SeaDweller's Progress Shots

[Rick5]

I appreciate the info. I’ve set a calendar reminder for about 3 weeks out to do a further full tank assessment before moving forward with the lighting changes.

@Chaswood79 PM’d me and asked that I reach out to you to give him his photoshop account back. Apparently you changed the username and password for security purposes. He said he can’t post photos of his tank until then. Weird, right?

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I appreciate the info. I’ve set a calendar reminder for about 3 weeks out to do a further full tank assessment before moving forward with the lighting changes.

@Chaswood79 PM’d me and asked that I reach out to you to give him his photoshop account back. Apparently you changed the username and password for security purposes. He said he can’t post photos of his tank until then. Weird, right?

Is it possible to photoshop on an iPhone?

 

[Rick5]

Is it possible to photoshop on an iPhone?

I have no idea. My SPS are so ugly that even photoshop can't make them look nice.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I have no idea. My SPS are so ugly that even photoshop can't make them look nice.

That sucks. The new lighting program isn’t helping??

 

[Rick5]

That sucks. The new lighting program isn’t helping??

It definitely helped at the outset (when we were acclimating to ~41% on cool white). Then a nicely sized chunk of red dragon receded that was otherwise looking good and I freaked out and dropped cool white to 25%. I'm thinking I need to ramp up the cool white slowly to no higher than 30% but I really don't know for sure. Things are growing but the growth is slow as molasses. Consumption is at 5 ml/day (Bionic) which sounds absurd for nearly 40 SPS frags.

I had an ORA granulosa go from tan-isn upon arrival to a jungle green. I was thinking it's going through the transition from brown to green to the actual color it should be, but it has been ~55 days or so since I placed it in the tank. I don't know if I'm rushing it or if something with my lighting (or otherwise) is off.

Another member suggested I may have low PH (due to the poor alk uptake), which is probably right (as I don't run a skimmer), so I changed my refugium light cycle so it's opposite the display just in case.

Everything's stable (alk, calcium, mag) but I potentially screwed up my nitrate with a swing. I was consistently between 5 to 10 on salifert then jumped to 25 due to feeding experiments/nutrient export testing and then dropped to 10 (but holding steady at 10). Not sure if that did it.

I'm a drama queen, maybe. Can't say for sure.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

It definitely helped at the outset (when we were acclimating to ~41% on cool white). Then a nicely sized chunk of red dragon receded that was otherwise looking good and I freaked out and dropped cool white to 25%. I'm thinking I need to ramp up the cool white slowly to no higher than 30% but I really don't know for sure. Things are growing but the growth is slow as molasses. Consumption is at 5 ml/day (Bionic) which sounds absurd for nearly 40 SPS frags.

I had an ORA granulosa go from tan-isn upon arrival to a jungle green. I was thinking it's going through the transition from brown to green to the actual color it should be, but it has been ~55 days or so since I placed it in the tank. I don't know if I'm rushing it or if something with my lighting (or otherwise) is off.

Another member suggested I may have low PH (due to the poor alk uptake), which is probably right (as I don't run a skimmer), so I changed my refugium light cycle so it's opposite the display just in case.

Everything's stable (alk, calcium, mag) but I potentially screwed up my nitrate with a swing. I was consistently between 5 to 10 on salifert then jumped to 25 due to feeding experiments/nutrient export testing and then dropped to 10 (but holding steady at 10). Not sure if that did it.

I'm a drama queen, maybe. Can't say for sure.

I don’t recommend whites, especially with hydras, going above 30. Mine max out at 10 on my 52’s and 25 on my 26’s.

 

[LARedstickreefer]

My short spine urchin knocks out the majority of my coralline

Want me to come take care of him for ya?

 

[Badilac]

Amazing tank! Can you please post a chart of your current light schedule. I have a standard 240 with 2 48’s and would like to run the same schedule you are having success with.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Want me to come take care of him for ya?

Nah. That thing is 15 years old and I actually like not needing to deal with excess coralline

 

[SeaDweller]

Amazing tank! Can you please post a chart of your current light schedule. I have a standard 240 with 2 48’s and would like to run the same schedule you are having success with.

here’s what I’ve been running as of about 2 months ago. As I thumb thru my notes, I shouldn’t have gone above 85% blues and 21% other channels. At one point I was running 100% blues and 50% whites and bleached a few pieces, and have gone to the above schedule to get 400-450 par at the top of the rocks and about 200 at the sand bed.

I probably had really good success at 85/21 as the frags were just becoming colonies. These lights are strong, don’t underestimate them. Get your hands on a par meter if you can.

 

[SeaDweller]

Well today marks 1 year exactly since I began adding acros again successfully. I'd have to say it's been a smooth ride for me this time. I was able to ditch controllers and just rely on my eyes and time tested water changes and diligence. Yeah I had some cyano. Yeah I have bubble algae. Yeah I've tried a few expensive pieces. Yeah I've lost some pieces randomly. Ich reared its ugly head again with the addition from the gem, but I kinda knew that would happen, maybe.

Last night was too good of an opportunity to pass up on some shots, and I knew I was gonna be busy today. Sorry for my crappy shots but from a tank full of 1" frags to 95% colonies, I'd say this tank is firing on all cylinders now.

I did have to shut off my carx as my ca was 520. My sulfur denitrator uses up alk so there was an imbalance so I've been doing about dayam near 7 tsp of baking soda daily (1.4+ dkh). It drops that much and I mainly dose in one shot at night.

My NO3 has been creeping up as I've been experimenting and you can tell some have darkened up and one or two have browned. You can see it in the SSC colony.
FTS

SECTIONS

RANDOM TOP DOWNS

I think I give up on HW. I can't pull the pinks, so it's been more frustrating than anything really. Cheers to all you guys who can.

That Laura's purple polyps is about to get dwarfed by that mille on top.

I don’t know why but look how dense my RR PC grows. It’s a solid mass you can’t really appreciate in picture. I usually see it branch, but maybe it’s the flow.

here you can see part of the SSC colony not happy.

Anthony's very own piece. Super nice

Classic PC Rainbow

Crazy how bright the Vivid Confetti is. And this is growing on the bottom, getting 200+ par. Getting some of the greens in.

Back from the dead CC Voodoo Majick

Super hot RR Raven. For reference , that's a huge colony of FF red Robin next to it. Look at how electric that color is, and it really is crazy in real life.

Random stuff getting like 100 par and growing well. Green stuff, but growing well.

Vivid pink passion. Getting some different colors, cooking at the bottom.

Big R WD, again, pulling colors on the bottom of the tank.

Recovering RRA OP, got one piece on a rock with perfect coloration. One of the pieces I bleached with 600 LED par.

Hey baby, nice rack!

 

[UWC]

Tank and corals look fantastic!

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Yea I sure growth for one year if everything was from 1” frags. Well done!

 

[AlainD]

WoW fantastic color. You show us that you don’t need high expensive led lamp to have success

 

[SeaDweller]

WoW fantastic color. You show us that you don’t need high expensive led lamp to have success

Sure don’t! All lighting ends up costing about the same tbh. Maybe my option is slightly less

 

[AlainD]

I really like the spectrum color in your picture. At what time of the day you take your picture. It’s your night or day setting ?

 

[tripdad]

Very impressive! If my reboot looks like that at a year I will jump for joy. I doubt I'll be anywhere close but nice to see it can be done. Really nice corals!

 

[Bugsy_Barboza]

Your pc rainbow is so much more red than mine. If you count up 21 pics from the bottom picture what is the orange, green and yellowish acro in between the green ones?

 

[Brandon McHenry]

Fantastic job! Awesome growth and color for so short of a time frame. Well done!

 

[SeaDweller]

Your pc rainbow is so much more red than mine. If you count up 21 pics from the bottom picture what is the orange, green and yellowish acro in between the green ones?

That's TGC orange creamsicle. It puts out the green in less par. I prefer that.