Brhino's 75g Supercommunity Aquarium

[Cosmo23]

I'm not certain if this has been asked before - But how are you able to take such great pics of your fish? Whenever I try - My fish look at me, and then dart as soon as I hit click - They must fear I'm taking their souls with the click.

[Brhino]

I am by no means an expert photographer, so take all this with a grain of salt, but here's what I've learned:

We'll use a bullet list. Haven't used a bullet list in a while!

• Get a good camera.
  How much does this matter? I don't honestly know in technical terms. But, thanks to my wife's interest in photography I have access to a pretty good camera, a Nikon D40. Before I used that, I had an old, cheap digital camera and the results were not good.
• Keep your front glass clean.
  Algae on the inside, water marks or fingerprints on the outside will make for a less sharp photo.
• Take pictures at an angle, not straight on.
  This will prevent the flash from reflecting off the glass into the camera. A smarter photographer might be able to get good pictures without the flash, but not me - at least not of things that move, like fish.
• Take pictures when the rest of the room is dark.
  Light from the room, or indirect sunlight from windows, can reflect off of all sorts of things and make it harder to get good shots. Best to wait until the evening and turn off the room lights.
• Cover up the range finder light
  I'm not sure if I'm naming this accurately, but this camera has a little light that turns on when you're preparing to take a picture and the autofocus is locking in (I rarely manage a good picture without autofocus, even on a stationary subject). This light will cause some of the more skittish fish to flee, so I cover it up with my finger while shooting. With the tank lights on there's still enough light for it to focus.
• Do something to get the fish out in the open
  Like feeding them! Feeding time is a good time for picture taking, because they're more interested in eating and less concerned about me blasting them with camera flashes.
• Take lots of pictures.
  I usually take 40-50 pictures at a time, of various things in the tank that catch my eye. Maybe one in a dozen will be worthy of posting here, and a real Picture of the Month candidate only comes along maybe one time in a hundred.
• Photograph slow fish
  What can I say? There's a reason I don't take pictures of the danios very often.

[bcg150]

I don't know why I never asked the same question here before. Thank you so much for info on taking pictures. I wanted to take pics of mine but they always suck. I will have to check this out later.

Since you cover up the auto focus light do you focus it manually?

[Brhino]

no, it still manages to focus with the light blocked. I assume it is because the tank is well-lit enough that it doesn't actually need any more light.

I've tried using manual focus sometimes (say I'm trying to take a picture of something behind some plants, and I can't get the camera to focus on it) but I just haven't had much luck at all. Even when I think I have the focus right, when I plug the camera into my computer and blow up the photos they're slightly off.

[Cosmo23]

Thank you for the tips!

[Brhino]

It's been a while since I've taken pictures, but I was inspired today, because somebody spawned...

Probably this guy and friends.

Which means fish were swimming all over the tank with eggs stuck to their face!

This platy's got two eggs stuck to her face, and a bit of gravel and a strand of hair algae stuck to the eggs. It's the rare horned platy.


The pest snail problem has been largely eradicated thanks to the assassin snails. I rarely see one outside of the filter box.


But I'm still finding baby assassin snails all the time.

[Brhino]

The queen of the tetra school is getting very large, both in belly and in overall size.


Here's one of the others for comparison.



Some of the RCS gathered at the front of the tank to eat something in the gravel (think it was fish poop). Mostly adult females, but there's a male on the right and a baby on the left of the first picture. I haven't seen a shrimp get eaten for a while now, and certainly the population is stable at least.

[Brhino]

Oto...


Oto and platies...


Zebra danio. I want to try breeding these. Have I mentioned that? I think so...


And lastly, a shot of java fern mountain. It looks a little funny since I didn't use a flash unlike the rest of these pictures. It's starting to be overgrown, I might actually have to prune back the ferns a bit. Not sure how exactly I'd go about doing that.

[Pamela2Heaven]

Awesome pics!!

[Cosmo23]

I like your java fern mountain!

In your next round - can you include a shot of the whole aquarium?