Xmoji 57 Gallon Reef Tank

xmoji

Eat, Sleep, Reef
Hey guys, I took some new photos tonight. I thinks it’s time to start shopping for another macro lens. The one I had previously was an auto focus lens so I returned it. Any suggestions on a macro lens for a Canon T5i? I want to be able to get to super close polyp shots but still want to get colony pictures? Is it possible with one lens?

BC Wondermelon

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TCK King Acro

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No name wild acro

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ASD Rainbow Milli

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Raspberry Limeade

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Torches! :cool:
 

Sawdonkey

Premium member
Could it be the browser you’re using?
Yeah, they don’t show in tapatalk (but most of your pics do), but they show in a web browser. Weird. Nice pics by the way.

Not sure how serious you are about photography or how much money you want to spend, but if you want to keep it cheap, but still get decent results, extension tubes or diopters might get you where you want to be? I just use tubes on a regular telephoto lens. Diopters actually take better photos, but are a little more fussy. I dabble in both.
 

xmoji

Eat, Sleep, Reef
Yeah, they don’t show in tapatalk (but most of your pics do), but they show in a web browser. Weird. Nice pics by the way.

Not sure how serious you are about photography or how much money you want to spend, but if you want to keep it cheap, but still get decent results, extension tubes or diopters might get you where you want to be? I just use tubes on a regular telephoto lens. Diopters actually take better photos, but are a little more fussy. I dabble in both.
Not super big into photography and actually only started using a dslr because of reefing. I haven’t looked into tubes or diopters but will check them out. I’ve been shopping for a Tamron or Canon macro mostly. I had a cheaper manual macro lens but didn’t like the manual focus so I returned it.
 

Sawdonkey

Premium member
Not super big into photography and actually only started using a dslr because of reefing. I haven’t looked into tubes or diopters but will check them out. I’ve been shopping for a Tamron or Canon macro mostly. I had a cheaper manual macro lens but didn’t like the manual focus so I returned it.
I’m in the same boat. Not that into photography except for aquarium stuff. The tubes or diopters allow me to take decent-enough pics that are better than most and don’t break the bank. Plus, they work with your zoom lens which I assume you already have?
 

xmoji

Eat, Sleep, Reef
Yeah
I’m in the same boat. Not that into photography except for aquarium stuff. The tubes or diopters allow me to take decent-enough pics that are better than most and don’t break the bank. Plus, they work with your zoom lens which I assume you already have?
I’m using the standard 18-55 mm lens that came with the camera. Do the tubes and diopters give the standard lens a zoomed in picture to f the subject?
 

Sawdonkey

Premium member
Yeah

I’m using the standard 18-55 mm lens that came with the camera. Do the tubes and diopters give the standard lens a zoomed in picture to f the subject?
They will both work with your lens but they work differently:

For the tubes: Each thickness of tube gives a different magnification. You then use your lens zoom to bring things into focus. Nothing is automatically in focus...you do it by adjusting the zoom.

For the diopters: Each curvature of lens brings things into focus at different distances from your lens. Everything in that range is already in focus. Then you can zoom in or zoom out to magnify the object and everything stays in focus. If you want to focus on something in the rear wall, you’d use a 1X or 2X diopter. With those, nothing near your front glass will focus. You need to change the diopter to a 10X or so to bring things close to the front glass into focus. You can also stack the diopters on top of each other.

In short, with tubes, you control the focus, but not the magnification. With diopters, you control the magnification, but not the focus.

Both work well.
 

xmoji

Eat, Sleep, Reef
Hey guys, so it’s been a rough couple of months. You may remember back in July I mentioned I was going through some tank issues. About a month after it thought I was finally getting things on the right track, I was wrong!

GHA took over. I mean my rocks were completely covered in that stuff. I would take out rocks scrub away the gha and within a couple days it looked like I didn’t do anything. After testing nitrates were always undetectable. Po4 however was detectable. Between mid September and mid October po4 would range between 0.06 and 0.13 ppm :eek:

In an effort to get po4 under control I continued 10 gallon weekly water changes. I also reinstated my skimmer and threw in filter socks. I really dialed back feeding which had an effect on my corals, more on this later. I also used Vibrant as a means to control the gha. I think all of this together worked in getting the gha pushed back. It’s not yet completely gone but it’s no where near what I was dealing with.

Since I dialed back feeding and used Vibrant I lost colors on sps. Some browned others got pale on me. After noticing that I started feeding daily. I would feed reef frenzy, reef roids and I also started to supplement amino acids. Recently started using acropower. I want to say a couple days after using acroppwer sps tips started to color up. My sps aren’t fully recovered but I am noticing subtle positive changes.

I’ll post some pics shortly showing the before and after. It’s not all pretty but it is a work in progress....
 

xmoji

Eat, Sleep, Reef
Red planet before


Red planet after


Orange passion before


Orange passion after. Love the polyp extension though!



WWC Yellow Tips after



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

xmoji

Eat, Sleep, Reef
No for the good, these pieces have really made a change for the better or weren’t effected so much.

ASD Rainbow Milli - not effected


CRT Insidious - lost color on this piece


Hawkins -regaining color


Blue tip sps - regaining color


WWC Nuclear Grapes- lost green tips and polyps.




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

xmoji

Eat, Sleep, Reef
This rack was completely covered in gha. Poor zoas and acans couldn’t even open up. They’re doing much better now.







Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

xmoji

Eat, Sleep, Reef
Even though I was going thru tank issues I couldn’t keep my addiction in check. I picked these up from Aquashella....

Lady in Pink


TGC Cherry Bomb


WWC Pink Panther



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

xmoji

Eat, Sleep, Reef
Ugh just noticed these are super blurry. How do you guys upload higher quality photos? I had to used Tapatalk because the file was too large in the browser.
 

Chicagoreefs

Administrator
Staff member
Ugh just noticed these are super blurry. How do you guys upload higher quality photos? I had to used Tapatalk because the file was too large in the browser.
Thats weird. How big are the files? I made the limit pretty high so people can put them directly in the site theiugh the browser. I can review and update to see if we can get it to work correctly.
 

Chicagoreefs

Administrator
Staff member
Hey guys, so it’s been a rough couple of months. You may remember back in July I mentioned I was going through some tank issues. About a month after it thought I was finally getting things on the right track, I was wrong!

GHA took over. I mean my rocks were completely covered in that stuff. I would take out rocks scrub away the gha and within a couple days it looked like I didn’t do anything. After testing nitrates were always undetectable. Po4 however was detectable. Between mid September and mid October po4 would range between 0.06 and 0.13 ppm :eek:

In an effort to get po4 under control I continued 10 gallon weekly water changes. I also reinstated my skimmer and threw in filter socks. I really dialed back feeding which had an effect on my corals, more on this later. I also used Vibrant as a means to control the gha. I think all of this together worked in getting the gha pushed back. It’s not yet completely gone but it’s no where near what I was dealing with.

Since I dialed back feeding and used Vibrant I lost colors on sps. Some browned others got pale on me. After noticing that I started feeding daily. I would feed reef frenzy, reef roids and I also started to supplement amino acids. Recently started using acropower. I want to say a couple days after using acroppwer sps tips started to color up. My sps aren’t fully recovered but I am noticing subtle positive changes.

I’ll post some pics shortly showing the before and after. It’s not all pretty but it is a work in progress....
How long has your tank be setup? Also how deep is your sand bed? I have some ideas on green hair algae based on my experience and see if yours in similar to mine.
 
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