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Tomorrow, members of DFWMAS will be coming over to visit from 3pm to 6pm to learn about reef photography. I've been taking pictures of fish and livestock for over ten years, and get many compliments for those efforts. I also have a (cough) friend that says I don't know a thing about it, but she's in California so essentially I ignore her completely. (Jessy, I'm talking about you in case you missed it.)

When it comes to taking pictures, I have specific ...

It occurred to me that I'd not taking a picture of the refugium zone in a while. Feather caulerpa has been my staple for many years, and even though I run biopellets the macro algae seems to grow well. My display tank stays algae free, although I do see some micro algae taking hold in the anemone tank. I'll have to manually assault that situation before it gets out of hand.

A couple of pest anemones are in the refugium, but can be removed ...

For a long time now, I've followed discussion of extension tubes for macro photography. And a few years ago, I looked up what they cost and quickly dismissed them. However, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking "what if those are really what I need to get these stellar macro shots?"

Probably a year ago, I considered getting them again. I talked to someone that had them, and to someone else that had used some... one person said I could use the cheap plastic tubes (less than $10) ...

Here are a few further attempts to get some crazy close-up macro shots, using the extension tubes. It would be so nice to do this side by side with another person that has used them as well. Processing is a big challenge as well. I'm not going to go overboard doing this all the time, but I want to do so from time to time and hopefully improve this skill set.

Acropora sp.

Birdsnest branches.

Birdsnest ...

The left side of my reef suffers from sand movement. The ebb of the Vortech pump seems to pull the sand toward the pump, leaving a huge low spot at least a foot wide that coincidentally buries some corals on the left. It wasn't this bad at first, but something changed and it will move in a day instead of over a week's time. In this recent picture, you can see the big hole. Maybe I bumped up the flow rate, I'm not sure.

I took a couple of ...