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Legendary Corals - Eye Candy Thread + Discussion!


Legendary Corals

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Legendary Corals

Dang! I haven't updated this thread since February. Going to be posting quite a bit of photos just to catch up on things. Sorry for the inconsistencies!

 

Here's a Goniopora that we picked up back in late February. It came from one of the early Indonesia imports. The polyp structure is a bit different than other Gonioporas we have. The polyps are pom-pom-y like an Alveopora, but resemble more like a Goniopora. The polyps are more of a medium length than long like traditional Gonioporas as well. It's been thriving but has turned more a pastel pink, and has been given the name LC Strawberry Swisher. If anyone knows the more specific Goniopora species please do chime in!

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Photos of some frags that have sold:
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Legendary Corals

This is an older photo and many of these zoanthids are back in grow out. But just check out the colors on them! Been running Kessil 360x over the tanks and the zoanthids are just loving it. I get asked a lot what the one in the center of the photo is, and they're GSC A$$clowns from Golden State Corals . Elliot's been growing them for some time but for some reason they've been under people's radar. They're so cool!

 

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Pictures of some of the GSC A$$clowns frags I took awhile back.
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Legendary Corals

One of our UCC (Unlimited Color Corals) Rainbow Boom Gonioporas has overgrown its grow out disk and is ready to be fragged. I took the time to take a quick video before it hit the saw, as it took a few months for it to get to this size. It's one of my favorite LPS corals in the farm to keep, as the colors are outstanding and it's relatively easy to keep for a Goniopora. 

 

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Amazing corals!

 

Y'all should take some select frags outside and take pictures in just natural sunlight. I'm curious what some of these would have looked like when someone found them.

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Legendary Corals
1 hour ago, Tired said:

Amazing corals!

 

Y'all should take some select frags outside and take pictures in just natural sunlight. I'm curious what some of these would have looked like when someone found them.

Thank you for the compliment! As cool as that sounds, most of these corals aren't found in shallow water as most home aquariums. The ocean filters out most of the sun's light spectrum and leaves mostly a blue coloration behind. These corals would be very cooked/ bleached if kept outside in a 12" frag rack directly under the sun! 

 

To find most of these corals in the wild, they would be many feet under the water's surface. Here's a video of Jake from Reef Builders out in a coral farming workshop focused around Acropora species, which can handle more shallow depths. You can see how blue the water is even when he's just a few feet under the surface!

 

 

In this video, the lighting in the ocean where he films look almost like a blue T5 spectrum blend. At time mark 8:22, the water is super blue!

 

 

Blue lighting spectrum for corals is completely normal for them. Jason Fox dives himself for many of his signature corals and comments that it's almost completely blue where he collects his coral, and is his reasoning for running almost all blue spectrums for his corals.

 

Hopefully this comes off as passing along some interesting knowledge that most reefers don't know. It helps for us to understand what our corals actually want. 🙂 

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Legendary Corals

Just another mixture of some of our more hardy zoanthids, with one little Vivid's Gushers appearing on the far left!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Legendary Corals

If you enjoy WWC Twizzlers, then you're in for a treat with this morph! LC Havocs Zoanthids have a blue-purple sheen over the body with bright green contrasting skirt tips. Definitely a unique piece for those looking to keep something a little different.

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Love all the corals and pics!!!! I still remember buying some candy apple and Granny Smith Zoas before you named the business, must’ve been 10 years ago.  
 

I am learning macro photography now and I wouldn’t be alone in asking for pointers, maybe even a tutorial or primer for taking pics like you.  Thought of creating a separate page on the website?

 

Jeff

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Legendary Corals
On 8/18/2020 at 5:52 AM, jcreefer said:

Love all the corals and pics!!!! I still remember buying some candy apple and Granny Smith Zoas before you named the business, must’ve been 10 years ago.  
 

I am learning macro photography now and I wouldn’t be alone in asking for pointers, maybe even a tutorial or primer for taking pics like you.  Thought of creating a separate page on the website?

 

Jeff

Hey Jeff! I created an article on the equipment choices I use, hopefully this helps out. I do plan on adding more articles in the future as well and can definitely work on a photography one. 🙂

https://www.legendary-corals.com/blog

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On 8/21/2020 at 12:16 AM, Legendary Corals said:

Hey Jeff! I created an article on the equipment choices I use, hopefully this helps out. I do plan on adding more articles in the future as well and can definitely work on a photography one. 🙂

https://www.legendary-corals.com/blog

I read the article!  Thanks for the nice breakdown.  I know it was focused on the equipment, would be great if you can do another one focusing on the “hows”, ISO, Aperture, Exposure, Shutter Speed, etc. I know that’s a lot more in depth than just set it to auto and press the shutter button, but a general guideline would be awesome!

 

Jeff

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Legendary Corals
On 8/22/2020 at 6:32 AM, jcreefer said:

I read the article!  Thanks for the nice breakdown.  I know it was focused on the equipment, would be great if you can do another one focusing on the “hows”, ISO, Aperture, Exposure, Shutter Speed, etc. I know that’s a lot more in depth than just set it to auto and press the shutter button, but a general guideline would be awesome!

 

Jeff

 

I haven't created an article yet as I've been working on a few other projects, but these are my quick steps for my photos so you can get going a bit 🙂 :

 

  1. Coral Lighting:
    1. Adjust Kessils to a more white setting. I run my Kessils at 100% blue to grow the corals, but swap them over to a more white spectrum to take photos. The pros with Kessils is that you can adjust the settings manually on the fly!
  2. Camera settings:
    1. Set White Balance on camera to 10k, the warmest setting. My camera is a bit older and the auto white balance is a but wonky. I tried using custom white balance before and it had all those off yellow/ orange colors that most gel filters give off. It wasn't very accurate so I just used 10k and adjusted afterwards.
    2. Set shutter speed to around 1/30 or 1/50. I have pretty stable hands and the 100mm lens I use has image stablization. So I can get away with a lower shutter speed. 
    3. Set ISO to auto. It's too much work for me to take a photo and then 2x check it afterwards to see if the settings were all correct. So I set the ISO to auto, since usually it's not so bad. I can always increase the brightness in post!
  3. Post editing in Lightroom:
    1. Adjusts and tweak things such as White Balance/ Temperature and Brightness.
    2. You can always play around and mess with things like contrast, sharpness, shadows, highlights, etc to your liking/ style. Everyone has their own preference on what they'd like their photos to look like!

 

Hopefully these three steps help! I don't really do anything too complicated since I usually take a lot of pics. 

 

 

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Legendary Corals

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One of the most sought after mushroom corals at the moment, and it's no surprise. The chaotic black and purple splashes along the body is a trait not seen in many corals, let alone a mushroom coral. The babies themselves come out as all red, and the chances of them gaining the splashing color patterns isn't guaranteed. Regardless of the pattern, the red is extremely brilliant and gorgeous on its own. But for the ones that do develop it, they'll become a masterpiece.

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Legendary Corals
2 hours ago, jcreefer said:

Thanks for the great tips!  Keep up the good work!

 

-Jeff

Thank you! And if you run into any difficulties just feel free to ask in here. 🙂

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  • 8 months later...
Legendary Corals

A couple of new photos of some corals and anemones around the frag tanks, along with a big photo shoot of the Ricordeas that have been coloring up and adjusting under our Kessil AP9X units for the past few months. 

 

A gorgeous yellow tipped flame variant Bubbletip Anemone.

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A beautiful Bubblegum Digitata hanging around some of our higher flow portions of the frag tank, a low maintenance but gorgeous SPS coral.

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A few CC Magic Carpet / CB Fire Mushroom Corals being propagated. So much bright coloration in one mushroom coral.

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One of the "fluffiest" SPS corals in the hobby and is luckily relatively easy to care for as well! Birds of Paradise Birdsnest is a great choice for all levels of hobbyist, as it's more resilient to parameter swings as compared to more sensitive species like Acroporas. 

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And now onto all of the Ricordea photo spam! There's just so many beautiful specimens that we've been nurturing over the past few months. Some of them have already split on their own! Here's a small glimpse of the variety we have here in the farm that will be making an appearance soon to the website. Just message us if there's any specific piece you'd like! 

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Cheers,

Darwin

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