? That sounds like a very deep sandbed.

bazinga!

[metrokat]

18 inches? That sounds like a very deep sandbed.