This render is actually from back in April, before the full Ilgkrātuve render with literally thousands of these 'tubes', I spent some time developing the basic shape and shaders for the individuals by running a test renders on a single unit in my test area.

Ultimately, I reduced the body shader to a simple two piece diffuse black and Fresnel diffuse green shader. None of the complex glossy reflection components seen here contribute anything visually to the full Ilgkrātuve render, due to the distances and limitations on bounces. The volume shader and particularities involved in the 2-piece transmission shaders for the glass/liquid altered the color significantly once they were stacked, but I rather liked the change.

The render took 4 1/2 hours in non-progressive mode. It was about 2 1/2 in progressive, but there were far more noticeable "fireflies" (the little bright hotspots that spackle reflections). It's a terribly complicated setup, so I suppose it's understandable. Still, a certain comment from someone on the time hit me kind of hard (it felt like "that's it? After 2 hours?"). I derailed my work for about a week to try to get up to speed with Blender and see how a modern GPU render engine could do. I will go into more detail on that in a later scrap.