melev

On 6/10, the tank turned seven months old. Which means fresh pictures, right? I've been doing some necessary maintenance to clean up the system because I prefer it that way, but also because Gary Parr is coming to visit and asked specifically to photograph my reef. All the Vortechs are clean, the viewing panels are spotless, the overflow scraped down to the glossy black acrylic once more. The reef is ready.

I see blue polyps in this montipora, and some interesting rootlike veins.

I picked up a blue tort for my reef, which is a necessity. I love this coral, however I have a really bad success rate with this one species. Trying once more; wish me luck.

Here's a mystery or bonus acropora in the works. I have no idea how it got started there, but the puddle is growing and a tip has emerged.

Speaking of new growth, when the return pump is off to feed the reef, the staghorn acro now makes contact with the surface, and a branch to the right is about an 1/8" away from doing the same.

One of the skills I lack is placing contrasting corals next to each other. I had a pink pocillopora next to the reddish acropora. Neither made to the other look good, but when I placed the blue tort between them, bam!

Pink hammer polyps.

The purple montipora is so pretty and eye-catching, although it is definitely looking to overtake its green neighbor.

Drew's acro is growing faster. I can almost see daily progress now.

The red acropora from Sea World is doing very well. I need to sharpen my skill at taking pictures of it, because they are almost always soft for some reason.

Red arms emerged tonight - a rare sighting.

My friend Ryan thinks the unknown acro may be my Tyree A. valida - maybe he's right. I had it four tanks ago, and lost a lot of it. It's really a brown annoying mass in the reef, but look at this spot on the backside. I'll probably move this into the frag tank to free up space and see if it turns into something prettier. It's eating up some prime real estate in the front of the reef and isn't showcasing enough color to justify that spot. Maybe the new lights will help.