DreC80's Reefer XL425

[DreC80]

31 minutes ago, pokerdobe said:

Crank that s*** up to 100% and call it a day. 😄 

Is that what you are doing lol?  I have my two maxed out at like 40 or 45% overall.  Sounds like I need to turn them up.  Hope my corals brought their sunscreen.

 

1 hour ago, mitten_reef said:

 

Copied from above, happened to have the name for this monti?  the closest I've seen to mine.  Does it shift colors often?  

 

The guy at the lfs said slowburn monti.  When I initially got it the frag was mostly pink...but they had it in really high light.  I think the tan color with pink edge is just a result of lower lighting.  I almost prefer it this way honestly because of the contrast...purple polyps too.  I have a frag of it I might try moving up higher in the tank to see if it turns pink.  The only other one that looks similar online is the RR Nauti Spiral.

[mitten_reef]

4 minutes ago, DreC80 said:

Is that what you are doing lol?  I have my two maxed out at like 40 or 45% overall.  Sounds like I need to turn them up.  Hope my corals brought their sunscreen.

 

The guy at the lfs said slowburn monti.  When I initially got it the frag was mostly pink...but they had it in really high light.  I think the tan color with pink edge is just a result of lower lighting.  I almost prefer it this way honestly because of the contrast...purple polyps too.  I have a frag of it I might try moving up higher in the tank to see if it turns pink.  The only other one that looks similar online is the RR Nauti Spiral.

thanks.  Nauti Spiral was suggested to me as well.  Mine grew huge with multiple layers (you have to go back pretty far in my thread).  But now I'm only down to this frag, which is in its most colorful state yet, sorry for the extra blue iphone pic.  Mine seems to do the opposite, the colors lighten up as the lighting gets stronger.  I really wanna see if I can get it all the way to yellow with brighter light/different location.  

 

 

here it looks a little bland under a more neutral light

 

 

[SliceGolfer]

Nice pics!

[DreC80]

46 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

thanks.  Nauti Spiral was suggested to me as well.  Mine grew huge with multiple layers (you have to go back pretty far in my thread).  But now I'm only down to this frag, which is in its most colorful state yet, sorry for the extra blue iphone pic.  Mine seems to do the opposite, the colors lighten up as the lighting gets stronger.  I really wanna see if I can get it all the way to yellow with brighter light/different location.  

 

 

here it looks a little bland under a more neutral light

 

 

Interesting, I've only seen mine pink and now this tanish color.  I'll move the frag up in higher lighting and see what happens.  Maybe we have two different ones?

[DreC80]

7 minutes ago, SliceGolfer said:

Nice pics!

Thank you.  It's a work in progress for sure.  As if this hobby isn't humbling enough...then you go and try to take pictures and they look like crap lol.

[pokerdobe]

5 hours ago, DreC80 said:

Is that what you are doing lol?  I have my two maxed out at like 40 or 45% overall.  Sounds like I need to turn them up.  Hope my corals brought their sunscreen.

Yeah, it's my preferred method. I don't like messing around with percentages or things like that so I figured if I just set my overall intensity to 100%, it's less of a hassle. 

[teenyreef]

Wow, what great tanks! Just wore out my "like" button 🙂

 

Your newer pictures look great to me. I don't mess with a preset white balance on my camera. But I do reset the LEDs to be whiter than usual and let the automatic white balance do it's thing. For me it still comes out too blue, but when I adjust the RAW image in Lightroom I can get it looking just like it does in the tank.

 

I think that third G4 Pro will help make your colors even better. Definitely use your PAR meter and ramp things up slowly. But, like @pokerdobe, I've eventually brought all my lights up to 100%. But I don't have Radions, and they are powerful lights so...

[DreC80]

8 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

Wow, what great tanks! Just wore out my "like" button 🙂

 

Your newer pictures look great to me. I don't mess with a preset white balance on my camera. But I do reset the LEDs to be whiter than usual and let the automatic white balance do it's thing. For me it still comes out too blue, but when I adjust the RAW image in Lightroom I can get it looking just like it does in the tank.

 

I think that third G4 Pro will help make your colors even better. Definitely use your PAR meter and ramp things up slowly. But, like @pokerdobe, I've eventually brought all my lights up to 100%. But I don't have Radions, and they are powerful lights so...

Thanks Teeny.  I never did buy the reeflink or apex control module for the radions...probably a good thing since it makes it harder to tinker with the lights.  I'll pull out the laptop and bump up the whites for photos, hopefully that will help.

 

Looking forward to seeing what the increased lighting will do for colors...as long as everything doesn't turn white I should be ok 😏

 

 

[DreC80]

Hope everyone is doing ok.  Got the radion diffusers in today and now just waiting on the last XR15.  Once it's all here I'll get it mounted and throw a pic up.

 

On a side note, my GARF bonsai finally decided to start some vertical growth.  It encrusted for 1.5 years...hopefully this is the start of a nice colony

[DreC80]

Oh yeah and ordered some new corals...should be in tomorrow.

 

JF Fox Flame

JF TNT Anacropora

Sanjay's Leprechaun Beard

Tck Rainbow Acro

Tck Pink Bear

Tck Molten Core

[teenyreef]

Those are some nice new corals! 

 

I've never figured out why some corals just want to encrust forever before they start to grow up. My katropora encrusted for about a year and half before it got going. But every frag I've ever made from it grows up right away.

[DreC80]

3 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Those are some nice new corals! 

 

I've never figured out why some corals just want to encrust forever before they start to grow up. My katropora encrusted for about a year and half before it got going. But every frag I've ever made from it grows up right away.

Thanks, hopefully they will be colorful and decent growers.  I guess some corals just like claiming their turf before shooting upwards.  That bonsai was bleached at one point, brown at another, then colored up, and now growing upwards.  An old school coral but I like it.

[DreC80]

Alright everyone, third radion is in and all diffusers installed, much better coverage.  I do have to admit I'm pretty happy with the diffusers even though they are overpriced.  They help cut down on light spill tremendously and blend the leds much better.

 

Sorry I didn't remove my algae clip or magfloat for the FTS 😆, but here's a phone pic with just LEDs on.

 

Off to do some par measurements...

 

 

 

[DreC80]

Got my par measurements done this past weekend and the lowest value I got was 190 towards the bottom left and the highest was 415 or so right near the purple stylo in the top center of the tank.  This was with the T5s and radions all on during peak hours.  Radions are set to 50% intensity, so I'll slowly keep bumping those up

 

Also received my tck corals order last week and dipped them/put them on the frag rack.  I've ordered a couple of times now from Tck and been pretty happy.  Their pics are mostly accurate.

 

From left to right:

 

Tck Rainbow - currently brown rainbow

Tck Molten Core - currently light brown turd

Sanjays Leprechaun Beard

Tck Pink Bear

JF Fox Flame

JF TNT Anacropora

 

Looking forward to seeing what these turn into.

 

 

[DreC80]

When I moved everything from the Nuvo 30l to the Reefer last September I had to break a few of the corals that were encrusted on the bottom.  I had a no name plain green acro that did some encrusting, but not much else in the Nuvo.  I glued a small piece of the encrusted portion on to a frag plug and it's been sitting on the bottom of the Reefer just hanging, not doing much.  About a month ago it started some vertical growth and turned into this.  Never expected the pinkish color...just thought it was going to be green.

 

This frag is going to be bigger than the mother colony very shortly...which makes me wonder if I should start fragging some other stuff to encourage growth.

 

Do you guys see your frags growing much faster than the mother colonies?  Does fragging encourage the mother colony to grow any faster in your experience?

[Ratvan]

18 hours ago, DreC80 said:

When I moved everything from the Nuvo 30l to the Reefer last September I had to break a few of the corals that were encrusted on the bottom.  I had a no name plain green acro that did some encrusting, but not much else in the Nuvo.  I glued a small piece of the encrusted portion on to a frag plug and it's been sitting on the bottom of the Reefer just hanging, not doing much.  About a month ago it started some vertical growth and turned into this.  Never expected the pinkish color...just thought it was going to be green.

 

This frag is going to be bigger than the mother colony very shortly...which makes me wonder if I should start fragging some other stuff to encourage growth.

 

Do you guys see your frags growing much faster than the mother colonies?  Does fragging encourage the mother colony to grow any faster in your experience?

I've not tried myself but following a few threads where the reefers are attempting to make a single colony by repetitive fragging and gluing down so they encrusts into each other before shooting up. Seems that that initial stage is sped up as the cut frags seem to grow the quickest. 

 

I need to revisit this thread for the photo tips

[DreC80]

Well, took about 3 weeks, but I managed to bleach some corals after adding the third radion.  Even after adding diffusers (which supposedly lowers par about 25%) and doing par measurements, I was still able to piss some corals off.  Weird thing is it's mostly the red/pink ones that seem to be affected....red planet, lil red ferrari, firewalker milli...and of the non-reds the garf bonsai is a little lighter.  Everything else didn't seem to mind.

 

I went ahead and lowered the overall intensity to 35% from 50%.  Hoping they'll recover within the next few weeks and then I can slowly start increasing the intensity again.

 

On a side note, I participated in my first coral auction event and picked up a sunset milli for $38 and a starburst monti cap for $8.  Supposed to be here Thurs.

 

Not much else to report, other than my self induced screw up. 

 

 

[mitten_reef]

1 minute ago, DreC80 said:

Well, took about 3 weeks, but I managed to bleach some corals after adding the third radion.  Even after adding diffusers (which supposedly lowers par about 25%) and doing par measurements, I was still able to piss some corals off.  Weird thing is it's mostly the red/pink ones that seem to be affected....red planet, lil red ferrari, firewalker milli...and of the non-reds the garf bonsai is a little lighter.  Everything else didn't seem to mind.

 

I went ahead and lowered the overall intensity to 35% from 50%.  Hoping they'll recover within the next few weeks and then I can slowly start increasing the intensity again.

 

On a side note, I participated in my first coral auction event and picked up a sunset milli for $38 and a starburst monti cap for $8.  Supposed to be here Thurs.

 

Not much else to report, other than my self induced screw up. 

 

 

It’s always better to know the cause of the unhappy corals, even if it’s a screw up 😅. 
Can you get a good pic of the little red Ferrari next time you do photos, would love to see it? Also, sounds like a couple of awesome auction wins.

[DreC80]

1 minute ago, mitten_reef said:

It’s always better to know the cause of the unhappy corals, even if it’s a screw up 😅. 
Can you get a good pic of the little red Ferrari next time you do photos, would love to see it? Also, sounds like a couple of awesome auction wins.

I can certainly get a pic...I'll try real hard for good lol.  Here are a couple of pics from when I first got it.  This was early March.  Let's just say it's a little lighter at the moment.

[mitten_reef]

25 minutes ago, DreC80 said:

I can certainly get a pic...I'll try real hard for good lol.  Here are a couple of pics from when I first got it.  This was early March.  Let's just say it's a little lighter at the moment.

Do the yellow tips fade in and out depending on its mood?  My fire dragon (just the Jason Fox variant) seems to do that now and again. 

[DreC80]

4 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

Do the yellow tips fade in and out depending on its mood?  My fire dragon (just the Jason Fox variant) seems to do that now and again. 

That seems to be the case with mine as well.  Right now I think they are non-existent, but we'll see if I can get the yellow back.  

 

Mine seems to color up better in less intense lighting.

[DreC80]

Quick top down shot of the Cali Tort and JF Coolers Champagne.  Blue acros seem completely unaffected by my light bleaching incident.

[DreC80]

Linked up with @teenyreef in VA Beach today for a quick frag swap.

 

He hooked me up with bubblegum digitata, JF Setosa, WWC Yellow Tips, ORA Pearlberry and a mini colony of Katropora.  I got everything dipped and settling in.  Pics to come...if I don't kill anything.  Thanks Teeny.

[teenyreef]

1 minute ago, DreC80 said:

Linked up with @teenyreef in VA Beach today for a quick frag swap.

 

He hooked me up with bubblegum digitata, JF Setosa, WWC Yellow Tips, ORA Pearlberry and a mini colony of Katropora.  I got everything dipped and settling in.  Pics to come...if I don't kill anything.  Thanks Teeny.

Thank you! I'm really looking forward to seeing how they grow out in your tank.

[FISHnChix]

On 5/19/2020 at 6:41 PM, DreC80 said:

Not much else to report, other than my self induced screw up

Get sps he said. It will be fun he said🤔😁😁😁😎😋