Xanthurums SPS collection

[Xanthurum]

Greetings from Connecticut! If all go's well I will be home on the 19th! It's always exciting to see how much things have grown while I'm away and I'm especially looking forward to it this time because last night's Alk test showed that consumption has increased! New growth pics will be taken once I'm home but here are some pics to hold you over until then.

Starfire is getting some sweet highlights on the new growth

The Demons are showing some fire

Garf Bonsai is becoming a nice little tree

 

[martinphillip03]

Please explain to me again how you know your alklinity draw has gone up?

 

[Xanthurum]

@martinphillip03 I video chatted with my wife and walked her through testing Alk. I use the Hanna Alk checker so it's a pretty simple process. She does this while I'm gone and if something is off I can call @SawCJack00 or another friend to get to the bottom of it but luckily things have stayed on track. The results of the last few tests have clearly showed that my Alk is dropping a bit but are still within normal range. To be more specific Alk was 8.0 when I left and as of earlier today its at 7.8. While I trust the results she got I will confirm them when I get home and make adjustments to the doser. I make sure everything is where I want it to be before I leave town and try to plan for stuff. Hope this explains it well enough.

 

[Xanthurum]

I'm back at home and I must say I was pretty impressed to see the changes that took place while I was gone for nearly 4 weeks. Not as much growth as I was hoping for but then again it's never enough. Lots of pieces really grew while others seemed to stall a bit. I'm thinking the lighting upgrade had a lot to do with this. While growth was not affected on the Cherry Bomb the colors unfortunately were, the polyps just aren't as red as they were but I'm hopeful they will come back. Everything else seems to have enjoyed the new lighting and colors are really looking amazing! Enough talk here's what you all really want.

JF Kamakazi

JF Icebreaker Tenuis

Decided it was time to step up to Big Boy status and pulled the trigger on.....
This particular Rainbow Splice has some nice Red swirls and some yellow along with the green!

 

[btb72]

double post

 

[btb72]

amazing corals! What par are you growing your bahama mama at? Just picked up a nice chunky frag and was wondering. Thanks.

 

[Xanthurum]

@btb72 its was getting about 600 par when I had the Gen3 Radions but I’m not exactly sure what it’s getting now. I need to re map my tank now that I have the G5’s but I can say that even if the par is lower it’s getting more light due to the spread. Before I basically had 6 spots that were very high par (directly under the pucks) and the rest was lower but now the par is pretty even all over but gets lower the deeper in the tank you go. I will say that every Mille I have loves s much light as you can give it.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

Looking awesome good sir! You can taker my PAR meter with you when you come over tomorrow.

 

[TheDragonsReef]

You got some killer pieces for sure. The tank will look incredible once it's grown out

 

[Xanthurum]

Thanks for the kind words @Dragonsreef. I still have room for quite a few more pieces. I'm really looking forward to seeing it fill in.

 

[Xanthurum]

Ok peeps so it looks like I will be home for good! Hopefully?!? Anyway here are a few things I have noticed in the last month, of which I have been home about 5 days.

1. Nearly all of my corals look better now since I upgraded my lighting. The primary coral that has changed for the worse is Cherry Bomb. Growth is still strong but colors are bland.

2. Some of my corals seem to struggle if I don't do regular water changes and I'm not sure why. I think it's due to my refugium still having black sand. Overall I'm still super happy with how things have gone in my absence. I did a water change for the first time since the new year so those having issues should get better.

3. While I've been gone I saw an uptick in Alk consumption but then a sharp decline. When I got home I noticed my bag of Easy SPS food was done so maybe that was it? I also noticed quite a bit of growth so I'm a bit confused.

So I am now taking requests for my next round of pictures, what do you want to see?

Disclaimer I just bought 5 Radions and a Rainbow Splice so I don't have any new corals at the moment lol.

 

[Xanthurum]

Picture time!
EA Cotton Candy Climax

EA Sunburst Mille is finally growing!

Vivids Confetti growing good

The polyps on JF The Unknown are seriously red

Love the swirling on the BC Sky Doppel

 

[Xanthurum]

Hump day pictures!

Cliffs acro is true beauty

Tanzanite Terror and RMF Acid Trip doing a delightful duet

TSA Bill Murray, accidentally fragged it during a water change but it was too small to try and sell it so I'm gonna grow it out.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Looking good!

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

Your pictures are stupendous!

 

[vanpire]

Nice job on the coral growth and great photography. What camera/lens are you using?

 

[Xanthurum]

@vanpire I have an incredibly complex camera setup. It’s the camera on my Samsung Galaxy S20 and some cheap clip on filters. That’s it I don’t do any photo edits I just put on either the orange or yellow filter lense to try and replicate what my eyes see.

 

[vanpire]

@vanpire I have an incredibly complex camera setup. It’s the camera on my Samsung Galaxy S20 and some cheap clip on filters. That’s it I don’t do any photo edits I just put on either the orange or yellow filter lense to try and replicate what my eyes see.

That’s awesome buddy. Maybe I should replace my iPhone 6 with something better so I can take better pics.

You are doing a great job with your corals. You are Baby Bill for SPS in AZ.

 

[Xanthurum]

Time for an update. I've been dealing with issues that seem to pop up every now and then but it only seems to affect a few corals while nearly all others aren't phased. I used a small amount of carbon to see if it was possibly some contaminate in the water but that made it way worse and lots of corals decided to brown out a bit. Some water changes and removing the carbon seem to have things back on track. Anyway I noticed that my Rainbow Splice is sprouting at least 2 if not 3 new branches and I'm seeing some new patches of red!

 

[ScottB]

Looking great!

Bill do you have some of that Acid Trip? Awesome colors.