FarmerTy's 215-gallon SPS Tank

[FarmerTy]

I also got AllStar from bubba. I can’t wait for this thing to grow! It has so much potential

Its awesome but the price was high... my son is being delivered in a month and I have to send him straight to Bubba.

@FarmerTy glad you were able to act quickly to save most everything! If it were me I think I would've panicked and lost everything.

As I was reading about the incident, I couldn't help but wonder if there was a reason you don't have your ATO controlled via your Apex? A simple "if pH > 9.0 then ATO off" could have prevented it from dumping 50 gal of Kalk water into your tank, unless it was a siphon of some sort?

I'm genuinely curious, not trying to bash in any way. I'm setting up a large system soon so I'm trying to think up all equipment and fail-safes.

No, definitely good question. I basically bought my current home and moved when my 1st son was 1 week old. That also included moving a 3 year old mature SPS tank. From the sleep deprivation and craziness of my life at that time, I basically ran everything at as needed levels and walked away from the tank. I never went back to add my failsafes 2.5 years later and so I paid the price. My new leak detection sensors came in today as well as optical float valves. I intend to have failsafes on my skimmer overflow, shutoffs programmed for leak detection, and my ATO. I have to have them now... second kid is going to break me in about another month when he comes.

Personally I’ve had my ato almost cause a crash 3 times while away on a business trip. i won’t brand bash but I had brand new top of the line ato get stuck on dumping 10 gallons of kalk saturated water into my 80 gallon. Then I returned the ato and got another brand new ato and it caught a siphon dumping 10 gallons for the second time.

i now dose kalk on a timer from a holding tank and have a gravity fed ato. Its been flawless and running kalk on a scheduled timer really balanced out the tank parameters instead of relying on evaporation to dictate when the kalk is dosed

I used to just run my topoff on a timer and would adjust it every couple weeks as needed. Though it required a little input every couple of weeks, it was nice knowing it would never overflow and just keep going!

I gotta get a frag if that someday!

Bubba takes kids for trades if you have any to send his way.

 

[drawman]

Holy crap Ty I leave this thread for a week...

 

[FarmerTy]

Holy crap Ty I leave this thread for a week...

Never leave me again! Please!!!

 

[aabjones888]

Its awesome but the price was high... my son is being delivered in a month and I have to send him straight to Bubba.

No, definitely good question. I basically bought my current home and moved when my 1st son was 1 week old. That also included moving a 3 year old mature SPS tank. From the sleep deprivation and craziness of my life at that time, I basically ran everything at as needed levels and walked away from the tank. I never went back to add my failsafes 2.5 years later and so I paid the price. My new leak detection sensors came in today as well as optical float valves. I intend to have failsafes on my skimmer overflow, shutoffs programmed for leak detection, and my ATO. I have to have them now... second kid is going to break me in about another month when he comes.

I used to just run my topoff on a timer and would adjust it every couple weeks as needed. Though it required a little input every couple of weeks, it was nice knowing it would never overflow and just keep going!

Bubba takes kids for trades if you have any to send his way.

Lol...so if I have 2 kids is that a frag pack? Lol

 

[bubbaque]

Lol...so if I have 2 kids is that a frag pack? Lol

Depends. How good are they at mowing the grass?

 

[Fishfinder]

@FarmerTy besides your CaRx do you dose any other supplements?

 

[FarmerTy]

@FarmerTy besides your CaRx do you dose any other supplements?

I do not. I'll occasionally have to bring up my Mg as the neoMg media doesn't always keep up with the consumption in my tank.

But I've had so many misadventures in the last two months that none of my "no water change" water probably exists in my tank anymore. It's all new water at this point... sigh...

 

[Fishfinder]

I do not. I'll occasionally have to bring up my Mg as the neoMg media doesn't always keep up with the consumption in my tank.

But I've had so many misadventures in the last two months that none of my "no water change" water probably exists in my tank anymore. It's all new water at this point... sigh...

hahahha I know that. I love old water also

 

[FarmerTy]

I thought this was interesting and wanted to share. With the trend in tanks going much more blue and focusing more on fluorescing pigments versus reflective pigments in acros... to capture what you see and filter out the blues that our phones and cameras pick up, often you have to use some type of filter on the camera (orange lens) to capture even a remotely passable picture. The issue I’ve seen with it is without proper correction, you still aren’t getting a true representation of the coral.

No matter where you fall on the discussion of representating true color in coral pictures, I felt this information useful and thought I would share. I’m not looking to ignite a debate but it does make me pause and look more critically at vendor pics when purchasing the newest corals out there.

I’ve used my Nikon D5300 with 60mm macro and a Neewer brand brown filter. I’ve found that it is much more accurate under my current lighting setup of Radions/T5 than an orange filter, which bias reds and oranges quite high and adds colors which are not there. Despite that, when taking pictures under all blues, I’ve still had to correct my white balance to capture what my eyes are truly seeing in my tank versus what some other hobbyists or vendors may be okay with uploading and sharing as true pics. Again, not trying to start a debate but just sharing my non-corrected white balance shots versus my corrected white balance shots so you can decide for yourself.

CC WD JR (white balanced to what I see in person)

CC WD JR (not WB.. red and orange bias high)

 

[FarmerTy]

I can see where in the past, I’ve taken some actinic pictures and I didn’t critically look back to make sure it was really accurate to what I see in person. I hope that this recent review of my actinic pics, which I rarely take anymore, gives me some better awareness to make sure I’m truly representing what each coral actually looks like in person. Thanks for humoring me and my self reflection.

 

[Blutspitze]

Fascinating comparison on the filters and balance. There is certainly a lot you can do to adjust/modify the images, and that's one reason that I'm a bit wary about buying WYSIWYG corals from a lot of vendors. It can be really difficult to tell how much adjustment was made, original conditions, etc. The last two images you post, for example, show a pretty drastic difference in coloration.

What do you use for editing? Photoshop? GIMP? I've been using GIMP myself to some success, but it's not super user friendly.

 

[panic]

I have a tough time getting the pics accurate too Ty, and I'm with you on trying to get them presenting their natural color. I use a Canon 5d with L series glass, so it's a decent rig. I don't post a lot of pics because it takes so much time, and I wish I could do it without color correcting in Lightroom, which takes a bunch of time too. Wait til your kids are pre-teens in every sport and activity possible! No time to be had, ever. Anyways, I have to start with the Radions on a 11.5k spectrum and turn off the t5s to get anywhere close or it's a waste. It's not spectrum I use daily, but it's what I have to do to get "real" photos captured. Do you take pics with your normal tank light settings?

 

[justingraham]

I have a tough time getting the pics accurate too Ty, and I'm with you on trying to get them presenting their natural color. I use a Canon 5d with L series glass, so it's a decent rig. I don't post a lot of pics because it takes so much time, and I wish I could do it without color correcting in Lightroom, which takes a bunch of time too. Wait til your kids are pre-teens in every sport and activity possible! No time to be had, ever. Anyways, I have to start with the Radions on a 11.5k spectrum and turn off the t5s to get anywhere close or it's a waste. It's not spectrum I use daily, but it's what I have to do to get "real" photos captured. Do you take pics with your normal tank light settings?

In Lightroom I have a base setting I start with then adjust from there saves a lot of time

 

[FarmerTy]

Fascinating comparison on the filters and balance. There is certainly a lot you can do to adjust/modify the images, and that's one reason that I'm a bit wary about buying WYSIWYG corals from a lot of vendors. It can be really difficult to tell how much adjustment was made, original conditions, etc. The last two images you post, for example, show a pretty drastic difference in coloration.

What do you use for editing? Photoshop? GIMP? I've been using GIMP myself to some success, but it's not super user friendly.

I use Lightroom to post process since I shoot all my images RAW on my DSLR.

The drastic differences is almost all white balance with a slight tweak to be less saturated too since often the filters can also add more saturation to your photos. I did the best I could to match to what I saw in real life... hovering my laptop over my frag tank like a crazy person.

So, beware of rainbow tenuis pics and anything with too much yellow in it... that’s just the white balance slider about to fall off the right side of the bar.

 

[FarmerTy]

I have a tough time getting the pics accurate too Ty, and I'm with you on trying to get them presenting their natural color. I use a Canon 5d with L series glass, so it's a decent rig. I don't post a lot of pics because it takes so much time, and I wish I could do it without color correcting in Lightroom, which takes a bunch of time too. Wait til your kids are pre-teens in every sport and activity possible! No time to be had, ever. Anyways, I have to start with the Radions on a 11.5k spectrum and turn off the t5s to get anywhere close or it's a waste. It's not spectrum I use daily, but it's what I have to do to get "real" photos captured. Do you take pics with your normal tank light settings?

I have preset settings for my Radion/T5 frag tank shots and my ATI T5 display shots. Then I just correct for exposure and done. Helps a ton with time.
I’m letting my kids just sit at home in front of an iPad for their preteens. Once they can drive they can do whatever sport they want. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
My pics are all at normal light settings. The brown filter helps remove the blue bias and my preset Lightroom settings correct for white spectrum and saturation. Then I just adjust exposure and done.

 

[Fudsey]

Thanks for the brown filter tip, works great ! !

 

[FarmerTy]

Thanks for the brown filter tip, works great ! !

Glad I could help!

 

[FarmerTy]

 

[Jimbo662]

More no name stuff...hopefully we go for cheap when I'm ready for some! ;-)

 

[Sea MunnKey]

Heyo FarmerTy how's your sps doing? Hope they're all recovering and coming back. Sorry to see what you've lost recently. Come on over to Toronto and I'm sure you're going to end up getting extra carry ons (heading home) with sps shopping while over here ....