Kallor

Well that is the best possible answer I could hope for - I was worried I was getting some sort of mutant-tumor-hitchhiker outbreak

I've been thrilled to see some new polyps blossoming in my paly/zoa garden. I'll try and get some nice photos soon . . . but in the meantime, I was hoping for some community input. Does anyone know what this odd growth is beside/on my palythoa grandis? I can see what is clearly a new head growing on the opposite side . . . but I've got no clue what this is. Any input is appreciated!

Thanks for tuning in! After all the hard work, both physical and mental, that goes into getting some coral growth, it really does end up being amazingly rewarding! Much appreciated - that is an amazing compliment! Pictures help keep me going when the workload feels a bit heavy, and I'm really glad you enjoy them as well. Having a nice desktop background of a particular coral or critter on a 'good day' goes a long way to keep me motivated! Thanks for the kind words and photo compliments! I'm lucky in that I got a bit of practice with macro shots of all sorts of flowers and bugs prior to setting up the fish tank, so at least part of the capture process feels familiar to me. Of course the refraction from the glass has unique challenges ... And I'm glad you like the 'things I've bungled' info - it is kinda hard to fess up to a mistake (or equivalent) in a public forum, but when I've read other people post similar info, it reminds me we all make mistakes and helps me get over whatever my latest 'oops' happens to be

Ain't that the truth? And of course that doesn't just apply to wives, but it seems most people you mention a saltwater tank to (that has some familiarity with them) has a favorite fish you can't keep for whatever reason ;-)

Ahhh that explains it! Thanks for the correction! And thanks again for the awesome frags! Also, a quick additional update: I want to include my foibles as well as my successes as I continue this 'log, and I had a pretty great one yesterday. I was working from home (normal practice on a Friday) and during my lunch break I did a salinity test on the batch of waterchange water I'd mixed earlier in the week. I had a saltwater tank back in middle/highschool, so of course 1.025 is burned in my head. However, since the SG scale is logarithmic, I recently decided to measure and work in the slightly more granular PPT scale. . . anyway . . . I did my salinity test, everything looked good and I proceeded to do my water change. This week I vacuumed out the 'fuge area of my sump, which is a slow-flow zone where detritus accumulates. I removed and replaced about 10 gallons (a few gallons less than normal). This morning I noticed my salinity was hovering around 33 PPT . . . I recalibrated my refractometer 3 times, and still the same result. I still had a bit of fresh saltwater I had mixed earlier in the week (the batch I tested and used yesterday), so I checked that, and low and behold it was dead on 25 PPT. My somewhat stressful work afternoon had given me a bit of brain short, and instead of adding two more cups or so of salt mix, I decided 25 PPT was spot on (confusing the "25" in 1.025 with the "35" needed in the PPT scale). Thankfully I can only change about 15 gallons at a time (due to space constraints). All my fish and corals look fine, and I think/hope I'm only the "high" side of 33 (closer to 34) PPT (or so my Apex probe tells me). I'm going to move it back up over the next week or so via top offs (since everything is OK right now, the last thing I want to do is over react and then stress anyone too much). But lesson learned - I've now got "35 PPT" labels stuck all over my refractomer so this doesn't happen again

Update Time! To start with, this last WAMAS meeting was my first and it was a blast. I pick up loads of lovely coral, and had fun milling about with like-minded reefers. The speaker was quite interesting as well. Good times, and I'll certainly be back! So thanks to everyone who chipped in to make this last meeting work! Regarding Gurgly's progress: things have been going quite well. My movement-inclined livestock has had quite the increase: I've now got a lovely Kole tang and a Kaudern's cardinal – as well as a pair of skunk cleaner shrimp, a peppermint shrimp and an emerald crab. Due to the extra company, my pair of pink skunk clowns seem just a touch more brave. They still love to hang in the back corner of the tank, but they swim about more now. They've also grown noticeably, which is definitely nice. Isaac hooked me up with two lovely acro frags, and I was thrilled to have them actually do pretty well in my young tank. The pinkish one in particular is encrusting quite rapidly (a Stubber Acro, IIRC, but that isn't looking like what Google images pulls up, so maybe I'm misremembering). The other, a tricolor frag, has also rooted quite nicely and grown over the superglue surrounding the frag. Blah blah blah, text text text, enough of that right!? On to the pictures! No Mr. Snail, don’t eat that paly! Orson the Cardinalfish Blueberry and Lime Birdsnest Blue Green Tenius Acropora Stubbers Acropora (or something else?) – you can see where it has encrusted over the rock it is glued to :-) Red Rhodactis mushroom – no new mouths yet, but has doubled in size over the last few weeks Duncan Galaxy Blastomussa Meteor Shower Cyphastrea Kole Tang Cleaner Shrimp Spiderman Palythoa This hermit crab has climbing skills, appearing to defy gravity as he scales the aquarium wall for a meal A fourth head has grown out on my trumpet coral! Show-stopper Acanthastrea – you can see some new heads growing on the opposite side 'pods hiding in a shell – they are surprisingly hard to photograph – if you look closely, you can see that there are more in the shell than just the really big one (edit, because I accidentally a word or two)

Thanks for the continued interest guys! And thankfully I've quite a bit of update news to share - new additions (both sessile and otherwise) - I shall strive to put forth a most noble update in due course!

A76 SOLD - add it to my proxy buy of A67 :-) **edit** eeek I was way late on this - I missed the last few pages of this thread! Sorry!

Thanks for reading through the build log, and for the input! I remember when I was in highschool (the late '90s). No one had a personal email address ... I'm impressed that your family manages to share one (or at least, share one to some extent - I'm sure you have a system along with personal accounts and whatnot). Regarding the anemone, on the one hand, I certainly was sad to return him. On the other hand, I was glad that by the time I got him back to the store he had returned to his normal extension amounts, and basically looked just like he did when I first bought him. So hopefully he is a happy 'nem in a "forever home" at this point. Regarding the landscaping comments, I really love to see the layout/design aspect of the hobby, and how people express their aesthetic preferences in their builds. It would be great to see this continue to develop - to the point of having bonsai-style acropora (or something along those lines). Corals of course are not plants, so snipping here and there has more of an impact, but all the same, remembering we are creating an underwater garden gives a whole 'nother level of enjoyment (beyond just keeping the various critters happy).

Thanks for the kind words! I'm sure as one's tank progresses, having the sheer number and variety of corals to watch and admire really amps up the overall experience! I guess sometimes to really "get" the maximum joy of coral watching, you may have to have put in all the hard work, tears and cash it takes to get to that stage :-)

Definitely a spot on analogy!

I definitely get the frustration about having a higher maximum aperture, and keeping moving fish in focus is very tricky. However, if you are going to get close to micro range, you want you aperture to be around f/8 anyway (or very little of the image will be in focus), so the 55-200 won't hold you back too much in that regard. If you want to be able to focus closer without throwing down a fortune on a new lens, the 55-200 actually works pretty well with the Canon 500D 'filter'. It is a glass element you screw on to the front of your lens (much like you would a UV filter or a polarizing filter). It changes the lens such that it can focus as close as about 0.50 meters (hence the "500" in the name, I presume). This will actually get you some pretty reasonable macro results with your lens. My last batch of photos were all shot with a 500D on my Nikon 200mm lens (at about the 135mm setting). For your 55-200, the 52mm version would do the trick - B&H.com sells if for about $75. Something to consider at least! Regarding white balance, your camera has all the capabilities you need to get the balance correct. I presume you are shooting in JPEG - as I mentioned above, the easiest thing to do then is set the camera on "shade" or "cloudy" and see which looks best. Or, pick up a "white balance lens cap" (starting at about $5 on eBay - Google "custom white balance Nikon D60" to see how to use one). You've got a lot of options - feel free to PM me or come by to see the tank again and and we can work on our tank photography.

Eek! Lost work = major sadness. It is all to easy to do when typing up a forum post . . . but I'm sure you will be motivated to try again one day down the road. I hope I made the right call being cautious with the anemone - I'm sure it is stressful to be moved from tank to tank. Also, thanks for the kind words on the photos!

Thanks! Yeah I'm already excited about picking another anemone out - there seems to be a lot more color variety for BTAs than I was aware of, so I think this will work out well for me in the long run :-) Aquarium photography is tricky on so many levels, and I've still got a lot to learn myself. The more manual controls your camera gives you, the better chance you have at getting the right white balance. In my experience, cloudy/shade settings tend to be the closest "in camera" setting you can use - and also if you have a large external flash, relying on it for most of your exposure helps balance out the high K lighting. For almost all of my tank photos I've been setting the white balance when I post process. . . but of course you camera has to let you do that. What are you using for your shots? The one thing I would love to be able to nail is the cool florescence some corals give off ... that would be great. Always something more to learn, right?

Coral Growth! You can just see where Isaac's encrusting SPS has grown ... it has started to move from its 'home' rock and grow over the epoxy that I used to attach it to yet another rock. I know this is old hat to most of you folks, but it is pretty exciting to a new reefer such as me!

This week I said goodbye to my purple 'nem. :-( I was on the way out the door to Quantum Reefs, and I noticed he was nearly fully deflated. After reading around a bit, it appears 'nems do this from time to time, and it isn't something necessarily to worry about. However, I could see from his deflated posture that he still hadn't attached to anything, so I decided to take this new behavior as a sign and took him back home to Quantum Reefs. Hopefully he will find a happy home in somewhere else, and I'll start looking for another anemone in a few weeks/months .... likely a purple/green bubble tip. My visit to Quantum Reefs was planned to pick up some more detrivores. It is actually kinda tricky to not overfeed my tiny clowns, and I also wanted to have some more sandbed activity, so I got a few conchs and some nassarius snails. I really love watching the conchs go to work. In addition to these snails, I had an order from Inland Aquatics arrive - some baby bristle worms, some more micro stars and more strombus snails. They all arrived in good health, and combined with my Quantum pickup means I have a pretty good start on a clean up crew. Good times! The new snails (and micro star) from Inland Aquatics really liked the vibes this nassarius was giving off. The poor guy kept falling over due to the extra weight. But I'm sure his shell is nice and clean now!

Sorry about your loss :-( The frag tank and that Kessil look mighty nice though! Have you gotten that fancy skimmer you've got on it dialed in? Guess you can retire that clunker you have from Avast once you do :-p

Not a problem - thanks for sharing the photos! I remember my first few forays into the wilds with my 105. I had all these tips I was trying to keep in my head, and when I saw something to photograph my mind kinda went blank. Then I'd get home, look over my shots, and remember all the things I was "supposed" to be doing/monitoring as I was taking the photos. It took me quite some time to get into a comfortable rhythm with macro shots. They are so unforgiving of even the smallest mistake, and really push the photographer (and his gear) to its limits. One thing that did help me was switching over to manual focus and manual exposure for macro - I set my ISO about as high as I could tolerate, given my camera at the time (ISO 640 - 800ish), set my shutter speed to as slow as I could get away with (1/160 for still bugs and flowers, faster if there was wind --- or in this case, water current) and then set my aperture to whatever the exposure demanded - hopefully f/8 - f/16, f/16 being my preference. Letting the 'camera decide' made everything way to unpredictable for me, and it made it hard to figure out when I made a mistake or when the camera made a mistake. Of course, I'm still adapting to aquarium photography, and it likely has its own tricks, and you also might find different things that work for you - and the keepers/fail ration of macro photos can be discouraging, but hang in there! You've already gotten loads of great results!

I about lost it at George Lucas - I'm going to bookmark this cause I've got so e family members to share it with....

Wow I love it! It is really cool to see him making use of all those limbs! Videos like these are part of what brought me back into the hobby ... It really drives home the whole 'piece of he ocean in your home'.

I have the Nikon version. My sister-in-law has the Sigma version, and optically it is also quite nice - there really isn't a 'bad' micro lens out there, so you can't go wrong. Living by B&H would certainly be a lot of fun - but would come with loads of temptation as well! I've only been by twice, and visiting is quite an experience. One or two more more micro tip (Nikon calls their close-up lenses "macro" rather than "micro", so I've built up a bad habit of using those two terms interchangeably) water movement really makes things tricky for the softer corals that wave around. So turning off your water flow would make shots a lot easier - otherwise I've found I need to dial up the shutter speed sometimes as high as 1/400 to take shots of my GSP that are crisp at 100%. if you have access to an external flash, give it a go - it helps things quite a bit, and I've gotten pretty consistent results by bouncing it off the ceiling. If you don't bounce you can get some gross harsh shadows. if you are using AF, and your camera has an AF compensation/adjustment setting, experiment with it and see if you need it. Even if you don't figure out if your lens + camera combo has a tendency to focus in front of your target, or behind it. Once you know this you can either dial in a AF adjustment in your camera settings, or pick your focus points slightly behind or in front of what you want in focus.

I can't comment on what the 60 is like to use, but the 105mm has been one of my most used lenses for the last 7 years or so (since I bought one) so I can give a bit of feedback on tripodless shots... In brief, it is absolutely possible to handhold macro shots with the 105. The VR helps but most of it is technique and practice. The most consistent way I have found is: Put the lens in manual focus, and dial the lens to about 1:1 (the minimum focusing distance - assuming you want a 1:1 macro, otherwise adjust as needed Smash the camera nice and flat to your face, and tuck your elbows into your sides (the standard posture for minimizing camera shake) Try to ensure your shutter speed is 1/160 or faster (1/125 can work, but it is even harder) Set your aperture to between f/8 to f/16 Now slowly lean forwards and backwards waiting for the moment your subject comes into sharp focus; when it does fire away! This method works for me as I find it much easier to tilt myself forwards/backwards than to fiddle with the focus. However, having a tripod of course makes things much, much easier. Also, the AF works nicely in this lens, and you can even AF down to a 1:1 macro shot .... however, it is also quite dependent on having good lighting and a detailed subject, so for dedicated macro work MF is the most consistent. FWIW, the photos in my thread are almost all with the 105mm, and the only thing I used the tripod for was the short movie of the hairworm.

Oh, a quick update on the ailing GSP: it got to the point yesterday where all the polyps were retracted, all day long. After doing a close examination, I noticed some slimy filmy substance covering the surface of the frag. I think having my pumps on really low for the last week (combined with my tanks age) let some algae/bacterial growth take hold. So last night I turkey-basted all the filmy goop off of him, and today he looks 100% improved. Very satisfying indeed!

Great shots! Some of my favs so far: both of the clownfish photos are lovely (the 'nem makes for a great background) I also particularly like the red and white acan (or I think that is what it is - forgive my poor coral identification skills) the wavy GSP shot, with the high contrast and dark shadowed valleys looks really beautiful and mysterious ... very nice! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for pointing that out - I actually did happen to grab him the previous time at night. If he wiggles over there again, I'm definitely going to wait until late night to try grabbing him!