58g Planted w/overflow and sump

Thanks for the review and encouragement, it's helped already! I would like to take better pictures but with my addictive personality I dare not delve into the details too much or I will entrench myself in it and I have enough hobbies. :D

Yes, color usually strikes me first when I look at pictures and it is lacking in most of these pictures. I like the last picture the most by far! Didn't realize how blah the other pics were. lol Gonna go find my backup battery now.....
 
These came out too purple overall IMO. Over saturated might be the word I am looking for? But the Nurii looks outstanding! Affinis looks redder than real life, greens look good but the black is far too blue.

7pm - Aperture priority - with an additional vivid color setting and again something turned down to make it not so bright. Looking at the photo properties it looks like it is called exposure bias. Used the tripod this time too cause I am too shaky for the lower light.

IMG_3276.JPG IMG_3277.JPG IMG_3279.JPG IMG_3280.JPG IMG_3281.JPG
 
I assume it looks different in person but I've noticed similar, less pronounced red & blue looks to LED lit tanks. Other than the photo issues, your tank looks great! Makes me want to hunt for my nurii, it was a very tiny baby.
 
Look for light balance settings, and try taking the same picture - easier if you're using the tripod - with different settings.

If it's set to auto, the camera might not detect everything correctly due to the non-linear spectrum of the LED lights, and compensate incorrectly.

There should be options for different settings, like 3000k and 6700k and nighttime, and incandescent and whatever... depending on your camera.

see what looks best at each stage of the light settings, and use those settings when taking pictures. Personal preference is what looks the most natural... but your pictures.

Exposure bias will under or over expose (make the picture lighter or darker) by a stop or two depending on how you have it set, so simply just lighter or darker

Vivid color setting sounds like a euphemism for over saturated... basically I expect color values are just being turned up to 11, if something is low already, it won't get as high as the other colors.


all this is part of post processing, as it's an automatic camera, or mostly, it's being done in the camera. You should be able to take a picture as neutral as possible (shutter or aperture priority won't affect the color of the picture, but more depth of field, motion blur and such) and process in an external program (look for something like 'curves', I think you can find a few tutorials on the Gimp website)

but, yes, I would say over saturated... just not overly so... I do still like them very much, I'm more interested in the specific plants though, and not the overall layout, as I know I could never handle anything like that :)
 
fishorama said:
I assume it looks different in person but I've noticed similar, less pronounced red & blue looks to LED lit tanks. Other than the photo issues, your tank looks great! Makes me want to hunt for my nurii, it was a very tiny baby.
Click to expand...
The color rendition from an LED fixture will depend on the overall spectrum of the light fixture itself. It may not be flat (or even close to) and will confuse your camera's settings when taking pictures.

Compare the little spectrum graphs from a T5 light bulb and an LED fixture, then look at pictures of both from the same camera with the same settings.. you'll likely notice a difference... 95% of the time, the difference will be very similar to the spectrum graph.
 
A lot to take in! Thank you very much for the tips and explanations! I'll continue to mess around in my spare time.

These Amanos are the most amazing breeders I've ever seen. Another female released her babies sometime in the past 3 hours and the males are doing their swarm dance already! I have 2 males and 7 females BTW. It was very interesting to see 2 females next to each other with one having brand new bright green eggs and the other about to drop her brown eyeball visible eggs, wish I had the camera at the time! Although unlikely I could have gotten a good shot with where the were located.
 
I seldom see the amanos doing much in my tank, except for the past couple of weeks they have been going not swimming around.

Not paid attention to any having eggs though, maybe I should look a little closer, but the tank is pretty messy and packed with plants.
 
SORRY for the long posts...always! lol Remember I use this thread as a journal/reference for myself as well so I like to put as much details as possible. Highlights listed for your convenience!

We've reached a new life stage for this tank. Different algae is showing up and certain plants are starting to lose leaves.

The new algae (in addition to the brown glass algae and BBA) is on the glass, hard to remove like GSA but it doesn't form in round spots like GSA and it a brown/red/almost purple color. No clue what it is, so that gives me 2 types of algae I can't identify. But so far the algae is still minimal. (Need I remind everyone what kind of algae issues I am used to in my planted tanks??) I can foresee this new algae to be a pain though.

The Balansae and Hudoroi leaves are starting to die off a bit, the balansae more than a bit actually. Since the melt stopped this is the very first die off so it's hard to complain. My thought is maybe with the super mulm filled substrate the plants starting growing like "we have an unlimited supply of nutrients" and now they have used up some of that and are getting a bit hungry. My plan is to do nothing different, let them adjust.

So with algae on some old leaves and the dying of other leaves I had to do some trimming today. I try to keep the tank tidy and clean of decaying matter. Trimmed mostly balansae, then some affinis and hudoroi, a couple buce leaves, the tip of one usteriana and zero nurii. The old affinis leaves are the biggest BBA culprits.

I also decided to check out the sump, which I haven't done in like 5 weeks. OMG dirty, dirty, DIRTY! It looked as though it was hooked up to a pond for crying out loud. So that was an big extra job. After I removed all the media for cleaning I was left with 6ins of gross water and being the tank is on the floor it is so hard to siphon out the water. I decided to fill the sump with tap water just so I could get a siphon going. I need to think about a better way to flush the sump. And I want a pre-filter that I can easily rinse weekly.

At the end of this over-haul water change I am almost done getting the sump all back together and I see this weird red swirling stuff clinging to the overflow box. Think of a good fog that lays real low to the ground but this was a vertical wall and it was RED. I got some quick poor pictures but I was more concerned with getting it out of the tank. At first I thought maybe I hit a clay chunk while vacuuming but then I realized I didn't add clay to this tank! lol No idea what it was...

  • New hard to remove algae on the glass
  • Losing a few leaves, balansae mostly
  • Still BBA on old leaves, affinis mostly
  • Did a big trim and cleaned out the filthy sump
  • Weird red swirly stuff appeared during WC
  • Snail population is exploding (and I don't really feed this tank at all)
  • Added 2 females and 2 males RCS/Sakura from 29g temporarily
  • Need a pre-filter and a better way to flush the sump
  • I have upped my metricide dosing to 3ml from 2.25ml
  • Still dosing ferts lightly and rarely missing a day (which is amazing for me!)

Pictures to follow, tank is a bit cloudier then usual after a WC due to the sump cleaning.
 
Oh dear, Jen...I need to think on all your issues. Not that I know what to do with a sump & more! I hope it's just a "blip" in tank & you'll figure it out.
 
Don't you worry your little head about my issue, I'm not even too worried about them. lol ;) Once the holiday season is over I will enjoy thinking about the technical aspects again. Right now I just want to look at the purdy plants. Might get some fish for Christmas!
 
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