LITTLE BLUE| IM30L (picking up pieces after the crush)

[A Little Blue]

9 minutes ago, specore said:

I think the reason I am drawn to his tank is he really owned the BB thing.  There wasn't an attempt to grow GSP or even place corals on the bottom,  and the result was your focus went entirely to the reef structure itself.  At one point he even put an acrylic square underneath his reef structure which gave a cool effect.  

 

Yours looks great BTW...it's one of the BB's I really like.  

Oh thank you. I would go with the idea of keeping B.B. clear (and I did at the beginning) but certain corals became an issue as far as stinging tentacles and growth was concern. Torches and Caps are a good example. I also keep sponges, big gorgs and few sensitive coral on the bottom for obvious reasons. 

But I love how easy this tank is to maintain. And that lets me focus on more important things such as testing, keeping my parameters in check and just enjoying the tank. 

2 minutes ago, specore said:

I'll have to look it up

Very popular channel and very nice guy. 

[A Little Blue]

I have mentally buried this as**** months ago and replaced him with “Bolt”. I love this guy but his disappearing act is getting on my nerves. 

So now I got 6!!! fish in 30g (excluding inverts) and that makes me a little nervous. 

 

(pic taken from several feet away as he gets spooked easily) 

 

Quick pic of a frag tank after some clean up for better frontal view. 

(Notice two piles of detritus on the bottom right. That’s how it accumulates over few weeks. Very easy to clean that crap up. And that’s the point. If it is easy, you do it more often)

[specore]

6 is good number

[A Little Blue]

On 9/14/2018 at 5:57 PM, specore said:

6 is good number

Let’s hope it’s a lucky number and my setup can handle it with some margin for potential screwups. 

 

[A Little Blue]

22 WEEKS SINCE THE MOVE VIDEO UPDATE 

[teenyreef]

Great update! I can't wait to see all those acros filling in 🙂

[A Little Blue]

15 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

Great update! I can't wait to see all those acros filling in 🙂

TY and so am I. With such a small spacing between them I am sure some won’t make it. As the saying goes, do what I say not what I do. Lol 👍

[A Little Blue]

 New hobbyists often ask this Q: how to prevent corals from growing over another or killing neighboring coral. Since I run to some of those issues b4 and I have 2 deal with this little issue at the moment, I figured why not mention it in my journal.

 Here is an easy solution to separate corals with aggressive intentions, encrusting species or other guys such as RFA from other corals. 

(Easier solution would be a smart placement with enough room to prevent such a nonsense but most of us are guilty of this.)

 

 

*Epoxy can be peeled off if encrusting coral grows over it. It would make a nice frag for grow-out tank or frag-swap. 

[teenyreef]

Great tip! I just finished cutting apart a rock to separate two corals and I should have used your idea back before it was too late. 

[A Little Blue]

2 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

Great tip! I just finished cutting apart a rock to separate two corals and I should have used your idea back before it was too late. 

Wish I could take credit for this tip but I hope others can find it useful in very common problem of overstocking. Something that we are all guilty of. 

I can only imagine how much work and effort it took to split your rock to save your coral. Hope you didn’t lose anything in the process. 

[teenyreef]

30 minutes ago, A Little Blue said:

Wish I could take credit for this tip but I hope others can find it useful in very common problem of overstocking. Something that we are all guilty of. 

I can only imagine how much work and effort it took to split your rock to save your coral. Hope you didn’t lose anything in the process. 

Oh, it was just a little rock 🙂

[A Little Blue]

Itchy fingers. Was looking for nice chalices and up with just one and more sticks. 🙄

 

And few random shots. Couldn’t take a better pic of Turquoise Stag- 3th pic from the bottom as it is placed lower in the tank (giving it some room to shoot up towards the light).

Bought some AcroPower to try out and new filter floss that seems to be an improvement over what I’ve used before. Everything is doing fine so not much of an update. One thing I do know for sure is that I’ll replace Kessils A160 with new Kessils 360X when they come out in Nov. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[A Little Blue]

I’m not crazy about zoas so I keep them in my frag tank but this little colony is kinda nice and it filled a “bold”, partially shaded spot on my rock in the middle quite nicely.

Got it from my favorite LFS at 1/2 price what JFox charges (JF crazy rainbow or something like that🙄). 

Colors might be a little different but than again, almost everything looks different in my tank. 

 

 

 

[A Little Blue]

Color difference between top/down and front/through glass shots. (And web pic taken/presented by one of the boutique vendors) 

 

FTS 

 

Top-down

 

Photoshoped to give wow effect to unaware buyer. Or if you run your tank strictly under actinic blues and like to cook your corals that way. 

 

Buy me shot

 

Coral is WWC Cherry Tree bought from local reefer. 

[A Little Blue]

Remember Zoa pic from earlier today? (more blue setting) 

Here is a pic of the same zoas at higher intensity, spectrum that is closer to daylight and a wider shot. Amazing how different light rendition affects coloration. No wonder corals on line or other people’s tank look different than your own. Hell! These zoas looked totally different this morning. Lol 

 

[A Little Blue]

Grazing on fresh algae while pumps are turned OFF. 

 

Wide Top-Down

 

 

 

Random Purple Cap, chipped off/lost pieces that refused to die and be forgotten. 

 

 

 

My flow methodology visualized. 

 

 

 

[teenyreef]

Beautiful pictures! I agree about how different light changes the way some corals look. I run mine with heavy blues in the evenings just because everything looks so good. I don't mind seeing coral vendor pics under blues, but only if they aren't oversaturated or otherwise artificially enhanced. It's so hard to get pictures that accurately portray the way corals look under blues. 

[A Little Blue]

6 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

Beautiful pictures! I agree about how different light changes the way some corals look. I run mine with heavy blues in the evenings just because everything looks so good. I don't mind seeing coral vendor pics under blues, but only if they aren't oversaturated or otherwise artificially enhanced. It's so hard to get pictures that accurately portray the way corals look under blues. 

That’s almost exactly what I do as well. Bluish morning > daylight for 4-5hrs > gradual shift towards actinic blues for the remaining of the photoperiod. 

 

To to be honest, I don’t have any theories on what spectrum grows coral better (maybe I do but it’s irrelevent lol). I have heard both sides of the this argument from two guru personalities in this hobby/industry and their theories contradict each other. 🙄

Actinic blues do make corals “pop”, no question about it. I like it somewhere between 11K-16K personally. 

 

Thank you for complements on pics. 

I try really hard to portray coloration of my tank/corals/fish as accurately as I can. iPhone isn’t the most sophisticated tool out there but it gets the job done and it is convenient. 

 

I would like like to see more vendors present their stock under at least two spectrums tho. Actinic and something closer to daylight. 

 

I’ll have new shipment of corals waiting for me later today when I get home so, I am curious how accurate vendor pics were this time. He is using totally different lighting on his tanks so it will be hard to judge. I got maybe 20 corals from him and I haven’t been disappointed yet. Color rendition is almost always spot on. 

[A Little Blue]

Arrived earlier today. Pissed after dipping but alive. I like corals from this vendor. Color is mostly accurate and frags relatively clean. I mean, I didn’t find anything alarming and I was really looking hard but as a precaution I re-plug new frags (unless it is on a new/clean frag plug) and isolate the ones that could  possibly develop an issue (especially montis). 

Also received a really nice freebie which I’ll post pic of later on as it’s in my frag tank at the moment. 

 

[teenyreef]

Nice! What are they? 

[A Little Blue]

17 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

Nice! What are they? 

From ASD:

[teenyreef]

ASD is one of my favorite vendors. Good prices and they always look exactly like they do in the pictures.

[A Little Blue]

37 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

ASD is one of my favorite vendors. Good prices and they always look exactly like they do in the pictures.

I don’t have much experience with online vendors so I cant say who is good or not. But their prices, service and selection is pretty good. I purchased well over a dozen frags from them and I haven’t found any nasty crap on their corals yet. 

That makes me happy. And if there is a problem with their stock, they call me to let me know what the issue is. Good guys so far. 

[A Little Blue]

Taking week long vacation starting next weekend so no more additions, changes or tweaks. Going to do a WC today or tomorrow, setup doser and give a basic crush coarse to my daughter on feeding procedure. 

 

Here is a freebie under 2 different spectrums (Kessil). It looked more yellow under HD Prime in Q tank. 

 

Kessil 13K %90 intensity & 19K %73int. 

HD

 

Some random weekend pics. 

 

[A Little Blue]

OK, so I was trying to calculate my total flow rate in my tank and perhaps you can help me quesstimate approximate value. 

 

Here are the pumps/wavemakers:

• One Jebao return pump rated at 528gph

• Three KPS wave-maker pumps 370-1050gph

Return pump is set to about %90. There is one stock return nuzzle and one RFG nuzzle that restricts flow by approximately 20-25 percent.

 

KPS pumps run on various wave modes throughout the day but most modes are set to pulse between %100 - %60 (2.5sec between waves/pulses). Flow varies between 60-100 percent except night mode when all wave-makers are set to night mode at 50-60 percent. 

 

• My questimation is somewhere between 2300-2600gph.

• Tank total water volume is about 27g after cheap tweak to raise water level in the display tank a bit. 

 

With that in mind, it seems that my overall turnaround rate is anywhere between 85-96 times per hour. 

 

Interestingly enough I feel I could replace one of the KPS wavemakers with new AI Nero 5 pump (not at full blast ofcause) for even better, more even flow due to new propeller design. 

Any thoughts?