SuncrestReef

Honestly, I think that would work. 🤣

My pavona was sitting on a rock for a month or so, until a turbo snail knocked it over onto the sand. The pavona left behind remnants on the rock that are now growing into a new colony, so I can attest to how easily it reproduces.

It looks pretty similar to mine, though it depends on the lighting. Mine sort of looks teal blue/green, but it's one of the most difficult to photograph accurately. This was also my very first coral, and I bought it at Cuttlefish & Corals. Here's a crappy iPhone photo:

Nice photos!

Nice! Looks great. Are you doing anything fancy in the sump and cabinet, or just going old school?

The hydroids in my tank went away on their own after a couple of months. I'm not sure why. It was during a time my tank was going through different phases with green hair algae, wire algae, and bubble algae. I could see my cleanup crew working on the various algaes, but they never touched the hydroids. I now have several long digitate hydroids that only come out at night.

And this is Bryopsis:

Here are some macro photos of hydroids. Is this what you're seeing in your tank?

Hard to tell from the photo, but it might be hydroids.

Great write-up as always, Bert! It was definitely a fun and informative meeting. Here are some of the photos I shot. I actually didn't shoot too many corals, but instead singled out a few and took many shots with different settings to compare them and hone my technique. I posted these previously in the meeting announcement thread, but here they are again for those who missed them:

I own a Reefer XL 425. While I really like it, there are some features on the Waterbox Reef product line that I would like to have: Leveling feet on the cabinet Gate valve on the overflow Dual nozzles on the return line The 70.3 is in their Marine product line, so not sure if it has these same features as the Reef line.

@Mandinga Thanks for the frags. The miyagi torts are looking good under my lights! I can't wait for them to grow out like your larger colony. You all should take a look; Isaac's got a nice collection to pick from. The Oregon mummy eye looks amazing.

The tang gets plenty of food. In fact, while I recorded the video there was a piece of nori on the other side of the tank. He goes back and forth between eating the nori and then pecking at the shrimp. It's like some sort of game for him.

My kole tang spends half his day nipping at my cleaner shrimp's antennae. The shrimp seems to be a good sport about it, but I can't imaging he likes it. It'm not sure why he keeps doing this. 🤷‍♂️ Anyone else having this issue?

This got weird really fast. 😳🤣 Happy birthday.

pm sent.

I just learned my tank has been featured on R2R's Reef Tank 365! https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/reef-tank-365-featuring-suncrestreefs-rsr-425xl.578550/#post-5894725 Not sure I can handle the new found fame. 🤣

@MrBret Here are some of the macro photos I shot in your tanks after the photography session:

Congrats! Looks great. (both the kitchen and new tank)

Any reason you're adding a separate Apex rather than just extending modules to the new frag tank? Just curious.

Here’s Cooper, our English lab, at 8 weeks old: and here he is now at 4 years old:

I've always heard that mushroom corals grow and reproduce quickly. However, I've had several mushrooms in my tank for over 8 months with none of them reproducing. Until now! Tonight I discovered a new baby St. Thomas mushroom: This probably isn't a big deal to the rest of you, but it's pretty exciting for me since it's a first in my tank.

I've charged my camera battery, cleared up space on the SD memory card, and cleaned my lens. I'm pretty psyched to shoot some photos tomorrow at Paradise Coral, and hopefully learning some good tips from the photography discussion. See you all tomorrow!

I first discovered the red bugs about 2 months ago. I picked up a pair of dragonface pipefish about 2 weeks later and they have been slowly pecking at the bugs once in a while, but not enough to eradicate them. However, I have not seen any visible damage to the corals, so I'm not yet ready to take any more drastic measures. If the corals were showing obvious damage, then I could justify the extra work to capture and remove all my shrimp & crabs before using Interceptor to kill the bugs. But there's little chance I could capture my pistol shrimp without completely destroying my aquascape, so I really don't want to go that route if I don't have to.

Here's an up-close macro video showing the red bug infestation on one of my acropora frags. They are pretty active little buggers.