Renton's Evolution from 200 to 440 gallons

[bubbaque]

Holy Moly! I got to get one of those!!!

 

[bubbaque]

How long have you had it?

 

[Renton777]

How long have you had it?

About 6 years. A year or so ago I fragged the colony into 5 equal sized pieces, I sold 4 and have regrown this one.

Here is the frag from 6 years ago.

 

[lolgranny]

Definitely beautiful! Super slow grower imo. Did you get it from dfs or Adam? Lineage to it? Not that I care with such a nice piece, always end up forgetting.

 

[Renton777]

Definitely beautiful! Super slow grower imo. Did you get it from dfs or Adam? Lineage to it? Not that I care with such a nice piece, always end up forgetting.

mine is from DFS via @purplereef . I agree, slow grower.

 

[Renton777]

Copps Bonsai

 

[Renton777]

Funky Hammer

 

[Renton777]

Frankenstein Mushroom

 

[Renton777]

A couple stylocoeniella

Burning Banana

Not sure if this one has a name but it is super bright

 

[bubbaque]

Are all the corals you posted from one system?

 

[Renton777]

They are all from one system but two different tanks. I have an 80 gallon "frag" tank and a 200 gallon display tank plumbed together. The frag tank is lit with an Orpek Atlantik 3 and the display is lit with AI Sols and a custom LED strip that puts out a lot of cyan (sea greenish) color. All of which run varying intensity and colors over the course of the day. Why do I mention that? Because there are lots of variation in lighting and corals and pictures can look a lot different from tank to tank and even the same coral looks quite a bit different a various points in the day.

Here is an older picture but it gives you a good look:

 

[Renton777]

Sea Cucumber and Mushrooms

 

[Renton777]

A couple group shots

 

[bubbaque]

The tank looks very filled out! I like it!

 

[Renton777]

A couple top down shots of the main tank

 

[Renton777]

Z's & P's in the frag tank

 

[Renton777]

I was asked a question about my use of the Alkatronic so I thought I would share my response here.

I am still using the Alkatronic and very much like it. I have not totally put it to full use and completely narrowed down my Alk range. Currently I have a low tolerance of 8.5dkh and a high tolerance of 9.2dkh, so ALK drifts within that range depending on my water changes and dosing. I eventually plan to narrow the range to 8.5 to 8.8.

In the graph below you will see ALK was at the high rang on August 7th. I turned off the Alk dosing via my Apex, intending to only turn it off for a couple hours.......well I forgot I turned it off until later that day and you can see the Alk drop from 9.2 down to 8.5.

The Alktronic is currently doing exactly what I want it to do at this point, prevent a drop below 8dkh and spike above 10dkh.

 

[bubbaque]

I thought it monitored and dosed to keep it in a range. Is that not how it works? Are you needing to tell it how much to dose?

 

[Renton777]

I thought it monitored and dosed to keep it in a range. Is that not how it works? Are you needing to tell it how much to dose?

I still use dosing pumps controlled by the apex. I would say the Alkatronic is more intended to help take corrective action when things get outside of your desired range. It will dose when the reading is too low and does have a blue tooth plug that can turn off a dosing pump when the range is too high. But it is not intended to be the main doser.

 

[Renton777]

Excuse the cellphone pic, but I just had to share a picture of a baby bounce. The foot of the mother was stretching way out after the main frag disk it is on broke loose. I cut the mother loose and the remaining part of the foot turned into a baby.

I plan to let the baby grow out and frag from that so that I dont ever have to cut the mother again.