skyscraper’s PicO III Reboot (7 Month Update 4/8, new photos)

[skyscraper2290]

So not too much to update, the TSB is doing great and is getting more and more comfortable in the tank. With my trip to Chicago I wasn’t able to keep up with dosing to maintain 8 alk and when I tested it late last week it had dropped to 6.7. Since then I have gotten it back up to about 7.3 and will be focusing on slowly getting it back up to 8. Nothing was showing any bad effects though. 

 

Growth has been looking good on the SPS and the zoa garden is really starting to fill in. The main coral that isn’t thriving in the tank now are my acans. It might be where they are mounted but have be thinking about taking the torch out of the sand bed and mount it in a rock and then get a big disk to put the acans on in the sand bed. This will also hopefully allow for some room for a couple more SPS (montis and acros most likely) but don’t know if I will do this for sure. 

 

Other than that still continuing with 2 approximate 15% WCs per week. I’m dosing Red Sea part A and B, NoPox, and Red Sea part A and B reef nutrition. I will probably have to add the Red Sea mag dosing because the blue bucket salt has lower mag than I want to run. For the most part though the tank is on auto pilot and just focusing on keeping my hands out. I still need to get new photos together for my 5 month update. I saw quite a bit of growth between months 4-5 so really want to see some before and after pics. 

 

Cheers everyone! O and here are a couple photos from Chicago...

 

 

 

[Reefkid88]

That first pic though !!!! Glad to hear everything is chugging along nicely. 

[skyscraper2290]

1 hour ago, Reefkid88 said:

That first pic though !!!! Glad to hear everything is chugging along nicely. 

Thank you! How is your tank coming btw? I haven’t seen a notification for it in a while. Maybe I missed it because I haven’t been very active on here recently.

[Reefkid88]

Its going,I'm waiting on my tax return and I am getting the ato and salt and it will be running. So maybe in a week or so. 

[ninjamyst]

amazing city of Chicago skyline!  been living here for like 20 years and your pic makes me hate this city less.  hahahah

[skyscraper2290]

2 hours ago, ninjamyst said:

amazing city of Chicago skyline!  been living here for like 20 years and your pic makes me hate this city less.  hahahah

Thanks!! I really need to stitch the whole pano together. It seemed like a really cool city from at least the small amount I saw! 

 

4 hours ago, Reefkid88 said:

Its going,I'm waiting on my tax return and I am getting the ato and salt and it will be running. So maybe in a week or so. 

Awesome! Can’t wait to see it!

[skyscraper2290]

All right, so had some time last night to take a bunch of photos for my 5 month update. It is going to be broken up in a few different posts.

 

FTS

2/18

 

1/13

 

2/18

 

1/13

 

2/18

 

2/18

[skyscraper2290]

Zoas

Mary Jane

 

Spit Fire

 

Rastas

 

Utter Chaos

 

White Walker

 

Armor of God

 

Hawaiian People Eater

 

Captain America's

 

Pink Hippo

 

Japanese Star Burst

 

Frost Brite

 

[skyscraper2290]

SPS

Golden Pavona

 

Diablo Milli, seems that most milli's in my tank just turn green haha

 

Green Acro

 

Pearlberry, you can see on the left side where the GCG had munched on the base

 

Birdsnest, 2/18

 

10/25

 

Unknown Milli

 

PC Rainbow, 2/18 already seeing some encrusting on this frag

 

1/26

 

Jedi Mind Trick

 

Pink monti with yellow polyps

 

 

[shaner014]

Shots look great! 

 

Can you share your Camera and Light settings used to achieve this? Thanks!

[skyscraper2290]

WWC Graphed Cap, 2/18

 

 

LPS

Torch

 

 

Indo Hammer

 

Splatter Hammer

 

Sonic the Hedgehog Galaxea

 

 

 

 

[skyscraper2290]

Hammer Garden

 

Zoa Garden

 

[skyscraper2290]

3 minutes ago, shaner014 said:

Shots look great! 

 

Can you share your Camera and Light settings used to achieve this? Thanks!

Thanks!! I took all of these with a Sony A7RII with a Tamron 28-75MM F/2.8 with 26MM extension tubes for all the coral shots and then I used a Rokinon 24MM F/1.4 for the whole tank shots. Most photos were shot between F/11-16 with my exposure typically at 1/4" to 1/30" at 500 ISO. My duo is an older model so only has 2 channels, I had it on my evening settings which are 12% on my white channel and 65% on my blue channel.

[shaner014]

1 minute ago, skyscraper2290 said:

Thanks!! I took all of these with a Sony A7RII with a Tamron 28-75MM F/2.8 with 26MM extension tubes for all the coral shots and then I used a Rokinon 24MM F/1.4 for the whole tank shots. Most photos were shot between F/11-16 with my exposure typically at 1/4" to 1/30" at 500 ISO. My duo is an older model so only has 2 channels, I had it on my evening settings which are 12% on my white channel and 65% on my blue channel.

Thanks!!!

 

Any orange filter used? Are you pulling them into any editing software and adjusting white balance, saturation and the like? Or are these SOOC? (Straight out of camera)

[skyscraper2290]

9 minutes ago, shaner014 said:

Thanks!!!

 

Any orange filter used? Are you pulling them into any editing software and adjusting white balance, saturation and the like? Or are these SOOC? (Straight out of camera)

 

So no orange filter, I shoot at 9900K for my WB in camera. I’m too lazy to set up a custom WB for the tank even though I should. I then put everything in Adobe LR to do some basic editing, usually change the WB because I shoot in RAW and it makes it really easy. I don’t really do anything else for color enhancement. So no vibrance or saturation adjustment. Then I edit in photoshop to just save the image for web. Here is the copy of my settings for the hammer garden photo, the one thing you don’t see is the lens correction and that’s just using the LR profile for it.

 

[skyscraper2290]

Also @shaner014 I shot all the coral photos at 75MM and then still crop very heavily on most photos. It's one of the nice perks on shooting with a camera with 42MP. I still would love to get a 100MM macro lens to get clearer and sharper photos. 

[Reefkid88]

SWEET BABY JESUS !!! Your tank looks absolutely UHMAZING dude wow. 

[skyscraper2290]

1 minute ago, Reefkid88 said:

SWEET BABY JESUS !!! Your tank looks absolutely UHMAZING dude wow. 

Thanks! I really appreciate that!

[Reefkid88]

Everything looks so happy,you are doing a phenomenal job making everything so happy. 

[skyscraper2290]

2 minutes ago, Reefkid88 said:

Everything looks so happy,you are doing a phenomenal job making everything so happy. 

I think the 2 WC's a week has really helped the tank.  The only issue I have right now is the magician zoas aren't doing so good, probably should pull them and dip them. I also have some hair algae at the top. I haven't figured out how to attack it yet because I will probably have to pull some frags off to access it all the way. 

[DaveFason]

Tank looks wonderful. Thanks for sharing the camera settings for others. 

-D

[skyscraper2290]

8 hours ago, DaveFason said:

Tank looks wonderful. Thanks for sharing the camera settings for others. 

-D

Thanks for stopping by Dave! Always happy to answer any questions that could help out someone else!

[skyscraper2290]

So have been bothered that I haven’t seen any growth on the 5 acans I have so decided to get a small piece of dry rock to put them on in the bottom of the tank. I then moved the torch up on the rock work where the acans had been. Also moved a Monti down that had bleached when I first got it but didn’t die off, and also moved my PC Rainbow down.

 

You can see in the top down shot in the top left section of the scape that I have some hair algae within the rock. I have been trying to manually remove it but can’t access it. Wanted to see if anyone has any recommendations on how to try to get it gone. 

 

 

[skyscraper2290]

All the SPS in the tank are starting to pick up growth, here is the PC Rainbow over the past month and handful of days.

 

3/3

 

2/18

 

1/26

[mtgmichaelg]

I'd just try to pick at the rock with tweezers while sucking out the algae during a water change. Then hope your clean up crew can finish it off.