Fish Tank Photography Tips!

 Here are some simple things I try to think about when taking photographs of aquarium fish:

1. Clean the glass, nothing as irritating as finally having gotten a clear shot and there’s dried water on the glass.

2. Stability, this could be a tripod, table or a pile of books. Especially important when not using the flash.

3. Lighting, turn off all other lights in the room and take the shot during the evening. Prevents annoying reflexion in the glass.

4. Flash, normally I tend not to use the flash as it is tricky to get an angle from which there is no reflection of the flash in the glass (and it might disturb the fish) but with fast moving fish it can be very useful.

5. Background, try to take shots of the fish when they are in front of something nice like plants or wood rather than the pump or heater.

6. Use crop when editing to get rid of that pump or heater

7. Practise on using the macro setting on the camera.

8. Try to focus on the eye or at least head of the target.

9. Take some time to try different settings on the camera, you don’t have to do this the manual way the pre-programmed settings will take you far. When you found one you like remember it! The photo conditions will not change as long as you don’t change for instance the lights and you can always come back to the one setting you know works well for one tank.

Good luck!

Melander

(These tips were originally posted on: http://www.irishfishkeepers.com/)

Beautiful day at the beach, driftwood and 160 litre aquarium

I have a few minor updates today. It was a beautiful and sunny day in County Wicklow and I took to the beach twice. Got this nice piece of driftwood with me home:

The 160 litre tank is finally repaired too, to my distress my first attempt failed. As I had removed the silicone around the leak I resealed the tank, however it seems that the old silicone was no good and the tank sprung a leak in a different location as soon as I filled it. I decided to remove all of the silicone and redo the whole job, this worked and I’m so relieved that it did.

The tank is now run by an Eheim Ecco pro 200 external filter, an Eheim 2x 100L/h airpump(one sponge filter), it has one 200w and one 100w heater.

The setup is far from complete but I’m glad it’s up and running. At the moment there is one large piece of driftwood and one Java fern along with guppies and bristlenoses in it but I’m planning for other inhabitants soon. This is how it looks now:

 

Previously I used a wooden cover for the tank, it looked good but was not really practical and I decided to line the top of the tank with wood and sawed out a lid out of Perspex:

 

The 144 litre is pretty much the same; I have however started to treat this piece of driftwood which will replace some of the wood in the tank:

 

That’s it at the moment, cheers for watching!

Melander

Growing aquatic plants & Anubias in a shed

Basically I have been thinking about propagating plants for a long time, especially Anubias which I find great and I could do with more of. As of now I have only really propagated them in submersed form. They just grow so slow and I want to find out the best way to grow them faster without too much fancy equipment.

Yesterday I bought the Practical Fishkeeping Magazine and there was an article about Anubias which I suppose gave me a kick in the bum to get started.

I have started to clear out this shed which was needed anyway but I have not decided exactly how to go ahead.



















Recently I also found a few of these seed boxes which I think will be great for growing smaller Anubias on bogwood.

This is just an idea starting to form and It might take awhile until it's up an running. I have not even decided if I'm going to do this in the shed or indoors.

I will post again when i get started.

Melander

Fry Tank, Corydoras panda breeding and leak test

Still in the process of moving but I have been able to do some fishy stuff.

* I have moved the first tank to the new house, it's my smallest one a 54 litre fry tank as seen below:

 














* In the meanwhile I have had great success with my Corydoras panda, they have been breeding for a long time but I have never seen as many females involved as the other week.
Usually the breeding occurs after a water change and a slight drop of temperature but every now and then they go at it without any triggers.

This time it was a breeding frenzy and even the young ones seemed interested in what was going on. 
The morning after I collected 15-20 eggs which I consider quite allot for this species. I could also see that many had been taken by the other occupants of the tank.

Here Is a picture of the event(it's hard to see but note the female in the middle holding an egg):




















* I have also started the leak tests on the 160 litre tank, it has gone well so far but I'm still keeping it outdoors just in case.

That's all for now, thanks for watching!

Melander

Beech branches

Not much of an update, have been very busy moving the last week but have still not moved any of the fish tanks. We are painting the new place so the aquariums have to wait until the paint is dry.

I do however have a picture of some branches of beech, the tree has been dead for over a year and I have now cut of all the bark and boiled the branches several times. They should be ready to go into one of the tanks soon.

Melander

I have started to work on the 160 litre tank.















During Christmas it sprung a leak in the joint of the front and "side" glass.

I have stripped all the silicone in that corner, in retrospect I should just have stripped the inner silicone but I hope this will work anyway. I also stripped quite a bit extra were there was no leak.

When that was done I cleaned the area with acetone and let it dry.

With the joints all clean and dry I applied masking tape so that my newly applied silicone will get a nice straight shape.

The picture above is taken after the silicone was applied, I smeared it out using a glove and then ripped the tape of before the silicone had time to dry.

I really hope this will do it but just to be safe I'm going to fix plastic supports in the joints, I'll post a pic when that's done too.

After that it's just the leak test left.

Melander