I just looked at the pics with the XM and Phoenix side by side, and your SE are much bluer on the magnetic ballasts than mine are on my electronic ballasts. Even with 2x54w UVL Super Actinic running beside them mine aren't as blue as yours.

Congrats on 5 years!

Would it help to motivate you on your upgrade if Christy and I came over and stole all the corals out of your 175G ?

It would probably have the opposite effect.....I would have room to buy more corals :razz:


That xm bulb is over a year old so it is a bit more yellow then it should be....

Ok, maybe that's throwing the white balance even bluer on the camera? Each end just appears reeeeeally blue...like actinic blue.

With everyone having different monitors, monitor profiles, browsers, embedded color profiles and mac vs pc...it's really tough to compare one pic to another unless at the very least both pics were taken with the same camera with the same settings and then viewed on the same system. Just sayin'... it's frustrating as hell for digital designers let alone reefers.

Just an add to that... Cameras have a white balance as well... so the color you get isn't the color that you actually see... in order to get the colors right you actually need to have a "color strip" with a white, black, blue, yellow, red, and green. You then have to manually adjust the colors to match the color card. If both pictures were taken in RAW used the same color card and then modified to match it, then you could compare pictures... but since most people don't even have a camera that keeps a pic in RAW good luck on that one. :lol:

It just came to mind. We all still compare pics... I do too sometimes forgetting all this.

Hey I can't help but notice the beautiful regal angel you have in your tank. How long have you had it? I was thinking about getting one but wasn't quite sure how it would do in a reef. Your tank looks similar to mine, mostly SPS and LPS, but I have a couple of softys and some zoos as well. What would be your advice on putting a regal angel into a reef tank? Thanks so much for your help.

I wouldn't recommend it..... that fish is a coral eater, it eats acros, most LPS (although he leaves my frogspawn and bubblecoral alone), clams and zoos.

So I wanted to ask why the 120 is your favorite tank ATM? The 175 looks pretty dang good to me:biggrin: Asside from th two-tone look