| The first two pictures show one of Sally Jo's 100% Pulsing POM-POM Xenia. This beautiful strain of Xenia was saved by Sally Jo in 1997 from one small polyp that survived the importation of a piece of Fiji POM-POM. These pictures were taken with a Sony Digital Still camera DSC-70. This picture was taken with F-stop four. The camera white balance was set to outdoor light balance. The VHO lights on the 135 gallon reef were the only lighting used. At GARF we are using URI actinic and Actinic white lights. This system has 3 six foot lights, two Actinic white and one Actinic blue. The Sony DSC-70 records pictures with three million four hundred thousand pixels or 3.4 mega pixels. The original pictures are 2048 pixels by 1536 pixels. This is enough data to allow us to post a 28.4 in. by 21 in. picture, but nobody has a monitor big enough to enjoy it. Each day Sally Jo takes from 400 pictures to 700 pictures, and each of these pictures is approximately 1.4 MB. Every evening we view a computer slide show and catalog the pictures into categories. We have two identical CD burners that we use to record 700 MB CDs. We now over 200 CD's full of reef images. The pictures that are chosen for the web site are opened in Adobe PhotoShop and they are reduced in size. It is important when you are working on images in the computer that you save the original picture in a format such as .tiff or .psd. You do not want to save the images that you are going to edit in jpg. because each time you save the image it is compressed and you lose some of the data. It is important to save your image in a format that does not compress the data and degrade the pictures. We use Adobe Image Ready to save the final picture as a .jpg. |
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NOW SOME MORE ABOUT THE CORALS This Fiji POM-POM is one of the oldest captive raised Xenia in GARF's collection. Sally Jo has shipped this Xenia to every state in the union, and hobbyists all across United States report that it is thriving in their systems also. Xenia that have been captive raised for multiple generations develop a hardiness that makes them very easy to raise and ship. There are two things that we consider very important about Xenia culture. It is critical that you are able to maintain the system temperature below eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit. In the wild large colonies of Xenia breakup and fall apart when the water temperature rises at the end of summer. We have been told by several divers, who live in the South Pacific, that if the Xenia continued to grow at the rate they grow in the summer there would soon be nothing left on the reef but Xenia. Several times we been told that just when it seem like the Xenia would take over everything the colonies crashed and it was hard to find any adult Xenia. If you do not want your colonies of Xenia to crash in your reef system it is very important to maintain a lower temperature. Xenia are able to absorb nutrients across their tissue surface. For five years we have been using SeaChem's product Reef Plus. Reef Plus contains Iodide, vitamins, and important amino acids. Sally Jo has raised several thousand healthy Xenia by using SeaChem Reef Plus twice a week in each of her Xenia Systems. REEF AQUARIUM CARE Xenia are quite tolerant of different lightING , but they do like to be in a moderate water flow. They should be place where they are not battered by the water discharge. By placing the Xenia in moderate water flow you will be able to witness 'pulsing' one of the most interesting traits of this group of corals. Pulsing seems to be genetically controlled. Cuttings from pulsing colonies of Xenia that are raised in many different environments tend to pulse in these new systems. Clones made from non-pulsing colonies very rarely start to pulse when they are grown in different systems.
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FOR THE LAST 5 YEARS WE HAVE WORKED VERY HARD TO PURCHASE, TRADE, AND SAVE AS MANY TYPES OF CORALS AS WE CAN.