British Columbia Aquarium Forums banner
41 - 60 of 67 Posts
Discussion starter · #42 ·
i use a crappy Sony DSC-S650 point and shoot. Also have to clean the kids finger prints from the lense every time i use it. i've just grown used to fine tuning the settings for the tank shots. Close ups are a real pain, where normally i take 2 of each shot, i need to play with the auto, focus settings, ISO, EV and white balance in hopes to get it to work. i tend to shoot with flash off aswell

Even then its a challenge. The other night the wife and i tried taking shots of the two guppies, both of us gave up after each spent a half hour trying to atleast get a clear shot of the blue/black male guppy... lets just say after a few hundred shots i gave up.

Speaking of the guppy though. Man is he active and he wont stop harassing the female. I have never seen a male this persistant, even at night if she gets in sight of him its a half hour of her trying to hide. So my wife made a trip to king ed's with our toddler to pick him out another lady friend, she came home with 2 females which are drip acclimatizing as i type this.

Maybe with the male having 3 mates instead of the 1, he'll swim slow enough to get a picture
 
The one at Brentwood Mall is small but decent. Not that many kind of fish but I've never seen a death one there. Sometime they have some nice sells on equipmet. It was a chain store, I am trying to remember the name, it was Pet..something (not "smart")
pet habitat I think is the name

i use a crappy Sony DSC-S650 point and shoot. Also have to clean the kids finger prints from the lense every time i use it. i've just grown used to fine tuning the settings for the tank shots. Close ups are a real pain, where normally i take 2 of each shot, i need to play with the auto, focus settings, ISO, EV and white balance in hopes to get it to work. i tend to shoot with flash off aswell

Even then its a challenge. The other night the wife and i tried taking shots of the two guppies, both of us gave up after each spent a half hour trying to atleast get a clear shot of the blue/black male guppy... lets just say after a few hundred shots i gave up.
I feel your pain when it comes to getting a good pic, between my shark and loaches it's literally impossible to get a good shot as they are always on the move or in a cave.
 
I thought neven was using a nice expensive SLR camera to get his pics!
i'm working on the photography aspect of taking photos of my tank. my blackberry camera is poor. i'm using a canon. 1 out of 10 pictures i take of my corydoras come out perfect but if you ask me to take pic of the danios or rasboras....good luck. they're looking like a blur in mid motion.
 
IMO 1 out of 10 is a good ratio lol I have a nice little 10 mp Canon digital camera and I have to take approx. 200 shots to get 10- 20 good ones lol . Thank God for the continuous shot function or I'd prolly have to take alot more lol
 
Discussion starter · #50 ·
Guppy fry and guppy fry and guppy fry..... thats all i can say. My god these these breed worse than rabbits do. The downside was i lost two females both after they gave birth, soon after the fry arrived they started to bloat and eventually died :/ The last female seems to be doing fine after the 16 or so fry she let out yesterday.

Tank wise, i've been tweaking the photo period and adjusting the EI dosing, and fish feedings. I overfed when i first had the fry show up, but the planaria outbreak let me know to stop it and its under control and shrinking daily, i think the guppy fry like em. Theres a bit of algae on the wood, but as its a new tank i dont want to battle it now as it doesn't spread elsewhere. Also due to the food pond snails got out of hand so i had to get a couple assassin snails and will be baiting them out to speed up their removal.

Plants, a lot more plant mass, through trades i got my hands on a couple more species that were on my wife's list of wants, and soon i should be able to replace the lotus and thin the grouping of Hygrophila polysperma 'Ceylon,' the latter takes almost half the tank up.

the crappy point and shoot i had, has been toast for a while, my son threw it off the kitchen table. So today i picked up a samsung es73 $139 point and shoot. For a dirt cheap camera i've been quite impressed, especially comparing it to mid range compacts from a couple years ago, it blows them out of the water it seems.

Lots of fry hidden in the pic


tank shot
 
Awesome!!! WOW, the tank looks great, neven!! And the fry is cuuuute!! BTW, I have endler fry, so it seems all the problems that we had are gone now! VERY happy.
Great job on the tank! Sorry you lost the moms but hope the fry will grow fast and healthy :)
 
Wow!! Looks awesome!! You've inspired me to set up a 10g lol

Thanks :D
 
Discussion starter · #55 ·
Update!

The Lighting has changed! well not by much. The 23 Watt CFL twister was a bit overkill and to maintain algae control, you got to have light as the limiting factor. Easy fix, Screw in Y adapter in the socket, Placed two 9Watt bulbs instead. Visually no different, but it raised the bulbs about a half inch higher due to the diameter change and the lumen drop is significant, about 600 Lumens, if it proves to be too low, i'll swap out the left bulb for a 15 watt since it has much more dense plants on that side.

Water parameters are shifting. I have tossed the crushed coral, as no co2, greatly reduces its use (carbonic acid helps break it down, plus also adds to KH itself). I got my hands on equilibrium and have cranking the GH up slowly, currently its at 7 degrees, aiming for above 10. KH i'll keep at around 3-4 degrees via baking soda.

Fishie news.... The first guppy fry have finally entered the stage where their colors start to show, i may have guplers but its hard to tell from this point. I've had 2 more broods of fry pop out of females. Due to lack of hardness in the tank, the females that gave birth didn't survive longer than a week after birth. That is fixed now, as the latest female gave birth a couple weeks ago is still very active. The male did die though, after adjusting the KH, he croaked but all of the fry seems fine, so must have weak genetics.

And the plants.... It has all changed, well half the tank changed, the left side. I bought CRS Fans's red package as it was filled with species my wife had to have in here tank (ones she picked prior to us getting the tank). So Lotus has been removed, the Hygro ceylon also. both are sittin on my counter in bags for a week now against the tank (fish tank water in the bag every day).
Plants added were:
Pogostemon stellatus 'Broadleaf'
Ammania gracilis
Alternanthera reineckii 'roseafolia'
Ludwigia ovalis
Hygrophila corymobosa 'Siamensis 53b' (thought i had this, but i guess i identified the other plant wrong)
 
Discussion starter · #56 ·
Update! After nicely planting everything, my wife decides she wants a new substrate, something less white, and in smaller grain... Yippiee!

So like a bandaid i pulled it off quick. Got new substrate from IPU (big suprise on the store :p ) She chose their bulk darker gravel. I then got home and Uprooted everything, then tried to find the assassin snails. Only found one.... Moved her driftwood to my tank, figured my cleanup crew can have a treat while i work on her tank.

All the old substrate was scooped out and sifted through for assassin snails, no luck, 3 missing so far, Peak over at her driftwood and it had 4 cherry shrimps, 9 amano shrimp, 6 otocs and my bristlenose eating away in my tank, lol.

I take a break to put the kids to bed and turn the filter on so the prefilter gets out a lot of the debris.

Then the fun begins, replanting it... I hate planting glosso and here i was doing it again. The advantage with the smaller grain gravel is i can use my fert sticks again without worrying about extra nitrates or carbonates being added outside of my ei regiment.

Needless to say, its done! yay! After i took the wood out, i found an assassin snail in my tank the next day, so i moved it back to its home, there may be more though, we'll see.

first is a pic of the first guppy baby to colour, i suspect its a gupler but we shall see.



lastly, the new scape, still needs the back left corner to grow out. left room for another plant right in the middle, thinking a red flame or something

 
WOW, awesome work! And such a hard one, to rebuild it all! Your wife must have been very happy!
And I love your baby, it looks like it has some strong endler genes in it :) Let me know if you want to add some pure endlers over there :)
Wonderful tank!
 
Your wife is so lucky! Imagine having someone who plants and replants tanks for you! You did a wonderful job. Are those mostly Stuart's plants in your new 'scape? They look very healthy.

That glosso looks very finicky to plant, though. How do you get it to stay in the gravel while you add water? Also, what are fert sticks? I might be rescaping my 25 tall this week (if I don't immediately rehome it). Do you recommend fert sticks? My tanks tend to run on hope and benign neglect, which seems to work pretty well for most of them, but the 25 tall clearly needs a bit more TLC. Maybe fert sticks.
 
41 - 60 of 67 Posts
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top