Pics of my 75g reef. (large post)

[Desolas]

Haven't posted pics on this forum before, here are a bunch from my tank.

Tank is a 75g reef, mixed sps/lps and soft corals. Metal Halide light, two 250w blueline bulbs. 5-7" dsb. 5-6 fish.

 

[fungia]

wowzers! those are amazing pics of your beautiful tank! what camera do you use by the way? i am very impressed

more pics if you have them......

 

[Len]

Wow, your first picture post is definitely feast for the eyes! Gorgeous photos. Consider looking into the photo contests if you haven't because you can definitely shoot. I'd love to see and hear more details of your tank.

 

[Merkur]

congradulations on a killer looking tank!!

 

[Desolas]

Thanks!

I have a Nikon Coolpix 2500, its 2.1mp I think. Pretty decent point-and-shoot camera but it has limitations.

Tank is a 75g, with 20g sump. It's been running 1 year 6 months. Lots of light, lots of clean water, and lots of food. It uses a urchin pro skimmer, and caulerpa for nutrient export. Lights are on 14 hours, just two metal halide lights. Sump/refugium is lit 24/7 with 128w of PC light in the stand. It's simple, and pretty maintenance free. Just add top off water. Alk and Calcium are maintained with a reactor. It is very easy to keep stable which is very nice, and what I was hoping for when planning it.

I love it when a plan comes together.

 

[Len]

Definitely work well planned and carried out. Your tank is obviously healthy.l Great work with the 2500. I've seen much more expensive cameras shoot much lesser quality photos

 

[Anonymous]

Definitely work well planned and carried out. Your tank is obviously healthy.l Great work with the 2500. I've seen much more expensive cameras shoot much lesser quality photos

Yeah, like mine. :?

Desolas, are you using a tripod at all? I'm certain that's my problem, amongst other things...

Since you are using a Nikon like mine, what are your other settings at, like white balance, exposure, etc...?

Peace,

Chip

 

[Desolas]

I use a tripod for some of the pictures. Most of those pics were taken with a tripod, except for the over head shots and the clown fish/anemone shot.

I use the timer to take the shot unless trying to shoot a fish. It's a poor man's remote shutter switch, I hit the button, wait 10 seconds, and an absolutely still camera takes the shot.

I adjusted the white balance against the sand bed, which removes alot of the blue from the tank's color that isn't seen by the eye, but picked up by the camera. The picture of the hermit crab is the only one taken on automatic mode and you can see how blue the sand is. I just kept finding a good white spot until the colors came out true, it was a PITA and took me several hours. I think a combonation of sand bed samples and white paper against the tank glass were used to get the right white balance setting..but it's been awhile since I did it.

Most of the pics are taken with the exposure at -0.7 or -1.0. All of these pics are at -0.7, but the one of the small toadstool is -1.0, which is why it's so dark. -1.0 takes the sharpest pix, but they come out over shadowed.

A tripod really helps alot. You loose the ability to shoot at any angle, but your pictures come out clearer. So full tank shots, etc, all come out much nicer. I think I've almost milked this camera for all it's worth though, and I cannot get very good macro shots...but otherwise it's okay.