My 20 gallon long

[Adam]

Hi,

Since this thread is up and I finally have all the parts for my aquarium, I decided I would finally start my thread.

20 gallon long (30" long x 12" wide x 12" tall) with black painted background
Black wooden marineland canopy with matching bottom wood trim
2 x 70W DIY MH with NAIS ballasts and Astralux 14K DE HQI
1 AC500 converted fuge.  I trimmed off 4 blades on the impeller to reduce flow.  The light is a 13W power compact desklight on a reverse schedule.  I painted the intake black to camouflage it.
1 Koralia 1
1 Koralia 2

2 Tank raised ocellaris clowns
1 Cleaner shrimp
9 Blue hermits
4 Cerith snails
4 Turbo snails
2 Margarita snails

Ton of zoo/paly frags and colonies...blue, yellow, pink, green, brown...
1 red mushroom
1 green Montipora digitata
1 Whitish/greenish/brownish millepora
1 green/brown favia







The last two are a little darker than what they actually look like.  Anyone care for some zoa trading?

[kirk88]

looking good! how bout a FTS.

[jeffd]

yes looking good! and I was going to ask for a full tank shot too

[Vallely4]

Lovin the zoo's especially ones in that first pic
-must be close to 200 polyps on that rock

Id love to see a preview full shot too ofyour 20g, I know Ive still gotta drop by, that is if you have some frags ready

[Adam]

Thanks for the nice comments...this was my first time really playing around with the camera's settings and I got a few pictures that I was pretty happy with.  It's an old fuji S5100, 4mp.  That rock has about 200+ polyps on it...as soon as I saw it, I knew I had a home for it, regardless of price.

I'll get a FTS when my second 70W ballast arrives...the light is too unproportioned right now, and the front and side glass is home to way more creatures than I care to wipe away at the moment to take a good FTS...

[jeffd]

hi Adam, do you have your 20L sectioned off at one end or are you wide open side to side? I'm wondering what width of coverage area a single 70w halide will cover sufficiently without darkening on the edges. I realize this depends on how high the light is above the tank, par of the bulb, reflector used but say a ballpark? I'm guessing around a 24" span with the light 3-4 inches or so off the surface.

thanks, Jeff

[Adam]

I get best coverage at about 20 inches. It's illuminated to the edges, but it's dark at the top corners.

[jeffd]

thanks Adam. If I end up going with a 20 long, i'll keep the 20" in mind as to where to put the separator section. Going with a smaller tank and drilling it (adding a sump to hold equip\fuge) is another option i'm thinking about also.

Jeff

[Adam]

Ok, I broke down and wiped the front pane...

The white balance and shutter speed were off, so it's darker and more yellow than it actually is.  Anyone have any settings they like to keep their aperture and shutter speed on?  Any numbers would help, thanks.


Yellowish FTS



Frag alley...I had overgrown colonies with no room to grow, so I started a little collection of frags here...

[Julie]

Looks good, nice zoos - before you know it you'll have large colonies.

[fischkopp]

Looking good Adam!

I am shooting 1/160 s with aperture around F16 (using 90mm macro and flash) for everything close-up. For full tank shots I use 50mm, no flash, F11 and whatever time is needed - this makes everything thats moving blurry though; there will be probably better settings.

[Adam]

My aperture only goes up to 9...too bad.

Took some more pictures today, but none of them came out the way they looked when I took them.  I'm having some issues with the white balance.  Should I take a piece of white paper and do it on that?  What kind of lighting on the paper?  The auto WB just doesn't cut it...everything is super saturated with blue.

[fischkopp]

There is always photoshop to correct the WB - the camera doesnt do anything else 

[kennyman]

Going to look pretty cool once stuff starts to fill in 

Can you make iso adjustments to your camera? as long as you stay below 800 you get more light sensitivity without longer exposure time. once you go over 800 the grain is pretty bad though.

[Adam]

Yes, I think in some cases I can go up to 1600ISO or 3200ISO...I'll try more pictures later. 

I really hope it starts to fill out soon.  I see a lot of new polyps here and there, but I'm having a hard time getting any polyps that I glue to start spreading over the rock themselves.  Sometimes they will just fall off.  I've taken to using super glue gel but drying the polyps and the rock with a tissue before gluing, then letting them sit in the air for awhile to harden the glue.  So far this technique has worked well.

BTW: Boomkin is dutch for small tree.  So they started called people boomkins referring to the cranial capacity of a small shrub.  I don't know when it changed to bumpkin though.

[Adam]

Here are some more shots of my aquarium:

[groupie02]

Looks really good!

[groan]

nice! a little dark but good nonetheless.

so when you selling those little frags? LOL!

[Adam]

Thanks.  It's a little dark, I know.  I'm still fiddling around with my ISO and aperture.  I just made some of those little frags yesterday as they were spilling over onto other rocks. Saw your new tank on here groan...looks really nice.  One of these days I will be able to set up my 75...

As for selling some of them:

http://ovas.ca/index.php?topic=23592.msg165390#msg165390