Deep Reef Anthias

[iceemn360]

I reposted these images after I had an editing flop! haha. Here they are again but with borders!

I volunteer at the academy of sciences and work with Matt Wandell on this deep reef tank. It is dominated by Tubastrea corals and various anthias (Randalls, Purple Queens, Sunburst, Tiger, ect). It's fed a 3 gallon suspension of freshly hatched nauplii, frozen cyclopeeze, and shellfish diet daily. The sun poplyps in the tank are target fed weekly. in other words this tank eats and eats and eats! It is dosed by a 30 gallon tank with Kalk and gets one or two 60 gallon waterchanges weekly with premixed IO. The system total is 300 gallons and its a blast to work with!

Supermale Randalls (Pseudanthias randalli )




Male Randalls (Pseudanthias randalli )






Female Randalls (Pseudanthias randalli )


Male Purple Queen (Pseudanthias tuka)






Tiger Anthias (Pseudanthias lori)

[junkie]

Whoa!!! "reef tank that you work on"? Please elaborate... Stellar shots might I add.

[SDguy]

Beautiful shots, as always. Where do you work?

[rodbuster229]

sweet!!!!!!!

[iceemn360]

Haha thanks guys!

Most of the credit for the setup/care/and maintenance of this Deep Reef exhibit goes to my supervisor, Matt Wandell at the Academy of Sciences. I volunteer with him working on this exhibit and a few others (cleaning... lots of it, target feeding, dosing, trapping troublesome butterflyfish!, placing tubastrea, and more feeding!). It is a ton of fun! BTW the Birch Aquarium might be looking for Aquarist Volunteers from time to time.

[SD Actuary]

That Ventrallis in pic 4 would look much better in my tank. Awesome shots.

[h20poloman]

Great shots Tim as usual. Can you also give specs on what photography specs you used for your shots...it's helps us beginners out.

[iceemn360]

Great shots Tim as usual. Can you also give specs on what photography specs you used for your shots...it's helps us beginners out.

thanks and no problem!

I floated around these parameters depending on how close the fish was to the window. I was using a bounce flash from the Flash card in the flash gun.

ISO 160
Focal Length 35mm (its a 35mm macro prime lens)
F /6.3-8
Shutter: 1/70-1/100sec
Flash Power ranged from 1/8th power to 1/32 power.

The best way to learn is to experiment! just try to limit the flashing of the fish!

[h20poloman]

Thanks Tim, never even heard of a bounce flash so now I have more things to google. Wouldn't have guessed you took those with a flash...I'm sure the fish were no so pleased with that.

[iceemn360]

kind of like this....



but my Pentax flash has one already build in so I just pop it out when I need it. The bounce flash is bright but soft so its not as direct/shocking to the fish as a straight on flash. (people dont like flash! you can only imagine how much fish would like it!)
also using a low power like 1/32 of full power helps not to freak them out.

[colindoug3]

The photos are currently unavailable. I tried pasting them into the browser with no luck as well.

Bouncing is a great technique to soften the harsh direct flash. For portraits you can swivel or tilt the flash and bounce it off of a wall or ceiling.
If that interests you, here is some more information: http://shutterfinger.typepad.com/shu...sh-skillz.html
"But that doesn't mean I have to use direct flash--the flat, harsh light so typical of amateur snapshots. I like my flash shots to look as if they were taken with ambient light."

[SDguy]

I knew that tank looked familiar!! Not many people with adult male tuka's around

[colindoug3]

Most of the photos came up except two. Wow!

[iceemn360]

I took the photos down from my host site because I realized the photos weren't displaying properly on some monitors. I did some dodging in the backgrounds to get rid of some marine snow and it showed up in some of the photos on certain computers as visible black splotches. I went back and re edited them and even removed the blurred out female in the background of the male randall's anthias to give it more punch!

The flash seems to work well with small tanks where the subject is close but not too close to the glass (4-10" away). It helps reduce visible glare in the photos from the glass while providing a more "above light source" source look instead of that harsh/flat straight on look.

I'll repost the photos up top in a bit....and with borders!!!

[iceemn360]

I knew that tank looked familiar!! Not many people with adult male tuka's around

Currently there are around 300 specimens on reserve that are waiting to be moved to the big reef! Plenty of males in there! its amazing to see groups of anthias in shoal sizes closer to what they would be found in the wild.