Its official, I've converted to the dark side!

[OgreMkV]

AS far as the chemistry goes, it's the other way round. The pH affects the calcium. Usually the lower the pH, the higher the calcium. Which is why I thought yours was very low.

My kH is (now) pretty constant at 11 and that seems to keep the pH at about 8 - 8.2.

Don't sweat the mushroom curling. They do that. Sometimes they are spread so thin you can almost see through them. Sometimes they stand up on the stalks, sometimes they curl all up. Strange creatures.

 

[gatotsu77]

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been kinda busy lately. I've ventured further into the realm of corals, and gotten my parameters a bit more in check. Salinity: 1.025, pH: 8.0, Ca++: 380, dKH: 9, Ammonia: 0, Nitrite: 0, Nitrate: 10, Phosphate: 0, Temp: 78-80 F. (fluctuation between coldest part of night vs warmest part of day)

Anyway, here's a quick FTS to show y'all what I've been up to the last few days.

 

[gatotsu77]

I've also ordered a new lighting setup for this tank. Its an 18" T5-HO setup with 2 20w bulbs, one is 10000k, one is 460nm actinic. Hopefully that'll encourage some nice coral growth, as well as really show off the iridescence most of these guys have.

 

[gatotsu77]

Updated FTS:

The previous FTS was taken with a fill-flash to help illuminate everything, and because I was being lazy, I managed to take a pretty crummy photo. This one isn't all that much better, but this was taken sans the fill-flash. I have done a white-balance correction, so that you'll see the tank as if it were in daylight. Here's an unedited comparison of brightness/color between the new (left) and old (right) lights. For those who understand a bit about photography, both shots were taken at ISO 200, F4.5, 1/10th sec. Focal length (before the 1.6x crop factor on my camera sensor) is approx. 30mm.