Planted Community Pictures

Corleone

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Borrowed a camera from a relative since I don't have a decent one myself, and tried to get some shots of my tank.


Practice pictures
A few that actually came out a bit ok from the dozens I deleted.

Not my community, just one of my first pictures. P. clarkii crayfish still in quarantine.
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Early effort in getting settings finagled, gold angelfish.
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Cookies to whoever can locate and identify the second fish in the picture - there is one, trust me. The image quality is that bad.

Too dark.
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Smaller keyhole cichlid looking displeased at all the activity around the tank, and my bristlenose is visible on the glass behind her. I just got done spooking everything else by accidentally leaving the flash on.

Fixed the darkness, now the blurryness is more evident.
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Pearl gourami with assorted small fish. My favorite ramshorn snail is on the bogwood in the background. White shell with a bright red body. His shell has a tiny hole through the center of the spiral like a donut.

And now for sorta good pictures!

Full tank shot, also the only pic my black skirt tetras stuck around for.
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I've set it up into three "zones." The left third of the tank is dominated by the large pennywort plant, and some other leafy plants. Below them there's a small rock cave, some driftwood and low-light plants. The gouramis, synos, and tetras spend most of their time here. The center is mostly open space with a lot of crypts, anubias, and riverstones in the bottom, usually where my corys hang out - there's straight valis, acora, and wisteria along the back, so it looks almost as full as the left, but is really quite sparse. The right has a small rockpile that my keyholes usually inhabit, a slate cave that my bristlenose lives in, and a big chunk of driftwood set on top of the rocks. Tall stem plants, valis and acora here, but not so many big leaves. The border between the crypt field and rockpile is sort of a mini-zone itself, with the fern plants (seen well in the feeding shot below) and wisteria filling out moreso than the rest of the middle.


Better results here - both angelfish together with my sailfin molly in the background.
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Down at the bottom, you can see a checkered barb. Hiding in the triangular orange rock, you can just see the tip of one of my petricolas' dorsal fin. Around the bright green plants here, the fix I figured out for the darkness taking pictures at the other end of the tank make for glare off the leaves.

Finally got things roughly right with this one. The problem is that the camera's macro mode is useless, I get better pictures without it.
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Male peal gourami, angelfish, and keyhole cichlids eating. The big keyhole usually shows this color pattern around feeding time. Assorted other fish milling about are my molly, pearl danios, peppered corys, and checkered barbs. You can see the tail of my blue panchax on the left and one of my two praecox rainbowfish behind the second pearl gourami.


Now that I think I have things worked out, I'm going to try to get some better shots in the future.



Edit: Inserting some stats:

55 gallon 4' tank (48x15x18)
Edit: 11/20 - since somebody decided apparently a 4 foot tank is only 45 gallons and has bugged me in other threads, added dimensions
Running since: January 2008
Filtration: Fluval 305 plus two Aquaclear HOBs (around 300 and 200 gph, respecitvely - the smaller one is my "bacteria farm"), battery backup (has lasted 5 hours on a few occasions, I'm confident it can go at least 24)
Lighting: fluorescent, ~1.6 wpg.
substrate: polished pea gravel scattered with shells of former snail inhabitants

Fish list:
2 angelfish
2 pearl gouramis (m/f)
2 keyhole cichlids (m/f I think)
3 red tuxedo variatus platys (m/f/f)
1 sailfin creamcicle molly (m) (a rescue from a crashed tank, but I've fallen in love with the guy)
6 black skirt tetras
5 peppered corydoras, 1 is the long finned variety
6 pearl danios
2 checkered barbs
2 praecox rainbowfish (refugees from another tank, I've never managed to find any more to fill my shoal)
1 bristlenose catfish
2 synodontis petricola (new addition, one was rescued from an unfiltered bowl but has made a complete recovery from ich and finrot)
1 blue panchax

Invertebrates:
~4 adult sized apple snails, 1 recently discovered baby
2 olive nerite snails
~10 good sized ramshorn snails, many smaller ones
~infinity malaysian trumpet snails

Plant list:
Pennywort
Narrow leaf Temple plants
Spiral valis
Jungle valis
Some unidentified grasslikes plants
Unidentified fernlike plant
dwarf and standard onion plants
Bananna plant (I think it's still there anyway, my keyholes like to pick it up and move it around the tank)
Red ludwigia
Hornwort
Lots of miscellaneous bulk stemmed plants
Lots and lots of crypts - bought what I thought was one nice beautiful big one, took it out of the pot and turned out to be 30 or 40 small ones
Small patches of java moss that grew off of stray pieces of gravel I picked up with plants.
Unidentified plant with white edges on the leaves (possibly a bog plant, chucked out as of 10/31)
Wisteria
November 08 added:
Argentine sword
Purple leafed "waffle" plant
Anubias

Other decor:
Bogwood, slate, river stones, polished petoskey stones, fake log cave, decorative garden stones, weird triangular red rock with a hole through the center
 
wow your tank is stunning! ive never been able to keep a planted comunity i wish i could.
some brilliant ideas in aquascaping i especialy like the 3 zones you have sectioned the tank into, makes it alot more interesting to watch and i love the choice of tankmates :good:
 
Was bad today, after dropping so much on the second petricola, I said no more this month, but I added some acora and wisteria today - couldn't pass up such a big bunch of wisteria for only $1.49.
 
Yes, I know, I'm posting a lot. I'm finally getting this to work and I'm a bit excited. :hyper:

Beautiful shot! I was starting to think the camera just couldn't do this well. Took a lot of tries, but here's a great shot of my molly.
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Best small fish group shot I've gotten. Black skirt tetras, praecox rianbow, pearl danios, and a platy, I think it was the male.
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Closeup of apple snail and a red ramshorn (recent discovery - I have ones with red bodies, but this is the first I've seen with a red shell in the tank)
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Nerite snail on glass.
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Baby apple snail with red stripes. I must have missed a clutch of eggs, though this seems to have been the only baby to have survived.
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hey those are looking great, i love that molly!
does your camera not ahve auto focus? if not that must be a pain! keep up with the photos you have a beautiful tank
 
It does have autofocus, but for close in shots or ones on moving targets, I entirely have to turn it off, since it adds about a 1/2 to 3/4 second delay to pictures. It doesn't have the pre-focus feature a lot of cameras do, I have to commit to taking a picture for autofucus to kick in at all. If I try to get a picture of my danios, by the time it snaps, the danios are gone and I get a blurry shot of a valis leaf and a rainbwofish. Those little guys are photo hogs - they seem to dart into every picture I have, usually making a blurry blob in front of my target.
 
Nice tankand fish Corleone, Im liking the commentary also. :good:
Keep trying with the camera, the small digi cams can give some nice shots. My digi cam was good till I droped it in the sink :crazy:
 
Another round. I think I have it figured out now, and it really shows in this set.



Male keyhole, calming down from territory markings after feeding
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Female keyhole
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Both angelfish together and not blurry
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Edit: Hit post too soon

Bristlenose. This was an easy shot to get since he sat still, but he doesn't sit in the open very often.
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Pregnant female platys
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Part of my black skirt shoal
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The fat one near the middle has been known to swallow shirmp pellets whole. He's currently running around the tank with a huge bundle of bloodworms in his mouth. I've been almost perpetually worried that he's sick, but considering his eating habits, I think (and hope) he's just a tubby little pig.

Rare shot - the two synos are usually either in their caves or racing around for food, never managed to get one to stay still enough to take a picture. This was the best out of seven shots before he was done eating and went back to his hole.
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Also, betta (5 gallon tank, girlfriend dropped it off a few days ago for me to take care of)
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Two days in, already has a bubble nest up. He spent the first couple days hiding and wouldn't eat, I had been worried about him, but guess not.
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Hey, do your snails like to eat the plants ? I Had golden ap snails and they eat into alot of my plants so I passed them onto my brother whom had no plants in his biorb.
 
The apple and ramshorn snails will eat unhealthy plants, but leave healthy ones alone. There is more than one species of apple snail, and at least one of them is a plant killer.

While I'm bumped, here's a few updates:

Patience finally paid off - Petricola came out and posed for this one.
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Bristlenose hanging on the glass
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And eating, very nice view of his fins here
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Random group feeding shots
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