Tyree LE/AE's: What do they REALLY look like?

[sirrus6]

Hi All

I'm new to the RC posting business, and to the reef hobby as well. As I have been acquiring livestock for my tank over the past 11 months (with my daughter's help!), I have come to question some of the striking pictures posted by some coral vendors. Do they use "special" lighting or even photo manipulation techniques to get those spectacular colors? What might those "rare" corals look like under the more unexceptional lighting that I have in my tank (3 x 400 W 10K XM's for a 175 G tank, 6' x 2')?

Well, to answer this question, I have purchased three Tyree LE/AE corals:

lime-in-the-sky (acropora), reef envy strawberry (montrastraea), and pink lemonade (micromussa). The former two corals came from Reeffarmers through their on-line auction, and the latter coral came through a direct purchase from an individual on Frags.org.

I can't post the online photos of these corals for copyright infringement reasons, but interested viewers can find them all at: http://www.reeffarmers.com/

I can, however, post photos of these specimens in my tank, as viewed through the front glass.



Lime-in-the-sky, 9 weeks after arrival, placed 17" below one of the 400 W 10K bulbs, and receiving moderate current. When it arrived, it was a little more muted in color, and it was difficult to distinguish the green from the blue color areas. It is growing and appears healthy, although I have never seen polyps, either during the day (feeding time) or when the tank is dark.



Reef envy strawberry, 14 weeks after arrival, situated about 28" from the nearest bulb, and receiving limited current. This coral is placed on the side of some rockwork, so it doesn't get direct light. It has maintained this yellowish orange color throughout, and I have never seen any evidence for a pinkish-purple-with green radial stripes coloration as suggested by the Reeffarmers pic. Whe it arrived, it consisted of three partial polyps in a dime-sized colony. It has grown well and now has six full polyps covering an area about the size of a quarter. I feed it mysid shrimp, which it engulfs readily. Below is a picture with feeding tentacles extended.





Pink lemonade micromussa, 5 days after arrival, located about 26" directly under a light, with limited current. As with the reef envy strawberry montrastraea, I can find no visual evidence for the pink/yellow coloration seen in the Reeffarmers picture. However, since this coral is new to my tank, I can't predict how it's coloration might change as it adapts to the local conditions. If its coloration is hard to see from the picture, I can best describe it as typical of that seen with an unexceptional acan lord that features radial stripes of teal and maroon.

So, are these corals "worth" the premium that Reeffarmers charges?

In the final analysis, or course, whether these corals are worth the money is a question that only can be answered by each individual based on the intersection of their financial comfort zone with their desires for coral husbandry.

For me, I would respond with a hesitant yes. They are healthy and thriving corals (micromussa still to be determined!) that I find intrinsically interesting, and that augment the diversity and appeal of my aquarium, at least to me.

[sihaya]

So, are these corals "worth" the premium that Reeffarmers charges?

Oh, I can't wait to hear Eric's response to this one. lol Good thing RC has a profanity censor...

[EricHugo]

rotflmao. There is a great deal of photo manipulation and flowery language to sell corals by photos. In fact, to use an example, I recently used my MASNA gift certificate from my photo contest winnings at MACNA to purchase from Drs. Foster and Smith Live Aquaria. I would up paying 21.00 extra just to get two corals - a lime green Leptoseris and a pink Sylophora pistillata. I got a pale pink SYlophora with white band-type recession, eroded tips, and looked like it hadn't had good care in at least six months. The Leptoseris turned out to be a common Merulina that quickly developed a white mat on it, forcing me to fragment into 0.5cm bits and pieces hoping I can even save the genotype. I saw Tyree's purple monster in person for the first time last year and was so unimpressed by its blandness I didn't even notice it until it ws enthusiasitcally pointed out as being that clone. I got some beautfiul frags from Leroy Headlee at GARF years ago from a new tongan supplier he had and wanted my feedback on...they were nice, and they were healthy andhave done well...but in no way resembled the photos on their website. I have dove some of the most colorful, diverse rich reefs on the planet and have never seen (and never want to see) the kind of color saturation that appears on these websites. Plus, coloration is so variable from tank to tank, even with the naturla color unenhanced by Photoshop. I want my tank to be colorful, bland, rich, poor, sandy, rocky, coral covered, not coral covered, sand, no sand, etc like a reef. If I wanted an electric assemblage of corals, even if such colors existed, I'd just get the painted fake ones that Walt Smith makes for public aquariums.

[MiddletonMark]

I'd add, given my photoshop work experience + impressions:

Most are shot top down. Given no glass, colors are better. Also, given you are just seeing the lit areas - you see the most brilliantly colored in the photo. But - given we mostly don't shoot from above .... it's not what I'm looking at in my tank.

20k bulbs. Sure make corals look good, esp under photos. Then again, running 400w bulbs that quickly degrade and don't have the intensity of a whiter bulb ... I guess that's energy I prefer not to waste [IMO]. But sure photos well ....

For wild corals - seems to me that most are photo'ed only hours [or a day] from the wild. Given what I've seen in my tank, or seen in the LFS ... that color is often lost [by the time you get it]. Some will recolor, some may not ... but yet that's not always a pic from the day you're buying it.

I won't even touch on photoshop ... partly because so many are using LCD's or uncalibrated monitors - and they could blame it on this. Then again, if they're tweaking the photos much and don't know the issues with either of the above ... that warns me away personally.

Just my impression. The photo manipulation [to make it look like it does to the eye ] ... often turns me off. Some is good, perhaps even truly more accurate ... but if you came to my house, I'd show you examples I've saved from a number of vendors - which IMO were outrageous Photoshopping.
But I'll do that privately, partly as they own the photos legally ... and partly because I don't want to seem like I'm making accusations - when it's hard to find a vendor that at least at one time didn't engage in this.

All IMO. Proving this is difficult, but I look at it like modeling photos. Yeah, she looks like that - but everything has been done to make the photo look better than reality [or the most ideal reality].

[sirrus6]

I want to thank the responders for educating me on a few of the finer points of coral marketing. I see that essentially three hypotheses were offered to explain the difference in appearance of the coral pictured on the original Reeffarmers Web site and the appearance of that same coral in my tank:

1) " 20k bulbs. Sure make corals look good, esp under photos."—MiddletonMark

Can the difference in the reflected (i.e., observed) light completely account for the different colors observed? In order to test this idea, I borrowed 400W 20K lights from a fellow aquarist, installed them, allowed them to run for a few hours, and then re-photographed the montastraea. The pictorial results follow, including the original 10K lighting picture for comparison. No flash was used for any of the pictures displayed by me in this thread. Again, the Web-based picture of this coral can be found at http://www.reeffarmers.com/.


montastraea under 400W 10K bulbs


montastraea under 400W 20K bulbs



2) "…coloration is so variable from tank to tank…" –EricHugo

Are the observed color differences a consequence of the invariably different stimuli that a given coral detects in different tanks? Perhaps lighting color and lighting intensity, current, water chemicals, etc. all contribute to the modulation the coral's transcription machinery, and the expression (or repression) of specific proteins leads to the different phenotypes (= colors). I cannot test this premise at present, but I can note that the montastraea looks to have the same coloration today as it had when it first arrived from Reeffarmers – yellow/orange and not purple (under 10K lights). I did not expose it to 20K lights at that time, and so I cannot exclude the possibility that, if fact, it arrived purple (by 20K lights) but I just could not detect this fact. Continuing on in this vein, perhaps over the intervening 14 weeks under my tank conditions, gene-level changes led to loss of the agents (proteins and/or small molecules) that caused purple coloration, so that it no longer looks purple under either 10K or 20K lights.

3) "There is a great deal of photo manipulation and flowery language to sell corals by photos." – EricHugo
"I won't even touch on photoshop ... partly because so many are using LCD's or uncalibrated monitors - and they could blame it on this." – MiddletonMark

These comments raise the uncomfortable concern that perhaps the original Web photos had benefited from some digital manipulation. Is it even possible to manipulate coral photographs to the extent that is at issue here? Of course, only the photo owners can answer that question for sure. However, as a test of this hypothesis, I have attempted to modify the colors of my 10K and 20K photos of the montastraea using Photoshop, and those modified photos, along with the originals for comparison purposes, are shown below.

montastraea 10K bulbs, original photo


montastraea 10K bulbs, modified by Photoshop


montastraea 20K bulbs, original photo


montastraea 20K bulbs, modified by Photoshop




I would be interested to hear from aquarists who also have acquired this particular montastraea coral (or the other corals mentions in my original post). If you do respond, can you supply coral photos and details of the tank and photography conditions?

Thanks

[EricHugo]

Sirrus - photoshop is far more powerful that that - use color balance, hue and saturation and you'll have some idea of how these sites show such beautfiul corals.

[MiddletonMark]

Sirrus - I'm on vacation, but I'll PM for you to send me the photo.

IMO, I can tweak it pretty radically with photoshop.

Personally, I think another coral would be a better suggestion ... but give me a few days [presently still on vacation ] to a week and I think I might be able to suprise you.

[sihaya]

You can do *anything* in photoshop... or if not photoshop, with any of the other dozens of photo-editing platforms out there. One of my in-laws is a computer-graphics/ photo-editing guru and I can't believe the stuff he can do. It's kinda scary really. I mean, it used to be that "pictures never lie." But now they can... and they do!

There was some movie about this too... about a president who completely fabricated a war (using photo-editing and video-editing). I can't remember the name of it though...

[aaron23]

wow amazing thread *aplauds*

[sirrus6]

Kudos to Rommel Lum of UltimateFrags.com.

I had been searching for an appealing frag of acanthastrea echinata, and had found several candidates amongst the many online coral vendors. One specimen in particular on the UltimateFrags site interested me, but it was photographed under 20K lighting and its colors were, to say the least, remarkable. Given the concerns expressed by others and my own suspicions, I decided to ask Rommel if he had any inkling of what this same coral might look like under 10K lighting, perhaps via feedback from some previous customers. I did not hold out much hope for a definitive response, but I thought that it was worth a try.

I was astonished to get an e-mail from Rommel in which he had swapped out his 20K bulb for a 10K one, took a new picture of this coral under the 10K lighting, and forwarded that picture to me, along with the 20K bulb picture as a comparison!

I cannot post those pictures here for copyright infringement reasons, but I have forwarded this post to Rommel in case he wishes to post them himself. I guess that I can describe the difference thusly: Under 10K illumination, the coral is more pastel-colored, much like if it were painted by, say, Manet, whereas in the 20K lighting Web site photo, it appears more like the day-glo work of Peter Max (for those of us who are old enough to recognize this cultural referent!). I was so impressed by this level of customer service that I purchased the coral on the spot, and I was certainly not disappointed by its appearance in my 10K-lit tank.

I hope that other on-line coral vendors who happen to peruse this post take heed of the lesson to be learned here.

[MiddletonMark]

That's nice to hear.

[sandlot13]

it makes me scared to buy corals from those vendors..... i want to know exactly what im buying!!! awesome post