my 125 gallon Central American cichlid tank

[Stanzzzz7]

Do you bring the tropical plants inside in the winter?

Hi Adam,
The big red banana plant I dig up every year and store in my garage.It stays dormant there all winter and I re plant it mid spring.
The other plants like the green bananas I rap up and cover the roots with straw.
I put a ball of straw in the crown of the tree ferns and the rest are unprotected all year.
I need to make some changes to the pond soon before my 9 month old daughter starts walking.
I don't want to but her safety comes first.

 

[mrrobxc]

Nice set up Adam. It can only get better as the fish grow.
My wife says that my tanks are boring."can't we have some colourful cute fish like those Goldfish with the big eyes"she says.
I have found that completely dismissing everything she says is the best way forward. Cute bloody Goldfish! Never going to happen.
Stick with the natural look Adam,it looks great.

I agree with Stanzzz. Natural way is the best way in my book. If my wife had her way, she'd kid things from all over the planet and the travel would be black and the ornaments pure white.

 

[AZ Red]

so first off, nice looking tank.
2nd, what did you use to photograph the tank? my pics never come out that clear and sharp...

 

[adamsfishes]

so first off, nice looking tank.
2nd, what did you use to photograph the tank? my pics never come out that clear and sharp...

Hi Preston,

Thanks.

I'm not a skilled photographer, but I'll tell you what I do. For the first shots in the thread, I was using my old camera, a Fujifilm X100S, which honestly isn't that great for this kind of shooting. I had to really tweak a lot with manual settings to get the shots to look somewhat close to reality.

For the ones from mid-August on, I'm using my new Nikon D5500 with the cheap kit lens. Shots from this camera are pretty accurate to what my eyes see. For settings, aperture may need to be adjusted manually; I generally prefer it wide open. Sometimes the lighting can trick the auto aperture, so if it's not on the smallest number (largest opening, it's inverted) or close to it, then I'll set aperature manually. Otherwise I let everything be auto. Also, I personally turn off the flash because it reflects off the glass. The D5500 has a touch screen, which makes it really fast and easy to adjust settings.

One thing I've noticed is that the auto focus will almost never want to grab what you want, so you have to manual focus, and take a bunch of shots. It can be hard to tell if it's truly in focus until you blow it up on the computer, so I'll tweak the focus a bit while shooting and pick the sharpest one. I don't think this approach is unusual. I'll probably get better at manual focusing with practice.

I'm still learning, hope to get better shots in the future. I'm also going to buy a nicer lens down the road, but the one I want is like $600, so no time soon...

 

[AZ Red]

Okay, so you're using a "real" camera then. That makes sense. Much better quality than my iphone. My wife has a nice dslr, maybe I can convince her to take pics for me...

AZR

 

[adamsfishes]

Earlier I mentioned that I added some new fish. I took some pictures of a couple of them tonight. Please excuse the microfiber particles, I didn't notice them until I cropped and zoomed the pictures, and I'm too lazy to retake them.

Today I'm going to show the Archocentrus centrarchus pair that I got from Jeff Rapps (tangledupincichlids).

Here is the female. She's starting to show some of the adult coloring. I estimate she is about 4 inches. She can change her stripe colors quite a lot. Sometimes they are barely visible, other times darker, and she can make her whole body almost black if she wants to hide (like when I'm messing around in the tank).



Here are a couple shots of the male, who seems to be closer to 4.5". You can see he is getting the blue stripe down his midline and also on his fins.




These guys are peaceful, not seeing any aggression between them and the other fish. They all get along swimmingly.

However, there is aggression from the male to female. He will sometimes chase her around, but he never harms her, and she isn't stressed, seems very relaxed. She will still cozy up to him, and he seems to tolerate her for the most part but will chase her around a bit. It almost seems like she is inciting him into a chase sometimes. I think it's normal, but please tell me if I'm wrong.

 

[Hendre]

Nice stuff

 

[Stanzzzz7]

Nice clear pictures Adam.

 

[adamsfishes]

Nice clear pictures Adam.

Thanks, they're not bad, but I'm still not that happy with the sharpness. I'm going to try some different settings and see if I can do better. Looking at Mo's Today in the Fishroom pictures makes me feel woefully inadequate.

 

[adamsfishes]

Here is an update on the male centrarchus, hasn't really changed much, maybe a tad bigger.



And here is the female, looking very stripey: