melev

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 ...

Here's a great video shot by Dustin Adamson.

I decided to try to take some pictures from above. I'm shooting with a Nikon D90, and used a 20mm extension tube with the 110mm Macro lens. Some shots were then taken with the 50mm with a polarizing filter, and I broke out the off shoe remote flash using an extending cable to light the subject from an angle, off to the side.

All images were shot in RAW-format in Manual mode. ISO varied depending on the amount of light the subject was under. Spectrum was 20,000K.

The ...

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 ...

Now that I'm nearly completely caught up from all the orders that were placed over the holidays, it's nice to feel a moment of relaxation. I totally expected a serious lull in business from Christmas to New Years, but it was quite the opposite. I went to spend time with family in Arizona, and the entire time I was away orders kept rolling in. I've spent all my time trying to get everything built, packed and shipped and stressed about it the entire time.

The reef is doing very well. ...