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. ...
Updated 02-16-2014 at 01:43 PM by melev
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 ...
Updated 03-30-2014 at 12:53 PM by melev
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 ...
So I've noticed since I restarted this tank which has been almost exactly a year, slow growth. And I am having trouble with LPS all of a sudden. Most of them are receding. I'm wondering if I am running too much light on my system? 50 3w Leds half royal blue half cool white Blue is at 80% intensity White 100% intensity Run for 8 hrs a bit more if you count the ramp up and down. 3 inches off the surface with no optics Here are also my parameters, ...