goldenbasketreef

Nice collection Tom!

Super nice corals Jeff!

Reverse Joker's Acan Lord

D = Boring Good thing Cam Newton got a good whip early in his carrier to set him straight. A few more and he should be fine...lol

My picture looks the way the coral do or better in people's tank. I can understand your background that making you judge my picture the way you do. I like to quote Brian Archer "There are many ways to skin a cat" Work habits. I have rhythm on how I do this that is unique to myself, others can do whatever they like and suit the purpose. I only care the end result my corals look better in person otherwise I will not last over 29 years in business. Yes, I can do all in Lightroom with its bell & whistle if I want to enter into contest photography. But picasa is as good as any post processing software for the purpose of viewing on the internet or any electronic gadgets. Yes, I have done presets. Again you and I now well that presets is only work if your subject is in the exact same lighting set up, position, and camera setting all the time. Otherwise presets is generalization that will not apply to all pictures taken. I prefer to review and crop my picture one at a time, time consuming but the result is much suited for my business. This is how we differ in the way we each experience our trade. You are more verse in potrait taking photography and occasional tank picture taking. I took on average 100 coral pictures a day in various lighting and camera setting and cropping set. So go through one by one is the only option for me. I am waiting for someday there is a post processing software that will be able to interprets each picture and apply the presets accurately for given situation. My wish but human brain funcation difficult to duplicate into a software application.

+1 on Kevin's pointers. If you have more blue spectrum setting it is more helpful to use plastic gray card instead of white color object to read white balance. Every area of the tank will have diff white balance setting. Both Nikon and Canon has white balance setting storage that you can recall when you are taking picture specific to certain area of the tank. I would start with widest aperture setting and ISO 400-800 to start taking picture, compensate over/under expose with +/- exposure adjustment knob. When you have moving water you need speed of 125+. When you need to take picture above iso 800 picture will be grainy. You can set camera either base on speed or aperture. If you set at speed mode, you set the speed and the camera will do auto aperture setting. If you set aperture mode, you set aperture opening and camera will do auto speed adjustment. You choose either or and may be even manual (you set both speed and aperture) and make a lot of practice shots, I mean lots of picture taking to get familiar with your camera and tank lighting. I shoot both in RAW and jpeg so I have more options to do correction. I use Lightroom to filter out blue & Cheap Google Picasa to crop and do minor correction. Lightroom is very fast and easy to eliminate blue hue. I usually upload pictures to Lightroom, select all, hit auto correction. Then adjust over/under exposure that is all you need to do. I use picassa to go back and look each picture and compare it against the RAW and do croping one picture at a time. Practice...practice...practice...in not time you will master your camera and also master the lighting condition in your tank.

First one is GB Scattered Brain Third is GB Scarface

I went last year, there are lots of nice corals at decent price. Lots of individual vendors with unique collections there. The best always gone the first few hours of show opening, killer deals will start a few hours before closing. When you see something affordable you like to purchase get it immediately because it may not be there the second time around.

Skimmer manufactures always over rated the skimmer service rating so most likely you will be undersized if you base your decision to use the skimmer as per manufacture rated service.

Passive carbon usage is very inefficient because a lot of the carbon absorption only happened in the top part of media bags. A lot of water bounce over and didn't get filter. Depending on the way you place it, the carbon bag will get dirty overnight making it less water to pass though. Micron filter and carbon reactor is the best way to utilize carbon filtration. Free floating particulate matter water will pass through reactor and passing all the surface area of carbon without restriction. Change the carbon often because carbon will release back what it absorbs when the pores fill up. In any case whatever work the best for your application don't change. You alone that knows well how your aquarium system works. One way of doing thing will not necessary applicable for your system so improvise.

I don't think his par that high

I still have the MH fixture that you look at before just no ballast and bulb.

That will be awesome. or You can spread out 100 Cree led on a 5'x5' aluminum sheet 1/4" and fire at 350ma or 500ma that should be less than 630.00

It is design for passive cooling so increasing the drive current is not feasible, adding optic / reflector will increase par by 30% maybe and at a much more ad on cost. Reflector / optic is expensive and the lay out of lani fixture not design to take optic or reflector because diodes align with minimal spread. If we were to use lani led for 4x8 tank we would need a lot of panels so it would not be cost effective. Can be done but become too expensive. Right know with 51 diodes per 20"x6" fixture @ 197W X2 I can light up 4ftX4ft area with 350-800 par edge to center. This is not counting the violet & rb par that the par meter can't read properly. Usually need to add about 30% of the par meter reading if there plenty of rb, violet, & true uv (sub 400nm). This reading with fixture about 24" above water surface. Sometimes we need to look at total cost to light a square foot area efficiently and comparing brand / ready made fixture with diy.

Isn't it the majority of aeration happened in skimmer chamber and also when water come down from baffle to create waterfall effect? Excessive aeration could cause the tiny bubbles to get stuck underneath the coral tissue.

Majority of reefers still using T5 and MH as the benchmark standard. So if using LED fixture not succesful they will go back to either T5 or MH. LED fixture will not fit all and also the fixture came in many design and difference in diodes quality. Some diodes you can drive up to 350ma and some diodes you can drive all the way to 1.5V. Some 3W diodes will maintain spectrum when dim or run at 350ma and some we will not know what spectrum they cast when dim at 350ma. Because of this variance LED fixture is not plug and play and also this variance attributed to some people having issue when running led fixture. The key is to know the handicap of the fixture being used and how to somehow lessen the issue to make it a good working unit. For example, many led brand place violet and white diodes in one channel. Violet is an absolute must have in a fixture for coral growth and color, it is as much PUR as you can get in a single violet diode. However when the white being dim the violet also got dim as well. No wonder that some people having issue with color and also corals not growing. Corals need violet, rb, & blue (basically 400-480nm) as much as you can give the corals, in a fixture you will want this at 100% output. Looking at Philips experiment they may design the led fixture with T5 benchmark, intensity/par and spectrum should be about the same as having T5. The color spectrum will be better because they covers a wide range of spectrum with the layout in CoralCare fixture. Still not sure if end user will be able to tune the color to have color combination of T5.

It is all depend on the application, it is difficult to build led aquarium lighting because one fixture doesn't fit all. In a bigger and deeper commercial tank high ma diodes may be necessary instead of having a bunch of smaller hobbyist tank fixtures for economic reason. In my shop we work around the tank a lot so having 6-12" fixture above the water just not workable, I need to hang the light 24-36" above water and still giving good par for the corals to grow and color up. Hence I am using higher wattage diodes so I can drive them with higher ma drivers.

D120 layout idea is design for even coverage using more diodes at lower wattage. Unfortunately running without optics will have to set down low to have enough par, I have tested this already. With or w/o optics will depend on lens that come with the diodes itself. Some color has 100 degree or less dome lens and some other colors has 180 deg lens. If the diodes all come with 180 deg lens and produce enough lumens then running without optics will be OK. At the same position par could be down to 50% w/o optics. LED reflector become the choice right now, it gives smooth and even blend as compare to optic. Back to Philips CoralCare it may have the new luxeon z on it, smaller platform with brighter and more efficient than luxeon rebel diodes. Philips is a household quality brand name and people should expect the same when this light become available. Philips hold so many patents in lighting technology including led technology up to a point that other brands led diodes pay royalty fee to incorporate Philips technology in manufacturing the led diodes.

Check this annoucement from Philips: http://www.philips.co.uk/c-m-li/coralcare Before putting up for sale to the public, Philips conducted ongoing study to compare this led fixture to T5 for growing corals. http://images.consumerproducts.philips.com/Web/PhilipsConsumerLifestyle/%7B883e5b3b-b8bd-44bd-8666-e67edeba6f46%7D_CoralCare_LED_unit_-_Preliminary_Field_Test_Report_-_FINAL_v2.pdf?elqTrackId=d1902c43043547c99c55a620f76bbe01&elq=5d382ca9f6b24aef86a62bc69d2e781b&elqCampaignId=&elqaid=12591&elqat=1 Will be interesting to see the final product. Very tightly space & low wattage for even spread and passive cooling.

Merry Christmas.

It is so unfortunate that some nice protopaly are deathly to other corals and can poison human also. Those corals may have a chance to come back depending on how much poison get into its system, it will be a long process. Sorry you have to experience this issue and hope for a better new tank.

Sorry I called Toxic Purple (Purple Death protopaly) because it is the first paly that poison myself when I inhaled the air while cutting a frag. 102 Fever & Chill and Burning Throat for 8 hrs. I was lucky I didn't inhale enough toxin to knock me out.

The nuclear green protopaly colony in your full tank shoot before the rock falling. The toxin will be very potent in a small tank. Nuclear Green & Toxic Purple Protopaly is best keep in 50gal or larger tank, so the toxin if release will be diluted with more water volume, hence less toxic to other corals.

Looks like your paly was stressed when rock falling down and releasing toxin into the water. Carbon will not removed the toxin, it will take a lot and the corals is affected immediately. Those tooth corals, lobo, blasto, trachy, favia, favites, scoly ect will be affected. Remove the paly from the tank and you can put back after the tank stable