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Saturday night, just after lights out... I was in the kitchen with the overhead lights on. The reef was already heading into sleep mode, but I noticed my Peppermint shrimp was out and about, very active. I'd noticed a few days ago that she was carrying eggs, and I had a feeling she was getting ready to release them. I'd not witnessed this in a very long time, and quickly dashed off to get my camera to capture the event.

The tank light was off, so I relied on the flash. Starting off ...

Back in 2011, I spotted a nice bowl-shaped Yellow Scroll coral at the frag swap. No-one was buying it, and I figured it must be expensive. To my surprise, it was $20 and yet not a single buyer. "Done," I said, handed him a $20 bill and walked away. I picked it up at the end of the event, and the seller told me he was glad I bought it because he knew it would do well in my system.

It quietly grew in ...

If you are nocturnal like me, you'll grab a flashlight to see what the corals are doing in darkness. I've used a few different flashlights over the years, but by far my favorite is the all blue one that Frag Junky / Orphek released at MACNA last year. It's so incredibly bright blue that corals pop with color.

Left to right: Maglight, Reefs Magazine LED, Red Critter Torch, and Orphek's LED chip.

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Back in December, I purchased what I figured was a Green Slimer acropora. It's a coral I've always wanted to grow out, but due to the tank leaks over the past couple of years previous attempts were foiled. As it has been growing out, it is turning out to be a different coral. The blue hue in the skin is never seen on slimers.

Here's the coral the day I brought it home.

Here it is today. I took these pictures when the light above ...

At the club meeting last night, I did a presentation on measuring PAR in our reef tanks and why it has value, regardless of the type of lighting choices we employ. I do try to focus on daylight spectrum more than 20,000 Kelvin, because PAR meters are designed to measure sunlight and not the blue spectrum.

Here's the PAR measurement of the frag tank. The light is a Reefkoi Evolution LED fixture that is three years old. The numbers are:
0" - measurement at the surface of the ...