[jag10016]

Wow

[scarf_ace1981]

Quote: Originally Posted by marki24 No no more sps!! SPS are boring. Softies are fun they make your head

i'm more of an lps and softie fan but his sps look very happy. he can upgrade and get more sps AND softies

	SPS Small Polyped Scleractinians - Sometimes known as Small Polyped Stony corals. These are hard corals that have extremely small polyps. They are typically on the difficult side and require Metal Halide lighting or dense Power Compact or T5 arrays. These corals are prized for their rareness and ability to be easily fragged into multiple colonies.

	LPS Large Polyped Stony corals – In the aquarium hobby this is a common division of the species of stony corals based upon the visual assessment of the size of the polyps. Corals in this category were among the first stony corals to be kept successfully in captivity and include many very beautiful species. Commonly kept Genera include Euphyllia (hammer/frogspawn coral), Favia (brain coral), Plerogyra (bubble coral), Lobophyllia (meat/tooth coral), and Caulastrea (candycane coral). LPS corals also include the popular solitary non-colonial stony corals such as Fungia (plate coral), Cynarina (button coral), Trachyphyllia (open brain coral), and Herpolitha (tongue coral). Like their SPS counterparts, LPS corals require good water quality, intense lighting of the appropriate spectrum, adequate water movement and regular supplementation of calcium.

[EmilyT]

right marki, i dont really care for colored sticks, but those are just beautiful. i hope my 34 gallon will look that nice.

[JHOV2324]

Dude get a Bigger tank...your doing a great job....corals loook noooice...

[jtbone68]

Very Nice

[rfc]

Thanks everyone for the kind words. Reefing is a wonderful hobby.

As to the question of flow, I am have a mag 7 return giving me est 400 gph, a tunze 6025 at 660 gph and a maxijet 1200 with a hydor at est 200 gph. So I guess im pushing a conservative estimate of 43X turnover. Top part of the tank has the most flow and the bottom is relatively low to med.

As the the black background...its photoshoped as many of you might have guessed. Here is my tank straight out of the camera




You can see one of my returns (lft center) is aimed at my overflow box to bank its flow onto the sps. The hydor gives a nice cyclical flow to the center sps and bottom. And the tunze is aimed at the right corner. Overall, the flow pattern is very random and seems to keep everything happy.


Not much room for more corals, time to let the small sps frags grow out.

As to lenses.... the full tank shot was done with a nikkor 35-70 and the individual corals with a nikkor 60mm micro. I shoot everything raw and then set white balance in adobe camera raw to 14K which pretty much matches the actual colors produced by the 14k phoenix MH.



Thanks again

RFC aka the NOOB

	MH Metal Halide Lighting, typically used for high intensity light demanding corals such as SPS. Bulbs come in varieties of spectrums (7k, 10k,20k), and intensity (175W, 250W, 400W).

	SPS Small Polyped Scleractinians - Sometimes known as Small Polyped Stony corals. These are hard corals that have extremely small polyps. They are typically on the difficult side and require Metal Halide lighting or dense Power Compact or T5 arrays. These corals are prized for their rareness and ability to be easily fragged into multiple colonies.

[Awibrandy]

I so love this slice of the ocean!! It is way beautiful. Everything looks extremely happy. Way to go "Noobie"

[rfc]

Not sure if anyone remembers me as I haven't been around for a while.

I haven't posted in a long while because nothing new has happened for me in this hobby. Over the past year I haven't done a thing to my tank except for feeding and maintenance.

Yes, since last summer 2007, zero dollars spent on corals and equipment. Just last week I broke down and purchased a new phoenix bulb to replace the last one which was 18 months old.


My tank is doing fine, and when viewing old photos, it was fun to see the growth of my corals. Other interesting observations for the past year....

- I stopped using phytoplankton DT and Reef Nutrition and I noticed a significant drop in my pod population,


- My candycanes and frogspawn are growing like weeds. Just recently I had to frag one of my canes and ended up giving them away as freebies


- I have gone thru the interesting population bursts...first colanistas snails, then vermatids, and now spaghetti worms.


- My last coral purchase in the summer of 2007 also introduced green bubble algae, aptasia, and red turf algae to my pristine tank. The red turf algae slowly took over two large rocks and it was thick, 1 inch deep. After getting tired of pruning it every week I did some research and found that many were having sucess with Mexican turbo snails to remove it. I purchased three mex turbos for my tank and in 2 weeks it was all gone ! The aptasia and bubble algae are the next to go. Recently purchased some joes juice and it seems to work well. Now I have to get a emerald crab.


- My fish, 2 clowns, 1 watchman goby, 1 firefish, have all settled into their territories and I dont plan on adding any new fish at this point in time. Honestly, I wish the firefish and goby would die because all they do is hide in their rocks all day long. I never see them except for feeding time.


- Deaths : No matter what one does in this hobby, death is part of the game. During the past year I have lost, 1 red mushroom, a montipora plate, and a small challace frag. Not sure as to the cause of death.... so it goes in a reef tank


For those interested, my standard maintenance schedule is
5 gallon water changes every week
b-ionic every day,
change carbon every 2 weeks.
change filter sock every 3-4 days
change rowaphos every 6 -8 weeks

Feeding - mysis, and formula 1 pellets once or twice a day


Future plans are to do nothing new. Just let the tank grow and mature. I have learned to control the MONEY PIT LOL


Here are some recent pics from the last month.

[rookie07]

Very Nice tank....It is very cool to be able to see the growth in your tank...The acan is growing like crazy....well done...keep it up.
Thanks

[MOIDOL]

Welcome back rfc I thought we lost one of the best photographer here! every time i c rfc it reminds me of "George Washington" picturethanks for sharing!