Here's my current setup right now...although I am in the process of removing most of the plants and installing and attaching a 'plant wall' to the back. I have these silk leaves that are chained together with plastic links so I can attach them to the back wall, and add or remove links depending on how it will fit best. I bought some 'industrial strength' large black rubber suction cups from home depot withstand any pulling from the oscar should he decide to go after them. I'm also going to cut the tree root decorations in half so it fits snug up against the back wall.

This way I can get a background in there without constructing a rock wall etc. The tank is small enough as it is being 55 gallons so there's no way Im going to give him even less room. Plus, when I decide on which larger tank I want I definitely will be wanting to change this one depending on what I end up using it for. I have my eye on a green spotted puffer for the 55 gallon eventually which would go great in my bedroom.

Anwyas, I have a really nice 'professional' camera I'm using however it has about a million settings that are greek to me, and I'm having trouble with shutter speed. At the low light I need to take the pics the shutter speed becomes really slow and blurs the oscars movement. I'm trying to manually adjust it and apeture settings but so far this is the best I could get. Using a flash kind of ruins the lighting. so I need to try and make the shutter speed faster without losing too much light.

lol can i have your 55 haha jk MATT OUT----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nice looking tank, it looks bigger than a 55g.

It might be a bit larger...its an old tank and i think it's a tad wider than most 55's. When I was building the hood it measured out to slightly less than 18''

There is a tank calculator on the home page. Type in your dimensions and it will tell you your tank volume!!!

I can't wait to see this finished Johnny!!! I bet it will look amazing!

johnnyphoenix wrote:


Looking great!

I use those silk leaved plants too, and inded my O's cannot totally destroy them, allthough they try.

you won't regret getting Green Spotted Puffers.
i'm converting my GSP tank to brackish at the moment and the fish are incredible.




Very much like oscars,begging and acting silly all the time.
They are very aware of their surroundings, just like oscars.
I say go for it!

On cameras i'm no expert, i just use auto settings when i borrowedthe one i used.
but the colour of the tank seems much nicer with a pro-camera, instead of the other ones i used.
This is from my cellphone cam:


And this from a Nikon cam:


Quite a difference...

@johnnyphoenix; your tank looks great... those driftwood make it looks like
a riverbank of the amazon

@Noddy, cam and pone photo both looks great...

PAUL wrote:


Im looking forward to getting that leaf wall in there...I bought a green led that stays underwater so Im going to try and backlight the plants with it somehow. I'm going for just have a few white leds for spotlighting the roots and I have 2 blues to add some accent color...and have the green background plants and light. Unfortunately I seem to have a strange ph issue (it's way high for some reason) and that's gotta take precedence right now. I have slate rocks and simple regular sand (obviously not 'live' marine sand or crushed coral) and my tap water tests out at 7.4 so there's no reason for it to be well over 8. I'm gonna have my guy test it and see what he thinks. It's odd and bothersome since I don't plan on messing with the ph unless I can do something natural like peat I guess...

johnnyphoenix wrote:
Anwyas, I have a really nice 'professional' camera I'm using however it has about a million settings that are greek to me, and I'm having trouble with shutter speed. At the low light I need to take the pics the shutter speed becomes really slow and blurs the oscars movement. I'm trying to manually adjust it and apeture settings but so far this is the best I could get. Using a flash kind of ruins the lighting. so I need to try and make the shutter speed faster without losing too much light.
[/quote]

What sort of camera/lense combo are you using. Some DSLR cameras perform better in low light than others with different ISO settings (sensitivity) but the aperture of the lense is important too. For low light indoor photos without a flash I use a lense that stops down to f/1.8 and that gives me good results. Are you taking pictures up close or do you want a whole tank shot? Short of handing over some cash for a speedlight flash that operates off of the camera (put it on top of the tank to give the light but none of the glare on the glass), sometimes moving the tank light to the front if possible gives more light over the fish when they are swimming up to get their picture taken.

There's 'professional' cameras but then there is also professional photographers. A person using a lower end camera with a bit of knowhow can acheive better shots than someone with little knowledge and a hugely expensive camera so read up on yours with a book or info from the internet.

If you don't want to play around with these greek settings too much try putting the camera into shutter priority mode, usually indicated by a S or Tv or something similar in a dial on the camera body. Check the user manual on how to do it.In this mode you tell the camera what shutter speed you want then it adjusts the ISO and aperture accordingly.

Sorry I tended to carry on a bit there

aus-car wrote:


C'mon, your the expert, if you can't explain, now who can...?

www.firsttankguide.net/calculator.php

That's the site I use to calculate aquarium volume. Always use interior dimensions or subtract an inch for outside dimensions. Most 55's are 48x13x21.

Tank looks very good. I need to do some work on decorations in my tanks. I usually keep things pretty minimal. Don't like to look over and wonder where my fish are at lol.