Innovative Marine 150G EXT: SPS Canyon

[xiaoxiy]

22 hours ago, Reefkid88 said:

Frag system's are super ideal for them. Man get some Acan's and cook them babies in the frag tank !!!  BSA has some super nice "asian" acan's for super cheap. 

I haven't bought coral since the CSB! I think all year I've bought a total of 2 corals. My goal is to buy no corals, and trade for them instead.

20 hours ago, pokerdobe said:

 

Is your frag system tied into your display, or standalone?

It's tied together. If one thrives, so does the other. If one dies, so does the other.  It's all or nothing.

[pokerdobe]

10 minutes ago, xiaoxiy said:

I haven't bought coral since the CSB! I think all year I've bought a total of 2 corals. My goal is to buy no corals, and trade for them instead.

It's tied together. If one thrives, so does the other. If one dies, so does the other.  It's all or nothing.

If you could go back and change it up, would you reconsider tying it in? Just curious. 

[xiaoxiy]

5 hours ago, pokerdobe said:

If you could go back and change it up, would you reconsider tying it in? Just curious. 

I would keep it tied in. It's so much easier when everything runs off of the same system. I only have to test one tank and I know how the other is doing. Same with dosing too. 

[xiaoxiy]

Speaking of larger frag tank: I upgrade quick. It's a 45x20 footprint.

 

Everything now has room to grow out!

   

 

[Justind823]

2 hours ago, xiaoxiy said:

Speaking of larger frag tank: I upgrade quick. It's a 45x20 footprint.

 

Everything now has room to grow out!

   

 

I'd shop at this store 😅

[mitten_reef]

The rics in that basket 🤯, solid red Yuma especially. 
 

[xiaoxiy]

14 hours ago, Justind823 said:

I'd shop at this store 😅

Lmao. My spouse made a similar comment about how I should start selling corals. I'm a much bigger fan of trading corals though.

10 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

The rics in that basket 🤯, solid red Yuma especially. 

That Yuma is one of my favorites. I traded away one of each ricordea frag this week to a local buddy, who is going to give some assorted ricordeas soon in return. I'm looking forward to expanding my ric collection.

[ef4life]

Very nice ricordea- I’d love those red ones in my tank. 

[xiaoxiy]

I'm going to try to do weekly mini updates this year. Here's my Sunday update for 1/10/2021:

 

It's amazing how much flow a XF130 can put out. I'm nowhere near 100%. 

 

A few of my acros have started to hit a stride again with growth. The biggest grower so far this year is the pink millepora. I'm still dosing 2x daily dosage of KZ Flatworm Stop. It's been almost a month and a half since my last dip, and I'm not seeing any signs of AEFW yet.

 

 

 

[xiaoxiy]

Sunday Updates: No major changes/issues with the tank, which is great news. The acros appear to really be enjoying the stability again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mitten_reef]

15 minutes ago, xiaoxiy said:

Sunday Updates: No major changes/issues with the tank, which is great news. The acros appear to really be enjoying the stability again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The growth rate in this tank is just unreal!

[xiaoxiy]

6 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

The growth rate in this tank is just unreal!

I often forget how things grow, but it always astounds me every time I do a time lapse. I highly recommend taking weekly photos of your corals. When you stitch the images together, the changes become really obvious!

[xiaoxiy]

Sunday Update #3: Not much has changed from a tank perspective. I ran a cycle of Chemiclean this weekend to take care of some Cyano in the display and frag tank. Otherwise corals keep plugging along. I'm also planning on picking up a Sony A6000 today, which should be a nice upgrade from my Iphone photos in the future. This being said, my timelapse gifs will still be via my phone.

 

Full Tank Shot:

 

Growth Time Lapse:

 

 

 

[xiaoxiy]

Here's a few of the Sony A6000 photos I took around noon. I need to get better at aperture, focal length and iso selections. Post-processing is hard too :(.

 

 

 

[xiaoxiy]

 

 

 

[xiaoxiy]

Here are some more DSLR pics. I've been playing around with the settings. Stylistically, I seem to really like dark photos with negative spaces. Which of the following pics are your favorites?

 

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#6

 

My favorites are number 1 and 6.

 

Also I plan on posting the routine Sunday updates tomorrow too. Stay tuned for growth pics!

[DreC80]

12 hours ago, xiaoxiy said:

Here are some more DSLR pics. I've been playing around with the settings. Stylistically, I seem to really like dark photos with negative spaces. Which of the following pics are your favorites?

 

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#6

 

My favorites are number 1 and 6.

 

Also I plan on posting the routine Sunday updates tomorrow too. Stay tuned for growth pics!

Nice pics.  I like 2, 5, 6.

[Reefkid88]

I say 3 and 5. All look great though. 

[xiaoxiy]

45 minutes ago, DreC80 said:

Nice pics.  I like 2, 5, 6.

My spouse also likes #2.

 

Routine Sunday Growth Updates:

 

 

 

 

[xiaoxiy]

1 minute ago, Reefkid88 said:

I say 3 and 5. All look great though. 

My  momma clown is so ugly.🤣

[xiaoxiy]

Week 6: I fragged out part of the WWC Yellow Tips. It was getting too big. 

 

FTS

 

Growth Lapse:

 

 

[xiaoxiy]

Another Weekend Update: No major changes in the tank. I'm averaging about 0.25-0.5inches per branch per month in growth.

 

 

[Justind823]

Love these growth time-lapses! 

[xiaoxiy]

Guess who was a dummy and started bleaching his acros a second time... me.

 

Last time I bleached/crashed my acros was during Thanksgiving. Prior to the episode, I had dislodged my ricordeas from their baskets and added aquarium gravel (Este's Spectrastone White) to my Ricordea basket so that they wouldn't attach to the bottom of the container. 18 hours later, my tank started bleaching. If you remember, I also found a stray current during that episode, and chalked the bleaching up to the stray current. I had also removed the gravel though just in case.

 

Yesterday, I found that my ricordeas had attached fully to the bottom their basket, so I dislodged them and added aquarium gravel again. You guessed it, Este's Spectrastone White. 18 hours later, my acros are exhibiting diminished PE and mild bleaching again. Maybe the stray voltage from last time was the red herring, and the real culprit was the Spectrastone. Another culprit could be pissing off the ricordeas (but I've definitely done that before w/o issue). Time to do some massive water changes again and run polyfilter. 

 

I highly suspect that whatever process is occurring has been only going on for the past 24 hours. The growth shots for this week confirm this; the acros have clearly been growing this week. Also see the stag as an example of the mild bleaching.

 

I'll post regular growth lapse shots later today, after I finish water changes and driving to the LFS 1 hour away to grab polyfilter. 

[xiaoxiy]

The damage continues to progress: Here are some gifs showing a bit of the damage.

 

Here's the Walt Disney this evening: Clearly bleaching.

 

Finally, here are the weekly growth gif: As you can see from the growth, the acros have been doing really well up until they took the hard hit yesterday. Last time it took me 3 weeks to recovery from the event. I plan on continuing my documentation of weekly growth gifs. I fully intend to document the good and ugly of reefing.

 

My plan going forward is continuing the water changes; I've done 60 gallons so far. I also have dimmed the lights down to 75% for an acclimation back to 100% over 10 days. Finally, I've turned off my kalk and 2 part; I plan on slowly resuming these as alk consumption kicks back up.

 

 Last time it took me 3 weeks to recovery from the event, but I plan on continuing my documentation of weekly growth gifs. I fully intend to document the good and ugly of reefing.