Acropora picture - From today....

[melev]

[I decided to take a macro picture of my acropora on real 35mm film today, to see how my Nikon would do. Here's the photo, for your viewing pleasure:

alt="">


While I was at it, I noticed my Flame Angel was actually posing for once!

alt="">]

 

[peterlin]

[Marc -
Your SPS look brown. Does it start out with this color? I bought couple so called tricolor - they look brown after 2 weeks. They are under 2 - 250 watt metal halide. Is that not enough light?
Your flame angel is very pretty. I would have one in my clam tank but I don't trust it from not nibbling on the clams.]

 

[melev]

[Peter,

It was a very light tan, but has been getting darker over the past month or so. It might be getting too much intensity from the 165w PCs I've got right over it.

If you'll click on the link to my 29 gal below, you can see the coral when I bought it at Macna, as well as a follow up picture two months later. I was happily surprised to see the growth, as I was really more worried if it would even live. SPSs are new to me.

I have a Maxima clam in this tank with the Flame Angel, and it has never bothered it for a minute.]

 

[Kevin Trotman]

[@peterlin wrote:

That's common with colonies that you buy. These SPS are used to very specific lighting conditions in the wild and they have to adjust. I don't have a lot of colonies for this reason. I do have one acro colony and it has done the same thing. It's under 400watt hallides, so its not an intensity thing. Not that I think colonies are bad, but its sometimes a toss-up as to wether you can get a nicely colored frag and let it grow out in less time than it would take to let a colony adjust to your lighting and look decent in your tank. 2 250watt hallides should be enough to do about a 50 to 60 gallon tank. Depending on how long it is. You usually want a bulb for at least every 2 feet of tank space. They tend to cast shadows when they are further apart than that.]

 

[Chris]

[Coloring in SPS corals is often dictated by the spectral intensity of your lighting. (often not always)

Two similar setups....

Tank 1 with 400W 6500K Iwasaki's no actinic support will result in rapid growth, poor coloration

Tank 2 with 400W 20000K Radium will result in less growth but excellent coloration

It's a bit old, but Sanjay Joshi did a spectral analysis of various bulbs.]

 

[melev]

[How old can that analysis be? We just saw his presentation last September at MACNA.]

 

[Kitty]

[

alt="">

alt="">
THe first picture is my acro in December, when I bought it. The 2nd is the acro last month - and it has gone downhill, as some of the bleaching has occured. Bleaching or dying - how do you tell the difference? I only know the "stems" are turning white.
:ghostface:
Help?!!? This is the first acro I have tried, and I don't want to lose it! Water parameters : Amm=0, Nitrite = 0 trate - 2.5 by Red Sea, Alk is "high" Calcium is 440. Phosphate is high - I'm having a green-algae-on-the-glass problem.
Lighting: acro is 3" under water level, directly under blue VHO. There is also MH 175w 10K over the tank, roughly 8" away. I feed Coral Accel every other day. This worked great for 2 1/2 months. oh - 140 gal tall, with refugium.
Any ideas, please?]

 

[melev]

[Kitty, the pictures didn't come through. Can you try posting them again?

Alkalinity is "high" ? We need to know specifically if it is x amount of dKH or x meq/l to help.

High phosphates are bad too, btw. I used Kent's Phosphate Sponge to bring mine down from 2.0 to .2 in 48 hours, last November.]