Coral Kingdom Of Thras ~ Waterbox 130.4 💦 ~ SPS Filling In

[Thrassian Atoll]

12 minutes ago, Elizabeth94 said:

Wow absolutely love the mix of colors you got going on with those montis. And the grafted one is ridiculous! No, I’m not jealous 😉 The sunset monti is pretty big. I have been staying away from encrusting montis because of this type of situation. But there are some varieties that are so beautiful I almost give in. I have one on a frag rack that I need to give to someone. Its starting to grow off the plug. 

Haha, thanks!  The mystic sunset is like 10” long by 4” wide now.  It’s about to run into that Bird Of Paradise birdsnest.  Got like 2” to go.  
 

I actually put in a rainbow encrusting monti up top in a little cave recently.  Probably going to regret that too.  😂

[Thrassian Atoll]

 

 

 

 

 

[Murphs_Reef]

Wow looks great 👍

[Thrassian Atoll]

4 minutes ago, Grimes said:

Wow looks great 👍

Thanks!

[mitten_reef]

3 hours ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

 

 

 

 

 

All the monti’s are getting huge. How’s the growth on acros?  They look bigger. 

[Elizabeth94]

Looks awesome. That grafted cap is crazy cool. I always see frags, you got a colony going in there. 

[Thrassian Atoll]

9 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

All the monti’s are getting huge. How’s the growth on acros?  They look bigger. 

The montis are getting big along with some of the birdsnest.  Acro growth has been slow with the higher end stuff for sure.  A few pieces are getting pretty big though like tri color valida.  I’ll take some day time photos tonight after the lights have been on.  

8 hours ago, Elizabeth94 said:

Looks awesome. That grafted cap is crazy cool. I always see frags, you got a colony going in there. 

Yeah, the person I got the frag from is jealous how good it’s looking compared to his.  😂

[Thrassian Atoll]

Still waiting on my fish from Bay Bridge Aquarium.  Communication has completely fallen off in the past month.  😔  I paid a lot of money at the beginning of July for a Gem Tang, Lineatus Fairy Wrasse and Flame wrasse.  I wanted a Magma instead of a Flame but he couldn’t find them.  I went with them because they supposedly have a good quarantine regiment.  I could of actually bought all three fish for cheaper from Divers Den in the past two months including a Magma instead of a Flame.  I’ll probably just stick to divers den from now on.  I have tried to get fish from other people in the past year and it never goes well.

[Elizabeth94]

Wow that’s definitely a large order. I never heard if them ill have to check it out. I have had a lot of luck with divers den though and haven’t had a sick fish from them yet. I was worried about the anthias I just got. Thankfully they are eating pretty good now, but I still feel like I am going to wake up one day and see one dead. Lol. 

[Thrassian Atoll]

13 minutes ago, Elizabeth94 said:

Wow that’s definitely a large order. I never heard if them ill have to check it out. I have had a lot of luck with divers den though and haven’t had a sick fish from them yet. I was worried about the anthias I just got. Thankfully they are eating pretty good now, but I still feel like I am going to wake up one day and see one dead. Lol. 

Yeah, what’s silly though is they still insist quarantining their fish, which in my head kind of defeats the purpose of going with them.  I have a qt tank set up for the fish, but also have my frag tank set up now and ready.  I’ll probably just throw them in the frag tank.  I have had a couple issues buying fish from divers den, but they usually refund or ship another.  At least with them, I know what’s available and it’s easy to communicate.

[A.m.P]

19 minutes ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

Yeah, what’s silly though is they still insist quarantining their fish, which in my head kind of defeats the purpose of going with them.  I have a qt tank set up for the fish, but also have my frag tank set up now and ready.  I’ll probably just throw them in the frag tank.  I have had a couple issues buying fish from divers den, but they usually refund or ship another.  At least with them, I know what’s available and it’s easy to communicate.

That's one of the unfortunate advantages of a larger business, more employee's, more communication. 

[Thrassian Atoll]

4 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

That's one of the unfortunate advantages of a larger business, more employee's, more communication. 

I have had terrible luck with small businesses in the hobby this past year.  Top Lids, Building An Obsession, Bay Bridge Aquariums.  I waited months for Dr. Reef to get me some stuff and he backed out.  These businesses make it hard not trust anybody but the big companies like liveaquaria, BRS, Marinedepot.

[A.m.P]

23 minutes ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

I have had terrible luck with small businesses in the hobby this past year.  Top Lids, Building An Obsession, Bay Bridge Aquariums.  I waited months for Dr. Reef to get me some stuff and he backed out.  These businesses make it hard not trust anybody but the big companies like liveaquaria, BRS, Marinedepot.

It has been an exceedingly rough-year for small businesses, online was already complicated and difficult enough... Hate to hear about the back-to-back issues, oddly enough my luck tends to run the opposite, nothing but refunds and botched experiences with big-names, get most of my stuff from locals and people I hunt down and send unsolicited PM's.

[Thrassian Atoll]

Bunch of IPhone photos with mostly white lights on, no lens filters.  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Thrassian Atoll]

Whites vs blues 
 

[Thrassian Atoll]

@Christopher Marks when did photo size uploads get so small?  Like 4 meg photos reducing to 250k. Definitely kills quality.

[Christopher Marks]

15 hours ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

@Christopher Marks when did photo size uploads get so small?  Like 4 meg photos reducing to 250k. Definitely kills quality.

Actinic toned photos seem to get compressed the worst, I'm looking into it... 🔎

[Elizabeth94]

Really like the white photos. Its crazy how some sticks don’t really show up in the blues. I see a lot more coral in the white photos, looks nice. 

[A.m.P]

1 hour ago, Christopher Marks said:

Actinic toned photos seem to get compressed the worst, I'm looking into it... 🔎

Another bit I've noticed is that photo's which are, even slightly, out of focus can end up quite blurry post-compression, could be an aliasing issue.

[Thrassian Atoll]

2 hours ago, Christopher Marks said:

Actinic toned photos seem to get compressed the worst, I'm looking into it... 🔎

Interesting.  I didn’t realize it until I was uploading all those photos yesterday.  I would upload each one at 3-4 meg and it would compress down to 250k or lower.  A little compression is good, like in half or something but that’s a lot.  I don’t know if I am remembering wrong but I don’t remember any of my iPhone photos being compressed before.
 

2 hours ago, Elizabeth94 said:

Really like the white photos. Its crazy how some sticks don’t really show up in the blues. I see a lot more coral in the white photos, looks nice. 

Thanks!  The left side of my rock work is really hard to see in the blues.  Lots of acros with good growth on that side hard to show up with my crappy photo skills.  😂

1 hour ago, Amphrites said:

Another bit I've noticed is that photo's which are, even slightly, out of focus can end up quite blurry post-compression, could be an aliasing issue.

I have no clue what your saying but I believe you. 😂. I really need to use the dslr more and actually learn some stuff.

[A.m.P]

2 hours ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

Interesting.  I didn’t realize it until I was uploading all those photos yesterday.  I would upload each one at 3-4 meg and it would compress down to 250k or lower.  A little compression is good, like in half or something but that’s a lot.  I don’t know if I am remembering wrong but I don’t remember any of my iPhone photos being compressed before.

They were still compressed, and that's not a terribly-uncommon ratio for converting from a raw or raw-adjacent filetype to a jpeg, or better, compressed image.

[Thrassian Atoll]

20 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

They were still compressed, and that's not a terribly-uncommon ratio for converting from a raw or raw-adjacent filetype to a jpeg, or better, compressed image.

iPhone photos are already JPEG size though.  Raw photos are like 20 megs or something aren’t they?

[A.m.P]

34 minutes ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

iPhone photos are already JPEG size though.  Raw photos are like 20 megs or something aren’t they?

It depends, raw files can be quite large but it mostly depends on resolution and various other settings, JPEG's have different internal levels of compression and quality, it might actually significantly help the quality of your photo's to choose, if available, a different format to have your phone save. So, as a for instance, every time a JPEG is saved it re-samples and causes an irreversible-loss of data (quality), if you were to start with a different file structure (png, .raw, .tif, etc.) and then have it uploaded, you might save yourself from having your photo's go through two different lossy compressions (more if you crop or, in any way, edit the JPEG file either on your phone or your computer after taking the picture; phone-software especially is really, really bad at only editing a photo once and instead may re-save for every change or crop you make to an image).

MP3's have a similar issue with data-loss from repeat sampling, although there are now quasi-workarounds.

[Thrassian Atoll]

Talked to Bay Bridge Aquariums today.  Next week they are shipping me the male flame wrasse and a free female.  They should be getting some gem tangs within a week.  He’s still not able to get a Lineatus but he’s hoping they become available soon.

[Elizabeth94]

Wow thats great. Hope they come in healthy for you. So your best to get some photos once they settle in!