My new tank

[jonathansruelas]

I use a Canon 50D and either a 100mm macro or a 50mm f/1.4 lens.

These shots were taken with the macro, it makes it harder because it lets in (at f/2.8 which is the largest aperture it has) 1/4 of the light my 50mm lets in at f/1.4, so I brought some compact fluorescent fixtures over and shined them in from each side of the tank, which helped, but definitely it's not ideal.

I need to spend $100 and get a good studio light I guess, I have an external flash but it makes it hard to shoot still. Of course, I could move it off my camera with a cord and aim in from the sides with it, that would help, but a dedicated always on light of the right spectrum would be easier

All it takes is money...

how much did u spend on the camera all together? i want one so i can start taking pics of my tanks and fish...

 

[samdaman]

that lens is about 500 i'm guessing and well the 50 D was in the 1000's back in the day when it came out don't know right now what they are going at.

 

[jonathansruelas]

Well, the little scopas is showing some signs of ich, not bad but I'm hoping it recovers. If it gets much worse, I'll move it off into QT and treat it, but then I'd still just be sticking it back into the display which has ich, so I'm not sure that's a good idea.

The dragon was doing some stretching tonight for me, pretty cool to see. I'm thinking about making him a "pool" of good sand to sleep in, then just rock rubble for the bottom of the tank. Or some other way to keep him from stirring up the sand nonstop, as you can see from the pictures there is particles through the water like crazy He is a real sand stirrer. The nice thing is although the back of my tank got a little bit of brown on it, the sand is staying totally algae clear due to the constant stirring.

beautiful fish man!!
y dont you trying lowering the salinity of your dt to kill off the itch? do you have any invertebrates

 

[Recty]

how much did u spend on the camera all together? i want one so i can start taking pics of my tanks and fish...

Back in the day when I bought it, two years ago, it was about $1200 for the camera and the lens was around $400. Now, the camera can be found used in good condition on eBay for $700-800 and the lens is still around $400.

You could buy the 50mm f/1.8 for around $100 and get basically the same combo I have for under $1000.

At the time I bought the camera I was building websites and was setting up a site for a LFS, so it basically paid for itself instantly, I did all the photography for the website.

beautiful fish man!!
y dont you trying lowering the salinity of your dt to kill off the itch? do you have any invertebrates

I have quite a few hermit crabs, some snails, and lots of little copepods and what not on the live rock. I also am growing some algae.

So, I could lower the salinity but I'd be killing off a lot of "stuff" that I dont want to.

If either of the fish start looking bad, I'll treat and just remove the inverts. However, I'd really like them to fight it off naturally, which may or may not happen. I'm giving it a chance before I start treating in some way.

 

[palmer373]

wow scopas is looking good recty. i havent been on recently and it seems like you have some new fish/lost some. maind posting a stocking list?

also just and update on the undy and whitetip, the undy is running out and about (like the WT did) but i havent seen the whitetip in 3 days. the undy hid without me finding him for a week or more once so im hoping i find him. i also have some caves i cant see into so maybe he is there. the only upside IF i lost/lose him (which i regret saying already) is i might be able to put a smaller fish in there. i shouldnt be thinking like this

tanks still looking great!

 

[Recty]

I think the only thing that has changed is I had a couple damsels die off, I've still got two left and they arent fighting at all, in fact the bigger damsel is acting like it's building a nest every night, so maybe I'll get eggs.

Hope you find your missing trigger.

I definitely am tired of the ich in the tank already, the fish are fine but I just feel bad watching them scratch on the rocks, so I'm lowering salinity and going to do hypo for a while to cure it.

I took some "cool" I think pictures of the tank today, as I was removing water to add freshwater I took pictures straight down of the fish. They arent the best pictures but they turned out OK. I'll process and post them later today probably.

 

[Recty]

There were top down shots, interesting perspective. It's too bad they didnt turn out better.

 

[jonathansruelas]

Back in the day when I bought it, two years ago, it was about $1200 for the camera and the lens was around $400. Now, the camera can be found used in good condition on eBay for $700-800 and the lens is still around $400.

You could buy the 50mm f/1.8 for around $100 and get basically the same combo I have for under $1000.

At the time I bought the camera I was building websites and was setting up a site for a LFS, so it basically paid for itself instantly, I did all the photography for the website.



I have quite a few hermit crabs, some snails, and lots of little copepods and what not on the live rock. I also am growing some algae.

So, I could lower the salinity but I'd be killing off a lot of "stuff" that I dont want to.

If either of the fish start looking bad, I'll treat and just remove the inverts. However, I'd really like them to fight it off naturally, which may or may not happen. I'm giving it a chance before I start treating in some way.

damn i might look into that camera, price is a bit too high, im saving up at the moment.
yea lowering the salinity might be the wrong choice to go if you have some copepods.. im surprised your trigger hasnt ate the hermits and snails yet...

hey do you know what kind of disease it is when the fish has some white mucus on their eye and looks like theres fluid inside, it's only on one eye, still swims fine, and eats.. he's kinda of jumpy though..?

 

[Recty]

damn i might look into that camera, price is a bit too high, im saving up at the moment.
yea lowering the salinity might be the wrong choice to go if you have some copepods.. im surprised your trigger hasnt ate the hermits and snails yet...

hey do you know what kind of disease it is when the fish has some white mucus on their eye and looks like theres fluid inside, it's only on one eye, still swims fine, and eats.. he's kinda of jumpy though..?

Yep, cameras are expensive, no way around it. I wouldnt own one but I make money with photography so it pays for the hobby part of things.

Not sure on the disease... if they eye just looks cloudy and bulged, there is a thing called popeye that fish get, it will go away with good water quality. You probably have something out of whack in your tank, check your parameters. It doesnt effect both eyes either, sometimes in fact most of the times it will be just one.

None of my triggers really bothered my hermits, the whitetip was a little crazy at first but once he realized good food fell from the sky regularly, he gave up on the hermits. I was moving some rocks around today and found at least 5 live hermits, so that means I've only lost two the entire time, if I remember right. That's pretty good for a tank with triggers, imo

This scopas is cool, he has little sharp teeth, I wouldnt want to meet this thing in a dark alley at night

 

[jonathansruelas]

yea thanks i checked the parameters and nthe nitrates were around 40 so i made 2 50% water changes and his eye looks good now .. so im guessing/hoping that was the only case.. but now i see little white fuzzy things on his dorsal fins, so i dont know what that could be?? any ideas?
yea everywhere i read i see that triggers will eat hermits and shrimps..
tang looks beautiful, great close up.. i dont know how u get to make your fish stay so stilll lol..

 

[Recty]

Does it look white and fluffy? Probably lymphocystis, another common thing associated with poor water quality/feeding. I'd suspect that's probably your culprit in both the popeye and the lympho.

Nice though is that both go away with good water quality!

ROFL, my fish are far from still. I just have a camera that can take pictures at a very fast shutter speed so I freeze them in action. Then the trick is hitting the shutter at the right time and following the fish around with the lens, it's harder to aim than you might think But it's rewarding, I enjoy looking at the fish up close. For instance, that scopas picture above... the fish is 2" long max, probably more like 1.5" and about the same for height, yet in the picture just the face is 8" tall. It allows you to see so much detail it's just crazy. Like for instance it looks to me like the scopas is starting to show slight signs of HLLE.

 

[Recty]

I thought this was cool, you can see the rows of teeth inside the queens mouth, they look like molars. I didnt know they actually had those but I assumed they had something in there. When she eats a pellet she totally demolishes it inside her mouth and powder flies everywhere sometimes, so I knew she was chewing real quick. I just didnt know with what exactly

 

[xxfirewaterxx]

NIce queens! I have two 5" ones in my 300g, I'm jeolous in your picture taking.....tried to snap a few pics and they all look blurry. Wait till they start getting big, the color will look incredible!

 

[Recty]

I cant wait until the queen gets bigger, it's definitely going to be the centerpiece fish in any tank I have, and eventually probably the only fish I have. The color is already amazing on this fish, I can only hope it gets better with time

 

[Recty]

A couple more pictures as I learn to use the new camera...

I like how you can see the pupil inside the eye. He also appears to be signaling a left hand turn...

You can see the dragon wrasse has a bulging belly, the hyposalinity doesnt seem to agree with it. However, I cant raise the salt level fast like I lowered it, so I'm hoping he will make it through.

If he continues to look poor for the week, I'll raise the salinity up to 1.014 over the weekend for some relief and probably start a copper treatment, but it depends on the fish condition.

 

[Gogandantess]

Recty you gotta get another BIG TANK!!

 

[Recty]

Eventually I will. The problem is I'm renting and I'm on a second floor... the floor was actually getting weak and shifty around the area of the tank so it was time to get rid of it, plus I've got a daughter now (6 months old) and I just couldnt justify the time the big tank took.

Anyway, when I move into a house finally that is mine... I'll start my big tank plans. I think I'll end up building one out of plywood and just one glass sheet across the front, so an in wall build, it will be cool.

This is the reason I stopped my big tank, she turned 6 months old a couple days ago

 

[Gogandantess]

haha it's all good man. Nothing stopped me from keeping the big tank lol. 3 boys and I still need my big tank! :lol2:

 

[Recty]

I had a lot of different factors come into play, it wasnt just my daughter but she was the main deciding factor.

I fully plan on having a big tank in the future so I dont mind giving it up for a while

 

[SouthSider]

Thanks The cutie in the avatar is an amazing little girl, it's been fun. I'm a proud and happy first time dad.

I'm using a canister filter rated for a 100 gallon tank and a smallish hang on back filter rated for a 30 gallon tank. I'm not using any powerheads as of yet but I might if it looks like the tank needs it. For now, the fish I have arent fast swimmers and dont need lots of flow, so it's working out great.

I had a 75g reef for over a year with just two canister filters and I did just fine, some of my corals were a little brown but they were happy and grew nice and fast, I figure if I can do that with a reef I can certainly keep a small fish population happy and healthy.

As far as ich goes, it just depends what kind of fish you keep. My previous tank my angels and tangs would have died from the ich. This undulated trigger is a completely different story though, he is a monster. Any fish that can survive in Petco's tanks for 5 months is almost impossible to kill. I've always heard hawkfish are tough and able to survive with ich no problem, so I went ahead and got him. My only concern is the six line, I've seen those die of ich in other people's tanks but I'm hoping he will be OK. If he does come down with ich, as long as it doesnt look too bad I'll just leave him in and see how he does. Otherwise, one of the LFS has a bank of tanks they always leave copper in, I can take him there and just donate him, they will treat and resell it.

I almost didnt buy the undulated, it was kind of pale and didnt have good coloration really. Everytime I saw it I liked it but knew it didnt look like some of the undulated I see online. However, when I got it home the transformation was amazing. Within a day it got all colored up and great looking, nice dark skin with bold lines and really orange tail and fins. I guess the stress of being in a 10g tank all day for over 5 months was wearing it down, it sure seems to like the new large space to explore.

One thing cool I didnt know about undulated is it can get pale (seems to happen around feeding time) but it keeps a dark spot underneath each eye, almost like a football player smearing the dark paint under the eye to help with glare.

How long did you have to wait for the tank to cycle ( if any ) since you're not using any live rock and live sand. This is what I have had in mind but I guess never bothered to ask if it was capable. I have a 24gl. Aquapod that I was thinking of turning into fish only but like you do not want to bother with all the other stress just something simple.