Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Not sure if this helps but FWIW I found when I had a sebae anemone that it was really terrible at attaching to anything (even when it was healthy). It's like it prefers to wedge its foot into a deep crevasse and then pressure itself into place. The only place it stayed successfully was a fairly deep crevasse created by the placement of two large rocks near to each other.

Good luck. They are very nice anemones when they are healthy but they seem to only come into the hobby way too bleached.

Thanks for the advice, I just moved a piece of rock from my fuge up to where the nem is. I placed it in the path of the current that keeps dislodging him. It's locking in pretty well, but if the nem stays put for a day or more, I'll epoxy it in to place.

I also pried a colony of acans off the rock that the anemones tentacles could reach if the current was right. I'm sure the nem would have won if it were healthy, but I'm thinking maybe the irritation was causing it to want to wander.

[asylumdown]

I finally figured out how to fix the white balance on some of my iPhone photos. They're still not perfect, but they're waaaaay closer to real life than in the past. Ferdinand is front and centre, clearly expecting me to feed him:



Got some new goodies. The sebae anemone I picked up didn't work out. I think it was just too bleached. It wouldn't eat, wouldn't attach, wouldn't right itself (it flipped over every day for almost two weeks), and finally turned itself inside out. So I picked up what's regarded as a 'harder' anemone to keep, but so far in my tank is doing brilliantly. It attached right away, moved a couple inches, and settled down:



And some other new goodies:

Red planet, finally!


I think pocillopora, you can also see my new rainbow monti in that pic

(thanks Argentiner for the frags!)


I got a small order from Canada Corals (didn't see the group buy, oops), that's an echinopora mammiformis and an Acropora secale. Both are pretty brown at the moment, but I'm hoping uner my lights they do something magical. I also got the rainbow monti in the pic above


Terrible blown out photo of the forest fire monti, also from Canada Corals (excellent service, incredible packaging, thanks guys!)

and just some other, sort of colour corrected photos. There's still too much blue in them compared to what you see when you look at the tank, but I'm getting closer to 'as seen in real life' pictures. I'll get them perfect eventually.

[asylumdown]

(this is the most accurate colour photo I've ever been able to get of this colony)

[kien]

Nice scores! And wow that tri-colour looks insane!

[gregzz4]

Wow, that white-balance shot looks awesome Adam
Now you need some more Red corals

Oh, and Ferdinand is tre` kool

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by gregzz4

Wow, that white-balance shot looks awesome Adam
Now you need some more Red corals

Oh, and Ferdinand is tre` kool

hehe, it's why I was so excited when I finally got some red planet. I've started breaking all my new frags in two if they're big enough and placing them in different lighting areas of my tank to see what they do. I've found some of my corals that grow like weeds in the brightest light also wash out horribly under the LEDs, but if I put a frag in the shade, they'll grow slower but go back to their 'show' colours. I moved a colony of green stag with blue tips in and put the bigger chunk of Red Planet in it's place, but I have that blue/green stag in three different places in my tank, the one frag of it that's at the bottom and partially shaded is a beautiful emerald green, while the ones that were near the top where that red planet is now had nice blue tips, but the body of the corals were almost light tan/yellow. I'm not sure if that red planet frag is going to do well that high up on the rock, so I've got another piece almost at the bottom of the tank. I want at least one of them to develop that beautiful green under-tone.

[gregzz4]

I hope you find the happiest places for your different corals

It's funny, talking about LEDs ...
Another member has recently told me he may dump his latest ones and go back to T5s. I'm not surprised
I don't have the money to play with LEDs, so I have no input ...

Here's to your red planet growing like a weed

And keep the pics coming

[asylumdown]

Yah man, they're definitely not a 100% solution. I love them because when you get enough of them, they're crazy powerful, way more powerful than I ever gave them credit for before hand (hence 8 units running at 75% max power when I really only needed 6), but I've never seen an LED tank look as good in person as some of the T5 tanks I've seen. Argentiner's tank that I saw today is T5 and his is everything I hope mine one day becomes, it was spectacular. I'm not sure if it's that I just have them way too bright for some corals, or what the deal is, but certain corals just don't hold their 'zing' colours under my lights, while others (like that tricolour) almost hurt to look at they're so electric. So far, I'm willing to trade off the colour losses when they do occur for the fact that my tank actually has a sunrise and a sunset, and how much the look of it changes over the course of a day. I can wake up on a Saturday and look at the tank in it's morning light, then go out and come back at 1pm and it's like looking at a completely different tank. I even get an hour of hyper crazy royal blue (which I wouldn't want all the time) right before bed.

I'm just now starting to play with coral positioning, and considering adjusting my light schedule to see if I can bump up the colours that I've lost without compromising the growth, but it makes me nervous to mess with a good thing if you know what I mean. I'm sure part of the issue is also that this tank has been darn near close to ULNS for months, so things are a little more pastel regardless of lights anyway. I don't think I'd ever ditch LEDs now that I've had a taste of their overall intensity and controllability, but I definitely wouldn't buy another fixture unless it had the same sort of diode mix that the new radion pro has. I think the success of LEDs is going to be when the diode colour mixes start to approach the richness and breadth of what you can accomplish with T5s. I think if I had something closer to the 'true UV', as well as a few more peaks on the deeper blue end in there, the colours would pop a bit more, and the corals that fade might hold on to some of their 'zing'. However, a many thousand dollar upgrade to radion pros is not in the cards for a while.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by kien

Nice scores! And wow that tri-colour looks insane!

Thanks man, I also picked up a birdsnest of some sort from Argentiner that's totally insane, I just didn't get a shot of it tonight. His tank is incredible.

That tricolor has been been growing like crazy, I broke the original mini colony off it's base in to 4 small pieces and glued them to a new rock. It's completely encrusted over that rock and has now cemented itself down to the rockwork underneath. It does not mind being in the brightest spot in the tank one bit.