# New CAMERA!!! (warning pic heavy)



## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

So, just got a fujifilm s1800, and the thing is great! I haven't read the manual yet, so havent taken any pictures on manual settings, but I snapped a bunch on automatic settings and macro, here's some!



Baby Sulawesi rabbit snail var. yellow, born 2 days ago, approx 6mm:










A blue (with really dark red stripes, can't really see them though) and blonde tiger shrimp:










One of my corydoras reminding me of a pompous british prince:










All of my dogs wrestlin' in a dog pile, and the old lady's feets:










One of our rescue dogs, 'Gin', her brother the other blue merle in the picture above is 'Tonic', and the sable weiner is 'Scotch':










A little group shot in one of my CRS tanks, with the otto on the riccia:










oh hai! Some CRS chompin' down like mad men:










Orange sunkist shrimp, lazing about on some almond leaf (caridina propinqua)










This is my first rescue dog, her name is Ruby:


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## Eden Marel (Jan 28, 2010)

The shrimp pic is very good!


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

OK MORE!

berried RCS:









my betta male, Doctor Jesus:










otto and some cbs:









cbs and golden:









a mess of shrimp, all sorts:









my messy shrimp room:









daddy rabbit, his shell was like that at the store, i had to buy him and give him his very own cuttlefish bone, he's happy now, see all of that beautiful new shell!?










one of my shrimp racks, upper is OEBT and higher grade RCS, lower is CRS and higher grade RCS as well as my rabbit snails:










This is another shrimp rack, however the 30g on top is right now being re-done. I somehow had gotten a yellow het into my cherrys and had to net out all of the cherrys a while back, it was terrible but can't have those ugly brownish clear regular ole neocardinia heteropoda! I gutted it and filled it with danio and molly fry to keep it cycled... some day! The bottom 20g is lower grade CRS and japanese trapdoor snails/assassins.










Ahh the secret to healthy shrimps! Haha, well at least that's what my mentor tells me, i think it looks cool on super macro tho:










my SE asia biotope which has mysteriously been overrun with brazillian pennywort, go figure. It has 2 gold gouramis, 1 flame gourami, 2 golden wonder killis, 7 ghost catfish, 10 dwarf zebra danio and 10 kuhli loaches:










And of course, since I posted pictures of my dogs, my cats started meowing about how I didn't take enough pictures of them, so here they are:

Meowmeowkittymeow and meowzer


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## Indignation (Mar 9, 2008)

Ok, I give up... what is that?


Cool pics.  Some of the aquatic ones are a bit yellow, try playing around with the white balance setting on the camera. Also, I'm crazy jealous of your shrimp farms.


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## Eden Marel (Jan 28, 2010)

Yeaa what is that, it looks like a really messed up brown egg shell or something.

And yea the pics are kinda yellow, it looks like it might be set on tungsten, you might have to set it to daylight florescent.


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

Yeah, pics are yellow because of the indian almond leaves, I usually take pictures right after a water change (especially because shrimp look better after a molt), but I wanted to play with my camera! 

And that wouldn't be a SECRET if I told you! Just kiddin, it's a small chunk of reishi mushroom.


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## Digsy (Mar 4, 2006)

Nice looking shrimp (and snails)! Glad to see a local with so many different varieties..hopefully you'll be selling in the future.


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## shane3fan (Nov 2, 2009)

Need more pics of "the old lady's feets:" LOL--j/k nice pics!


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## deleted_user_6 (Jun 19, 2010)

mordalphus said:


> a mess of shrimp, all sorts:


Man, I love this shot. Almost doesn't look real.


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## timwag2001 (Jul 3, 2009)

my favorite pic was the one with the red cherry under the red leave. too bad theres a little gsa there


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

Yeah, still battling the gsa on and off, i turned my co2 up yesterday.

I've been scraping it off about every 2 weeks, not a big deal, but the camera catches every little bit of it, lol.


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

peekaboo! Can you spot the orange eye?:









up close and personal with a japanese trapdoor snail:


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## Indignation (Mar 9, 2008)

I'm curious about the mushroom! do the shrimp eat it? is it for tanins/water quality? Where do you get them?


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## OhNo123 (Jan 8, 2008)

Looks like your japanese trap door snail is growing some hair. haha


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

Indignation said:


> I'm curious about the mushroom! do the shrimp eat it? is it for tanins/water quality? Where do you get them?


they pick at it, the snails chomp it down... It's got the texture of spongy wood. I grew mine, but you can also find it at chinese herb stores. It is generally made into a tea to drink as a health tonic. In chinese it's called Lingzhi.

It's an immune system booster as well as an anti-viral and anti-bacterial. I drink reishi tea whenever I'm sick. It doesn't taste great but it works! The downside is that it can be expensive. I grow my own for that reason.


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

OhNo123 said:


> Looks like your japanese trap door snail is growing some hair. haha


hah, yeah, and the shrimp love to ride the snails while munching... It's like a dinner train


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

ok just a few more:

a few of one of my OEBT that is pretty much solid black, he just as two LITTLE stripes of blue. The sneaky bugger only shows his face very rarely, and these pictures are terrible, because he was moving so fast and the GSA in the way.









and one of his tail end:









now some other pictures!


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## PinoyBoy (Mar 14, 2008)

Nice. Looks like you're getting to know your camera more and more. So are you gonna focus more on macro photography or other types?


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

i love macro photography, but i take pictures of everything. I've been taking around 400 pictures a day, albeit about 5 of them turn out any good. It's fun!


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)




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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

here's some pictures of one of my dark blue OEBT. In the first pic he doesn't look so blue, just because I had to lighten up white balance just to focus on him. The second shot shows what he looks like if you're just looking at the tank, but of course it's not as focused.


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

Oh, and see that empty trapdoor snail shell? My tigers eat baby snails... 

I need to get them to eat the limpets though, they're great at cleaning the glass, but they're fugly!


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## msnikkistar (Mar 23, 2010)

Those are some nice pictures Liam. Looks like you are getting the hang of your camera now.


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## dxiong5 (Sep 28, 2008)

Nice pictures, thanks for sharing. Your substrate looks rather fine, do you have problems with UGFs? I'm thinking about using them, but not sure if detritus and debris from Aquasoil and Azoo Plant Growers Bed will clog them up.


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## timwag2001 (Jul 3, 2009)

looking awesome!


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

I'm using 3M colorquartz black "fine" grade. I have the UGF outflow going into the intake of a little HOB filter, and at first I had some troubles with some bits of colorquartz hitting the impeller and making it stop... I just cut an algae pad into the shape of the uptake tube and pushed it down into the bottom, it stops anything from coming up into the HOB now. So far i'm getting good flow through the UGF, but it's only covering half of the tank, the other half has rooted plants.

This and my other sensitive shrimp tanks have WAY too much bio filtration... I do this on purpose, lots of people say "if there's no food for the bacteria, it will die", but with a home already established in a filter, it will handle a spike in ammonia a whole lot better than having just one filter.

In my OEBT tank I have the UGF going into the HOB, then a sponge filter going into a mini canister, that re-enter the tank through a biowheel. 

It's overkill, but I can drop 10 ottos into the tank without a spike in ammonia. (which I did about a week ago)

Now I just have to figure out a way to get the ottos to eat the GSA.

My high grade CRS tank has the same filtration except no biowheel (can't find another one cheap enough). Instead of the biowheel it has an air driven double sponge filter.




Oh, and one small note, the ADA and AZOO soils will break down into a LOT smaller particles than my colorquartz... I do have 3 shrimp tanks set up with aquasoil in them right now, but what I did was wrap the UGF in pantyhose, put it in, put one later of turface about 1 inch, then topped it with the aquasoil. So far no clogs or change in performance and it's been almost a year now.

Most people who use amazonia in their tanks have to break down the tank after about 2 years because the soil stops functioning as a buffer, and has usually turned to mush by then anyways... It's always good to replace your UGF when this happens.


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

Heeere we go!

hows this for a blue tiger? rofl, I think his stripes are big enough to call him black.










And this is his mommy, she's full of eggs again, and I swear to god she's the biggest tiger shrimp I've ever seen... And her eggs are red, doesn't really show in the picture, but she hides all the time in the leaf litter, so I have to russle up the leafs once in a while, she popped out and I grabbed this shot while I was holding the leafs back with a net, lol. She's about the size of neon tetra and when she's full of eggs, she's very round, and it looks funny... But she's an experienced mommy and she can be JAM PACKED full of eggs and she'll hold all of them.

Anyways, here ya go:


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## dxiong5 (Sep 28, 2008)

Thanks for the explanation, filtration overkill is great :thumbsup:


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

No problem, donny!

Here's a few shots, was playing with the photometry, exposure and sharpness to get a better focused, better lit, low light macro. It was hard, and took me about 25 shots, just to get these 2.
I think it's kinda cool, you can actually see which pieces of gravel have been cleaned by the CBS in his picture.



















These were taken in ISO 64, in a 20g long lit by 2 13w PC bulbs, which are 14 inches above the tank. Before taking pictures in this tank, I'd have them all come out either dark or not in focus... Now I've got the settings to where they need to be... Color correction set at incandescent (looks the best, even though the bulbs are daylight). I think I needed to set it to daylight because of the high amount of tannins staining the water from catappa and a large piece of malaysian driftwood. To take the picture at ISO 64, I actually had to set it on a tripod, then frame the shot, and set the timer to 2 seconds, press the button and step back... I was just trying to have it on the tripod and they kept coming out blurry because of my heartbeat through my hand, haha.


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

This poor girl is so full of eggs she can't swim correctly


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## DKShrimporium (Nov 23, 2004)

She looks great!

Hey Liam, I used the net yesterday when netting out some blacks from the crowd. I REALLY like the way it handles. Something about how it's extremely lightweight so you can hold it like a pencil and maneuver it very, very finely. One thing I noticed that I also like is that you can see through the mesh, unlike my tiny brine shrimp net. One thing I wish were different is I wish the mesh cup were deeper, as I had to immediately hold my hand over top or they would flip out of it too easily. Another thing I really like is the rim is extremely lightweight, so you can "feel" it better and not smash shrimp against the glass by accident if they get in the rim zone. I didn't realize how much difference these things would make in net "performance" until I was using it.

D.


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## timwag2001 (Jul 3, 2009)

how do you keep the substrate from becoming impacted and restricting flow in your ugf (which is hooked up to your hob?)

i would be worried that it would clog up and stop the flow to the hob and then i wouldnt have any filtration at all

i dont know much about ugfs because i've never used one, so please excuse my ignorance


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

DK: Yeah, I love these little nets, and you're right, they arent very deep, but I think it's actually the material since it's a bit stiffer than a fish net they can pop out, but I've kinda adjusted to covering the net before it comes out of the water. The guy at the shrimp store is so good with it that he doesn't even cover it anymore, hah.

timwag2001: When I do water changes, I use a rubber band to cover my siphon with fine mesh and attach a chopstick, while i'm doing my waterchange, i use the chopstick to gently stir up the surface of the sand, which sends all the little shrimpie poos into the siphon. 

The sand itself doesn't really get compacted because I have snails in with my shrimp, and the snails and shrimp pick up the sand and throw it around... It's actually pretty nuts how much sand the shrimp move. Around the rocks in my tanks, I'm always having to fill back during water changes because they pull all of the sand out from the bottom of the rocks, grrr!


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