SPS under VHO? A picture is woth a thousand words...

[Palmetto]

I took some new pictures last night of Paul Ifkovits' VHO-only Oceanic 120G.

I had originally photographed Paul's tank about six months ago- and wanted to see what the growth looked like. Paul runs 660 watts of VHO over his 120, using 2 each: AquaSun, Actinic 03, and Actinic white URI bulbs.

I was blown away by the growth in this tank! His stylophora had gone from the size of a lady's fist to a 10" wide cluster. The tri-color Acropora is about to grow out of the water, and his purple Robusta is holding color very nicely. He has added a couple of SeaSwirls to eliminate the dead spots, and has a dimmer that simulates storms and sunrise/sunset on his ICECAP 660. (He has two)

Darren Walker
http://www.PalmettoReefs.com

 

[Anonymous]

anybody else notice that sps grow distinctly different under VHO? I do like the softer look of vho, but the growthrates of halide, maybe T5's will fix that

 

[dually]

First I would like to say very nice tank.... I am starting up a 150 reef and I have just bought an icecap 430 with 2 bulbs, one blue and one white. my first coral was a toadstool and my second is a frogspawn, this has surprised me as it looks better than it did in the store. I was going to get 3 400watt metal halides as soon as I could afford it but now I am reconsidering, I like the vhos and love how cool they run but I am concerned that I would not be able to get the growth i would like. I would love to know if anyone else uses vhos in a tank my size.

 

[GSchiemer]

I don't think anyone will argue that you can't grow corals under fluorescent tubes, if you use enough of them. Light is light, no matter how you get it. It's just a matter of efficiency. You can achieve equivalent or better results over this aquarium with two 250 or two 400 watt metal halide bulbs. They would take up less space, produce more light per watt, and be much less expensive to replace.

I'm sure the colors of the corals in this aquarium are nice, but they appear to have been "goosed" by some photo manipulation program. IOW, they aren't natural.

Greg

 

[Palmetto]

Actually, there was no "goosing"- whatever that is. 220 watts of VHO actinic has a pronounced effect on coloration, as does the 50/50 and the AquaSun. What you see is the look of the three bulbs on colorful corals.

I do not use any photoshopping techniques, and I do not set the white balance to interpret colors inaccurately.

The pictures are quite true to what it looks like standing in front of it.

Also, I am not claiming that this is necessarily the best way to do anything. This is just one example of what works for one reefer.

Heck, I sell Metal Halide systems. ;D

 

[Anonymous]

I have to set manual white ballance on my camera, and then I can correct colors with photochop. If I dont set manual white ballance the colors are whacked pretty bad, and auto fix in photochop cant even repair them.

L8r mega

 

[GSchiemer]

Actually, there was no "goosing"- whatever that is. 220 watts of VHO actinic has a pronounced effect on coloration, as does the 50/50 and the AquaSun. What you see is the look of the three bulbs on colorful corals.

On my monitor the anthelia is purple, as well as the sand! Those aren't the true colors. All the colors are "blooming," which indicates they've been artificially oversaturated in processing. Looks like the CQuarium web site where every brown coral is pictured and described as "lavender."

 

[MiNdErAsR]

I don't think anyone will argue that you can't grow corals under fluorescent tubes, if you use enough of them. Light is light, no matter how you get it. It's just a matter of efficiency. You can achieve equivalent or better results over this aquarium with two 250 or two 400 watt metal halide bulbs. They would take up less space, produce more light per watt, and be much less expensive to replace.

I'm sure the colors of the corals in this aquarium are nice, but they appear to have been "goosed" by some photo manipulation program. IOW, they aren't natural.

Greg

I have to agree with Greg on all points here. On my monitor the entire tank looks supersaturated and abnormally pink. Nice tank though! Think I'll stick with my 250w DE halides.
8)

 

[Palmetto]

Oversaturated in processing?

The pics were taken point and shoot, resized in Adobe Photoshop Elements. Some of the pics were taken with the dimmer at various stages, so there is more Actinic effect in some pictures than others. No deliberate manipulation of colors was done, and yes- the anthelia looks purple when you shine a pink and a blue light on it.

Here is a picture with the same settings taken of my tank with USHIO MH and PC actinic:

I agree that MH looks more natural. I have 175, 250, 400, and 1,000 watt halides all over my home. I only have one VHO tank myself, and I use it for Ricordea propagation. Lighting is a very personal preference, however- and there are many different systems that work.

 

[King Jason]

Very nice tank.

I would say each type of lighting definably has it's plusses and minuses. I went from MH on my old tank to VHO on my new tank. There is a HUGE color difference! Plus you lose the "shimmering" effect that I loved.

But with VHO I don't have to run a chiller or fans in my hood.

I personally like MH better then VHO. I will probably switch back to MH and use my VHO as actinic. Too bad the switch will cost a pretty penny because I will probably need to buy a chiller :?

 

[Palmetto]

Jason, it dependes on the bulbs you run. I switched from 440-watts of VHO to 2 x 250 watts MH with 2 x 65 watts actinic PC, and my water temperature runs one degree COOLER.

Of course, I tried running a 400watter and it got way too hot. There is a HUGE difference in the temp from a 400.

(Of course, my 1,000 watter is even hotter, hehe.)

 

[Anonymous]

The cameras are built to correctly photograph under natural daylight or flash, and the wide variety of aquarium lights produce all kinds of results. Actually, I think Photoshop color balancing is useful to make the colors appear more accurate if the camera doesn't.

At any rate, awesome tank- I love it. VHO does have a diffused look that I think is a nice change from halides.

 

[Anonymous]

When I ran 2 110W VHU aquasuns and 2 110W VHO actinics over my 75 the photos always looked pinker than the tank looked in person. I played with white balance and all the other features of my coolpix 995, but could never really accurate photographs.

My stony corals have grown much faster under the new MH (2-175W MH and 2-110W Actinic) system I am now running. I am able to maintain temperature below 82 even during the summer. Right now the tank is running 78. I use one $7 clip on fan that is on the back of the hood, blowing in.

Pauls tank is quite beautiful!

Louey

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Darren- Is that a super long polyped sarcophyton? Nice- I've been looking for one of those...

 

[SnoopDog]

Man those are some killer large sps colonies, and the tank is gorgeous.

 

[GSchiemer]

I want to amend one of my earlier comments. I did not mean to imply that Cquarium was cheating their customers. It did come across that way and that wasn't fair to them. Although I haven't done business with them, I know that they have a good reputation and the "see what you buy" concept is a terrific idea.

The point I was trying to make was that APPARENT coloration can be greatly influenced by the camera, aquarium lights, white balance setting, film type, and photo software. Color can also appear different on different computer monitors. Cquarium even mentions these issues on their web site. They outline the exact lighting used in their photos. Under their lighting, that's the "natural color" of the corals. As you can see, "natural" coloration can be a very subjective term. Aquarists have to understand that an item they purchase may not look like the picture because of all these factors.

Greg

 

[Anonymous]

After being acccustomed to the look of metal halide. I am always shocked at how purple my VHO only friends tanks look. I even run 4, 6 foot vho actinics with my halides, my tank is bluer than most, but without the halides, all VHO tanks look purple to me.

I don't care for the look, but I suppose it has it's good side!

Really nice tank. I do like to see proof that these corals can grow under different types of lighting. People have been trying to tell me that I can not have sps under only 175 watt MH bulbs. Sheesh, sps is nearly all I have now, some just don't grow as fast, that's all

 

[Anonymous]

I kept sps under vho, and under a couple 9w pc's in my nano tank.

They grew, and had a little color, but both growth and color is a LOT better under halides.

Fwiw, if I don't manually set white ballance on my camera, when I take pics of tanks lit by radiums or vho the colors are way way wrong.

However, pictures of 12kk - 4000k bulbs seem to work fine the color ballance is close to reality. I believe most digital cameras have this problem to some degree, some worse than others, and I see it all the time, both on this thread and on others.

L8r mega

 

[Palmetto]

The biggest thing that whacked this shoot a bit was the dimmer on his ICECAP 660. The cartoon effect was much more pronounced when dimmed.