Thanks Brett! I just figured out how to adjust the WB on my D5100 last night. I can't wait to take some proper pictures.


Thanks! Now for a lesson in photography? :redface:

Strawberry Shortcake (no clue on the scientific name)... Love it though. As it turns out, it really likes lower light. I've seen amazing growth and color compared to having it up high.

wow tank is looking great !
just quickly scanned the whole thread .. great progress .

what can you tell me about your maintenance and dosing routine ?
what do you test for , extra additives etc .

looking good

Clean glass every 2 days.

Weekly - Bi-Weekly water change (Sometimes I forget). I matched temperature, ALK, CA, MAG and Salinity every water change. I stopped doing this for the last few water changes.

Zeovit - Reactor, bak, start and food. Pump every day-ish, start twice per day on an auto doser (0.4ml twice per day for 300Gal) and food/bak once per week. I haven't changed the zeolites in months.

Calcium reactor with ARM course media. PH set to 6.9 and just barely a stream for drip rate.

Carbon in a media reactor changed every 2 weeks (1.5 cups of media).

Skimmer dumped every week, cleaned every month.

looks like you're not using your DIY lights any longer? Are those Vegas?

Interesting on the Strawberry Shortcake..three of us in the Okanagan split a good sized chunk between us and all of us found that high light and high flow is the only way to make this not go pale and stop growing.

The DIY had some epic growth and color, but didn't push the light all the way to the edges of the tank. These are Hydras, after some tweaking I can vouch they are an epic light. Default program eliminates the royal blues, I added them in to ramp with the other blues and the colors improved! UV seems to have added some color to the corals. Some of them are starting to get their "halide" luminescence back.

I've had a couple fail on me though (one main board and one burnt white LED which causes all of the others to go out). I also found out they don't use any heat transfer material between the LED boards and heatsink (maybe a non-issue as they seem to cool fine).

Thanks for the response Wayne, I thought it was ssc but just wanted to confirm... Did you aquire the colony or frag and grew it out?

Would you say it's a fast grower.... I recently aquired a frag and have mine roasting on the frag rack but kinda unimpressed with colour as its pale ATM, it's fully encrusted now I may try to move mine lower to see if it improves.

Are yours under LED or other? I gave a frag to a friend with halides and it reacted better up high... Mine lost the green base up high and turned more white/pink.

I purchased it as a colony, but has significantly increased in size since I bought it (about 1/3). It came out of a halide tank and was pale white with pink tips.

For the past year I had an orange spotted rabbit fish that really enjoyed growth tips and zoas. The SSC was the only SPS he left alone, so it grew faster than my other corals lol.

Well since you have LEDs it would make sense that it likes lower, I forgot that when I first wrote my response, mine is under t5 and has good green but when I referred to pale it was the tips, they aren't exactly red.... More of a pastel pink hue. Maybe some more time suntanning may help it colour up.