ReefMan's 280g-ish AGE Acropora Reef

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I also put together a video all about the DaStaCo2 which I've had for a couple months now. I've been really happy with it's performance and the hands off nature of it. If it wasn't for the price, I'd fully recommend the DaStaCo to everyone.

 

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I was around last night while the tank was going to sleep, and thought this photo came out nicely. Who doesn't like macro acro shots? hah

 

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I love close ups of Acropora polyps!

 

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It's been a while, so here's an update on my reef for November 2019!



I also snapped a bunch of photos during filming this. Watch this space, as Rachel Maddow says
;Clown

 

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Now you all know the truth. I rotated the coral for the "title card" in that video so I could show off the Strawberrry Acropora without covering it with text hah

 

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These two Acroporas are some of the colonies that are growing together in my tank. These two seem to get along very well, there's even a place where the green one is growing _on_ the blue stag, amogst it's polyps. I would not have thought that the two species would tolerate literally brushing up against each other's polyps - other Acropora in my tank are NOT so excited to meet. It's been really neat watching the coral grow and develop into big colonies over the past few years. Both of these corals started as small frags about three years ago. Now the stag is probably a foot tall or so with several branches, and the green one is easily the size of a salad plate.

 

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I really struggled to get a decent photo that really shows the color that's in this little colony. For the longest time this colony didn't really do anything. It existed. It lost color, but never died. Eventually my Achilles tang and Blue Spotted Angelfish broke it off it's rock during one of their battles and I reattached it here where it seemed to perk up pretty quickly.

It's a really neat dark red/purple, but then the interior of the colony fades into greens and blues where it gets a bit less light. It's being crowded by the Anacropora on the bottom right, and "over" and to the top left is a big shelving acropora that will soon be shading this spot if I don't frag it out. You can see that THIS Acropora doesn't tolerate the Anacropora getting too close..

 

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The WWC Blueberry Gonzo Acropora has been doing well, though it's lost most of it's green flesh coloration. The growth tips are much more white than they came out in the photo, I was adjusting the color of this photo for the polyps and green flesh which are true to life. Enjoy the pink tips, but this isn't present in reality - at least not to this level.

 

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No Montipora collection would be complete without one of Jason Fox's colorful specimens. If I remember correctly this if the JF Beach Bum Montipora - I got it at Reef-a-Palooza this year in Anaheim. All my other encrusting Montiporas are doing great along the bottom of my rockwork, and I need to find a spot for this one soon. It's encrusted off it's plug already into the hodgepodge of stuff growing on my frag rack already - it took a bit to start growing but it doesn't seem to be much different from my other encrusting montis as far as growth speed goes.

Hopefully once I get it on a rock and it encrusts a bunch more I can get better photos. The frag rack isn't the best location for photos in my tank..

 

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This is one of my OG corals - an Aussie Orange Torch from Unique Corals here in Southern California. It has grown to fill its little cave in the rockwork, getting indirect flow enough so that it's tentacles are always in motion one way or the other. My Starki Damsel sleeps in the rock near this coral - I worry that one day the damsel will become a meal when it gets a bit too close to the torch, but so far so good. I haven't noticed sweeper tentacles or anything like that so far - there are a couple Acropora growing nearby that have been unaffected.

 

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And finally, my Montiporas continue to grow and expand along their rocks. My camera sort of missed the focus on this one - I really should be using manual focus for these photos but that's impossible as I use a top-down housing for the lens so that I can get these photos from above where the light and colors are best.

 

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My camera (a Sony A7R III) seemed to have issues when I was filming this. You can see the video sort of hitches a few times - I'm not sure what was triggering it, that's a new behavior. I was hopeful that it was just in the "live view" display, but it does seem like it made it into the video files themselves.

I was filiming this close to f22, so maybe there just wasn't quite enough light. I should back off the f-stops a bit, but I do like to try to get as much of the coral in focus as I can. Maybe I need to crank my lights up to 100% on all channels as a "video mode" hah

It's been a while, so here's an update on my reef for November 2019!



I also snapped a bunch of photos during filming this. Watch this space, as Rachel Maddow says
;Clown

 

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I'm also involved in the Poison Dart Frog hobby, and quite excited for these new In Situ Ecosystem tanks that are on Kickstarter. They seem to check all the boxes that dart frogs need.. misting, air movement, high humidity.. Looking forward to getting one, assuming they meet their goal.



Forgive the topic change, but I'm excited about them and wanted to share it with you all, whoever you may be. There's some cross over between reefs and dart frogs in the hobby, it seems.

 

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I installed some moonlights over my tank only to discover they were bright blue. Since the Neptune Lunar Simulator is just using 5mm LEDs I thought it would be easy to swap them with something more realistic. Actual moonlight is close to 4100K so I found similar 5mm leds and replaced the blue ones that came with the unit. Really simple to do!

 

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Under the neutral white moon light I can pretty easily get color-accurate photos of the coral. Under "day" light this Acropora tortuosa is almost impossible to get an accurate photo of - it's such a deep rich blue that it confuses the sensor or something. I was excited to find that this photo of it under my new moon lights actually shows the color, and I didn't even need to edit the photo to get it accurate. Pretty awesome!

 

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Here's a video all about how I modified the Neptune Lunar Simulation modules to be more accurate to the true color of moonlight - 4100k

 

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A nice shot of some Acropora axial polyps from today.

 

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Anacropora don't have axial polyps like Acropora do.

 

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Anacropora can be distinguished from Montipora (which also don't have axial polyps) because Anacropora have raised coralites. See how bumpy they are? Montipora - at least those which branch like this - are smooth.

 

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I have been having great luck with the WWC Blueberry Gonzo Acropora. It has held up its color and is growing into a nice colony. It's about the size of a coffee mug right now.