Christy's Reef

Well I still don't have my new ballasts. Hopefully they'll arrive sometime this week. Its been quite the struggle to get them. First they were backordered, then they sent the wrong ones and then the company that was sending them was in the middle of inventory so yet another delay. This last delay was of my own doing as I spent the money on something else :P

So I was eager to compare my overdriven NO actinics vs the real deal so I picked up some VHO URI super actinics on ebay for fairly cheap. The shipping was more than I paid for 4 bulbs. Crazy eh? Anyway, I put them on the tank and really I don't see much of a difference, so I'm glad I bought the VHO cheap and now I know I don't really need them so I can save myself the extra $10 a bulb and just get the NO. The VHO also run STINKING hot. I burned my ear while I was fiddling around in the tank. Yes yes, yet another body part to add to the burn list. Its not as bad as the metal halide burn I gave myself a couple years ago though.

My camera is being crabby tonight. I wanted to post some pics of that blue bali colony I was having troubles with back at the beginning ofDecember. Its looking pretty spectacular today but my camera just won't get the blue and really looking at the two pics side by side you wouldn't think its anything special. I'll keep on it though, maybe there is some setting I haven't discovered yet :P

Some of the colors are finally starting to come back. Alot of the blues and pinks are taking their own sweet time though. This pink pocilipora seems like its taken forever to come back and it still has a fair bit of brown on it. My yellow bali acro is starting to lighten up, it became a really dark yellow in the while I've had it. I still haven't really figured out what the problem in my tank was. I first attributed it to the ROWAphos but its just taking so long for some of these corals to regain their color that I wonder if it isn't something else.

Anyway, I was having a decent moment for the "non-blue" corals and even managed to eke out a decent shot of one of my faves: this blue acro. Its growth is practically non-existent but its hanging in there and looking better than ever! Then there is my green slimer and green acro which IMO look almost exactly the same and for all I know I've named them wrong. They used to have subtle differences but now they're not so subtle :P Also this one is coloring up nicely and this green one is becoming another one my favorites with a really nice purple starting up on the tips.

My yellow cap is doing great as well, it has really neat polyps and is considerably darker than it used to be, its grown quite a bit since I got it. This green "acro" is just dang cool, its about the only green thing I have ever had in my tank that wasn't algae :P

One of my ricordea is splitting, I think I mentioned that before. These guys sure don't break any speed records when multiplying thats for sure, I think its been like this forever :P Just when I think its trying a little harder the next day its like, "nope, I've changed my mind about this".

So on to the tank pic, its kind of small but photobucket resizes everything and I can't find anything that doesn't resize them besides hosting them myself and I'm unfortunately at my limit. Actually I think I was at my 10MB limit about 40MB ago :P Anyhoo, I cleaned off one of the end panes and took an end shot. End shots are so cool, they always make your tank a little more full and busy. Not so many little frags :P

By the way, some of you may have noticed that alot of the photos (since about September) are missing or have broken links. The site I was uploading my photos to is down at the moment so I uploaded the majority of them to photobucket :)