New kids in town

[Delphinus]

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/P1040248.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/P1040258.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/P1040271.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/P1040275.jpg

[Jason McK]

WOW Congrate Tony Not too often I see you getting another fish all be it 2

J

[fishoholic]

WOW Congrate Tony Not too often I see you getting another fish all be it 2

J

Very true, hummmm I wonder if I've been a bad influence....:razz:

Just bugging you Tony :biggrin: Congrats on they new fish, they look great.

[Myka]

Very nice Tony!!!

[jimbo222]

what kind of tang is the first one.
i like...:biggrin:

[Delphinus]

Thanks - they're both fish I've always loved and found them both by surprise, I had sort of written off as "I'll never find these" (well, maybe not quite "never" but I rarely ever saw lavenders for sale, and I almost never saw crosshatches for sale at price that wasn't astronomical). As it is they are both tiny (2.5" for the lavender, same size as my "tiny" butterflies, and 3" for the crosshatch.) The LFS had another crosshatch about 1" larger but that was sold I think the day they came in but they keep fish in the store until they are confirmed eating. It was love at first sight for this little guy. For some reason the smaller one didn't sell at all so the second time I laid eyes on him I asked about him, they said they'd hold him until he was ready, in the end it was nearly a month that he was "psuedo QT'd" at the store.

I keep saying "him" but I have no idea if it's a he or a she. :) They don't get their adult coloration until they are larger, so it will be a surprise. I'm happy either way, I think both male crosshatches and female crosshatches are exquisitely pretty fish.

The lavender had a really bad hazing experience at first from my potter's angel. I was more worried about the sailfin but he couldn't care less that there's a new tang in the tank, so was sort of surprised that it was the potter's who gave him such trouble. But now he's healing up, his fins still have some healing up to go (nip marks). He's eating like crazy now, has discovered nori (right into the frenzy when I put it in), and is so fast he's near impossible to photograph (those two photos were the only 2 salvageable from the about 40ish I took last night!)

[parkinsn]

I saw your name on the tank with the trigger in it at the LFS. I was wondering if that was you or not. Nice find Tony.

[Delphinus]

what kind of tang is the first one.
i like...:biggrin:

Sorry, I should have posted that info. The tang is a lavender tang, Acanthurus nigrofuscus (max size around 8", and to me a really beautiful colour although some think they are drab - you kind of have to give them a chance but when they do colour up it's just "wow").

The trigger is a crosshatch trigger, Xanthicthys mento, and is a total juvenile at 3", the smallest I have ever seen of one of these.

[wickedfrags]

Great pick-up Tony. You will enjoy watching the disposition of this fish change as it become familiar with the tank, and then of course associating you with food.

Watch those fingers around the tank!

The trigger is a crosshatch trigger, Xanthicthys mento, and is a total juvenile at 3", the smallest I have ever seen of one of these.

[kien]

Glad to see the lavender is doing okay! And ya, that crosshatch is nice! Probably the only trigger that I would ever get if I ever got a trigger :-)

[Delphinus]

Great pick-up Tony. You will enjoy watching the disposition of this fish change as it become familiar with the tank, and then of course associating you with food.


Thanks!

Starting to see a bit of that already (introduced into the tank on Boxing Day, spent the first two days holed up in a buried crevasse - you could just see the eyes moving watching everything swim by). This is a very clever fish, you can just tell.

Were you ever able to keep shrimp with yours Dave?

I find that to feed my golden dwarf eel I have to maneuver the tongs very quickly down to the eel's feeding station - I feed him mostly krill (seems to be the eel's favourite) but the trigger has discovered he too quite likes krill so also wants that tasty morsel that's being so conveniently held still by tongs. :lol:

I'm just wondering with both of their dispositions to krill that I'm probably unable to ever keep cleaner shrimp and etc. in the same tank.

[Delphinus]

Glad to see the lavender is doing okay! And ya, that crosshatch is nice! Probably the only trigger that I would ever get if I ever got a trigger :-)

Yeah that first week was really dicey. I'm very relieved that they seem to have resolved their issues with each other.

So .. um .. shouldn't you be on a beach or something by now?? :lol: Dude, put down the iPhone and start on a Corona or a Pina Colada or something!

[wickedfrags]

I gave up on shrip for the 2+ years I had my pair. I tried 3 large shrimp once, and they lasted about 10 seconds (2 went to the triggers, one for the mystery wrasse). That being said my crosshatch pair were 5" and 7.5" in size.

It may be quite the challenge to get food to your DGM now as the crosshatch will be very aggressive towards any live food.

I would say add the frozen food to one side of the tank to attract the crosshatch, then with the krill already thawed, get it down there fast for the DGM. Becuase he should pop his head out at the smell of the other food this should work.

Gotta say - one nicely stocked tank! I never owned both species at the same time. While I loved my crosshatches while I had them, I would have to say I don't think I could live without the DGM now. Good luck and congrats.

Thanks!

Starting to see a bit of that already (introduced into the tank on Boxing Day, spent the first two days holed up in a buried crevasse - you could just see the eyes moving watching everything swim by). This is a very clever fish, you can just tell.

Were you ever able to keep shrimp with yours Dave?

I find that to feed my golden dwarf eel I have to maneuver the tongs very quickly down to the eel's feeding station - I feed him mostly krill (seems to be the eel's favourite) but the trigger has discovered he too quite likes krill so also wants that tasty morsel that's being so conveniently held still by tongs. :lol:

I'm just wondering with both of their dispositions to krill that I'm probably unable to ever keep cleaner shrimp and etc. in the same tank.

[Delphinus]

Oh sorry I'm not feeding live - just meant "holding still" as opposed to carried away on the currents. The trigger comes up to the tongs and takes polite little bites of the krill. I only use the tongs for the eel, he's associated them with food. The eel comes out for food only when he wants to - and does a pretty good job of communicating "Ok I'm not interested in eating right now" when he doesn't feel like eating (swims up to the food, sniffs it, then swims away. If he wants it, that food is gone within about 2 seconds) so if he hasn't taken the food within a minute I pretty much give up and try again the next day.

The bioload is definitely getting a bit on the heavy side these days! But things are holding their own for the moment.

Did you sell the triggers because they got too big?

[Zoaelite]

Wow Tony Beautiful fish and a great snag! Guess this is just more intensive to set the new tank up faster :lol:.

[JDigital]

I see you found the "Pictures" section of our great forum. :wink:

Great addition though Tony. Your Crosshatch is gorgeous. Didn't know they were Reef Safe though..

[Carmen]

Really nice pair you found there Tony! Very nice additions! Great personality on both I bet!:mrgreen:

[Lance]

Nice fish Tony. Good choices, I'm jealous. I wanted a Crosshatch but settled for a Blue Throat as I couldn't see taking out a second mortgage to buy one. You're very lucky to find a small affordable one. Love the Lavender too. They are very similar to my Chocolate Tang, at least with the juvenile colouration.

[Delphinus]

Hahaha I know. I still can't believe I pulled the trigger on the purchase (oooh punny, I didn't actually mean that to be punny, sorry!!) but, and it really must be the size that explains it, but he (she?) was on par with the going rate on .. say, a nicely coloured carpet anemone these days (and not even the most expensive carpets!!) That same LFS had a pair last year that I saw that was 3 times the price for the two of them. Although in a strange way I think that makes more sense that a "pair" of something is worth more than two times one individual.. :neutral:

Josh, it sort of depends on what your definition of reef safe is. In this genus (Xanthichthys) are the crosshatch (X. mento), blue jaw (X. auromarginatus), and sargassum (X. ringens). They are supposed to be planktivores, their mouths even turn upwards as opposed to downwards as they are interested in open water prey. Clams and corals *should* be safe, but I guess I'll find out if I'm wrong here.

That said, I'm not sure if I trust him (her?) around shrimp like cleaners or peppermints (which is why I was asking Dave about that earlier).

There are other triggers I've seen in reef tanks, huma-huma triggers, pinktails .. maybe nigers too come to think of it. Although maybe it's hit and miss and these others, I don't know. Or maybe you make a choice not to have the kind of invertebrate they go after (things like snails or whatever). But everything I've read seems to suggest the Xanthichthys triggers are OK in a reef.

My butterflies are doing way more damage to my reef anyhow (you can see in the pictures the gorgs are all closed up) and I have to make a decision about them. :cry: I don't want to, so I keep hoping I can maybe get my other tank ready soon enough, then I'll just move everything ELSE over and keep them behind and turn this tank into a FOWLR or a BOWLR (butterflies only with live rock :lol:). I'd love to try a pair of semilarvatus butterflies for example (oohhhh such preeeeety fish :lol:). Failing that though I might have to catch them and sell them to someone with a FOWLR.

[es355lucille]

Nice purchase Tony! Wow those are really nice. These are both something I have never seen before. The lavender looks to have some reds and blue colors in the one picture. The Crosshatch is amazing!

Brad

[Delphinus]

The lavenders are exquisite in a subtle sort of way. At first glance many think of them as drab but if you stop to think, they wouldn't call them lavender if there wasn't some purple in them. And the more you look at them, the more you see different colours flash out from them. They're definitely one of my favourites, and at 8" max size they are a nice small tang too (especially for Acanthurus sp.).

Here's an interesting article about them: http://www.hawaiisfishes.com/fish_of_month/past_fom/fom_05_03.htm

[fishoholic]

I find that to feed my golden dwarf eel I have to maneuver the tongs very quickly down to the eel's feeding station - I feed him mostly krill (seems to be the eel's favourite) but the trigger has discovered he too quite likes krill so also wants that tasty morsel that's being so conveniently held still by tongs. :lol:


I find the same thing with my eel and my pink tail trigger. Only my silly eel is always hungry (for silversides) and he will come way out from where ever he's hiding in order to try to grab the food from the tongs. Problem is my trigger is a lot faster then my eel and loves silversides too. So I came up with a solution......I take my large net and I hold the food on the tongs on the one side of the net while moving the net (in order to scare away the trigger, which doesn't always work, sometimes he can get under the net and a few times he actually swam into the net and almost seemed to try to eat through the net to get to the food :surprise: but anyways 9 times out of ten it keeps the trigger away) which allows my eel the time he needs to grab the food.

[lastlight]

Laurie that calls for a video I'd say...come on! :razz:

[fishoholic]

Laurie that calls for a video I'd say...come on! :razz:

I'll try to get my boyfriend to film it tonight, it happens that way everytime I feed my eel, so I'm sure my trigger and eel will put on a show. It's quite tricky trying to move a net with one hand and hold food on tongs with the other.

[EmilyB]

I find it unusual that you would not to be able to keep cleaner shrimp with that kind of trigger. I have 4 year old cleaner shrimp in with my Black Blotch trigger. I didn't put in those tiny ones however.

[Delphinus]

I was trying to get some photos which capture the lavender's colours. Long story short it's hopeless to try get a good photo which captures the details, he's just far too fast. I have deleted dozens upon dozens of photos of indistinguishable blurs.

So I thought I'd try baiting him with some nori and filming him instead. The camera I had in hand isn't great for detailed videos so I apologize in advance for the quality, but it's 100 times better than any of the stills I got. I think I'm going to give up on trying to get photos and instead focus on videos. I'll use a different camera next time and see how things turn out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajwKGbs5OA0

[christyf5]

LOL Tony that rabbitfish has double chins, maybe you should cut back on the feeding? :razz:

The lavender tang is pretty, still darker than I expected though. I wonder if they're only light colored when they're stressed? I've only ever seen the one at our LFS and it was really pale in color (you could see the coloration in the fins much better).

I'm really liking that angel (?) you have in there. It sails onto the top part of the screen at the beginning of the vid. Is that a lamarckii? Ooh a pair(I see another one about 1/4 way through the video)??

[Delphinus]

A slightly better video. My first attempt at editing, so please be kind!! :lol: The video is about 3 minutes long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77VzJheJIOc

[Lance]

Great video Tony! I loved it!
Glad to see the little X-Hatch looks no worse for wear. :biggrin: If I might ask, where did you get those tongs from and how long are they?

[Delphinus]

You know, I'm not sure anymore? One of the LFS's. I've seen them all over. They're about 24" long and came with plant pruning attachments as well, but I only use the gripper attachment. The tank is 30" deep and the stand is 30" so the top of the tank is at eye level so even standing on a stepladder I can barely reach the bottom without extending my reach somehow.

I'll see if I can find a link for them. :)

[Delphinus]

This is them: http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/store_pages/product-info.php?product_ID=em-ztong24

[Lance]

Oh yeah. I've seen those before. It looked different in the vid for some reason. Thanks.

[lastlight]

I'll try to get my boyfriend to film it tonight, it happens that way everytime I feed my eel

Can't believe this one slipped under the radar. Apparently there IS much work to be done here.

Tony loved the video man. I too was loving another look at those sweet, sweet angels. Sure is lots to watch in there. I'm envious as balls.

[christyf5]

Great vid Tony, the tank looks awesome. And of course the stars of the show are looking spectacular. That lavender is a zippy little dude isn't he? :wink:

Oh and good choice of music, "wind beneath my wings" is so overdone :razz:

[blueyota]

Great vid ...That crosshatch is flippin sweet :mrgreen:

[es355lucille]

Great Video Tony!! Nice first go!! I really enjoyed that, there is nothing like watching fish and listening to good music. Brad

A slightly better video. My first attempt at editing, so please be kind!! :lol: The video is about 3 minutes long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77VzJheJIOc

[lastlight]

Oh damn I didn't have my sound on at the time. I've loved this track ever since I discovered the Apartment in a Telus (burn Telus BURN) ad. Score!

Great treadmillin' track fyi.

[Delphinus]

I have been trying to capture the lavender in a good photo. He has such exquisite features but so subtle so photos just don't capture them. Plus he's very very fast, for whatever reason, photos end up so dark for me, I have to have the aperture wide open which gets me a razor thin depth of field, so getting focus nailed in is a challenge.

Here are the keeper results of my last few attempts.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0001-1.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0011.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0021.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0001.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0008.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0020-1.jpg

Thanks for looking. Also, any tips for photographing fish gleefully accepted.

[christyf5]

Tony! He's gorgeous!!! Wow, now I'm totally bummed I missed out on mine :neutral:

On the flip side I ordered a female bellus today, don't know why the males arent' available though :confused:

Now I'm totally going to be on the hunt for a lavender tang. Wow!! :cool:

As for photog tips, have an itchy trigger finger for these guys, I think my average is about 1 in 50 or 1 in 75 of a decent tang photo

[Delphinus]

Thanks. Yeah, that's about the discard rate for me as well. Guess that's par for the course then .. I was just playing around with the camera settings and found that I was shooting in JPEG instead of raw, so I changed that and will see how things change from here on. The thing that annoys me is that I have the ISO equivalency set to 1600 which is enormous and explains the graininess but the shots are way too unusably dark if I don't have it that way. Maybe it's just a limitation of how much light the lens lets in???

[Delphinus]

I think the angels might be . er .. what's the word. Dichromatic? Dimorphic? Serial .. no .. um .. sexual sequential hermaphrodite (ok I looked that last one up on wiki). Eventually the female might turn into a male so you could always start there and see where it goes?

[Lance]

Tony, that Tang is a beauty! My Chocolate Mimic Tang is pretty but would be Miss-Runner-Up to your Lavender. How are the new kids doing? Is everybody playing nice?

[christyf5]

Thanks for the heads up Tony, just checking out a couple of threads on RC, looks like 2 females might be the way to go (dear god I just about typed 2 femails! I spend too much time on this board :razz:)

[Delphinus]

It was a rough go for the first 3 days but then it's settled down. The problem was with the potter's angel and the lavender. 4 weeks later and while they are not buddies per se they do swim together most of the time. There is the occasional bumping of elbows but it's 50/50 whom chases whom and no more real contact so I think it's OK now.

Tony, that Tang is a beauty! My Chocolate Mimic Tang is pretty but would be Miss-Runner-Up to your Lavender. How are the new kids doing? Is everybody playing nice?

[fishoholic]

Cool pic.'s you're making me miss my old lavender. It's nice to hear people think it's pretty, I always thought mine was too but many people I know said she was the ugliest fish I owned :neutral:

Mine died while I was Qting it for ich (my other tangs were picking on her so I was going to rehome her after the ich was gone) unfortunately she wasn't eating very well in the Qt tank and she died the day her Qt was over and she was about to go to her new home :sad:

[kien]

ooh, pretty! I didn't realize they had freckles. I like fish with freckles :-)

I noticed that you were shooting at 1/60s. Ya, for fast swimming fish you need to shoot a bit faster (shutter). This means a larger aperture or higher ISO (usually both!). If you are maxed out on all 3 settings then there isn't much you can do other than upgrading equipment (lens or body). For the faster fish I gave up on trying to chase them with the camera. Instead, plant yourself in one spot and wait for the fish to swim by. Often when you're chasing them you end up tilting the lens and shooting at an angle which will introduce distortion. A tripod isn't going to help with the fast swimming fish because you really need a fast shutter and at that high a shutter speed camera shake from your hands won't be registered.

My last suggestion is to ask a friend (perhaps one that works with you), to drop by with some expensive equipment and photograph your entire tank for you. :biggrin:

[lastlight]

Wow that last shot especially shows how beautiful the fish really is. Your videos didn't do the colors and details justice...wowzers =)

[Argentiner]

Great vid Tony. Nice shot of the freckles in the pics too. I totally loved the lavender tang when i was diving in hawaii. They are REALLY purple in the wild. All those gorgs look great too.

[Delphinus]

Thanks Kien, I may take you up on that. I did try several different ways of trying to photograph him and I was hoping to use 1/125s shutter speeds but none of the details showed up (at best) or worse it was just way too underexposed to be of any use. The camera is a D70s and the lens is a 60mm Nikkor Micro lens, both of which I thought had pretty good reviews? At least in their day. An equipment upgrade is a total non option financially. :( I could see maybe to a faster lens though (not sure if I'm using the term right .. "faster" as in "it lets in more light therefore you can use faster shutter speeds" and not "faster AF" or whatever), if there was a good option like that, I started to do some reading up on options but .. well, no sense in torturing myself either.

Maybe the trick is not to use a macro lens for fast swimming fish..

Frustrating!

@Brett - yeah, and the irony is I had tried the videos because the photos weren't working out. Although I liked doing the video it was sorta fun so might try a few more down the road.

@Scott - I agree, these fish just glowed when I saw them there. I was like .. WHAT is that fish? Nobody else seemed to think much of them when I was asking around but the way they flashed purples and reds .. I had to know what they were!! :lol: I scoured the books and online and finally stumbled upon this site and that cinched the ID for me: http://www.hawaiisfishes.com/fish_of_month/past_fom/fom_05_03.htm

[kien]

Thanks Kien, I may take you up on that. I did try several different ways of trying to photograph him and I was hoping to use 1/125s shutter speeds but none of the details showed up (at best) or worse it was just way too underexposed to be of any use. The camera is a D70s and the lens is a 60mm Nikkor Micro lens, both of which I thought had pretty good reviews? At least in their day. An equipment upgrade is a total non option financially. :( I could see maybe to a faster lens though (not sure if I'm using the term right .. "faster" as in "it lets in more light therefore you can use faster shutter speeds" and not "faster AF" or whatever), if there was a good option like that, I started to do some reading up on options but .. well, no sense in torturing myself either.

Maybe the trick is not to use a macro lens for fast swimming fish..



Ya, I noticed in the EXIF that you were using the 60mm macro. That is a great lens.. for taking macros! Hehe. Generally speaking macro lenses are very slow to focus and are not great choices for action shots. They were not built to focus quickly because flowers and still life typically doesn't move quickly :-) Although, having said that, I typically shoot everything with my 100mm macro lens, but I can get away with that because my camera goes up to ISO 6400:surprise:

Your terminology is correct, a "faster" lens would help, but also one that could focus faster would help too. It takes a lot of practice but panning shots help with fast moving subjects also. I suck at panning shots though. I usually just plant myself in a spot that I know the fish like to swim by often and wait for them to swim into or very close to the field of view.

If you are shooting at high ISOs often i would recommend sticking with RAW and then post processing the holy heck out of it. You'll be able to pull a lot more noise out of RAW files than processed files like jpgs. Also, if you shoot raw you can usually crank the exposure in post processing. What do you use to process/edit your photos anyway?

I just noticed that in at least one of your photos you were shooting at f/5 ? You should be able to bump that to the wide open aperture f/2.8 and gain more than twice the shutter speed. f/2.8 will be a very thin depth of field but if you shoot the tang on his side you should be able to get the whole tang into focus. Even if you don't, the other side will be out of focus but it doesn't matter because you can't see the other side, hehe. Could also try standing back just a little bit.

Finally (are you sick of me yet?? hehe), try shooting with an exposure compensation bumped down a little bit. The tang is dark, so if you have spot metering on, or even evaluative, the camera in Aperture priority mode could be trying to compensate for his dark tone, so it will try to bring in more light to even him out (which isn't really want you want it to do since he is supposed to be dark) with a slower shutter speed (needlessly). You ca also solve this by just shooting in manual or shutter priority mode to hold the shutter speed.

[Delphinus]

I don't even bother with AF. It's not the speed of focusing it's just there's too much to focus on and 9 times out of 10 it grabs the wrong subject (like, say, a spot of salt creep on the glass that I *thought* I had cleaned up 5 minutes prior, but turns out I didn't :neutral:)

Wow, ISO 6400. :eek:

Didn't notice at first the stuff you edited in, so I'll edit in my responses. :p

The f/5 was my attempt to bump up the aperture in an attempt to widen the DOF. The wide open aperture gives a razor thin DOF which means the focus has to be 100.0% perfect not just 99.9% and .. well the odds of that are nil.

I am already standing back 2 or 3 feet, otherwise I would just be posting pictures of their eyes.

And Picasa is what I'm using. Because it's free. Which is about my budget. :lol: I don't really like it very much. I had a package on my old PC but the motherboard is fried so I can't get at it. Forget what it was offhand but it was like a mini-photoshop. I should remember what it was because although it wasn't free it wasn't expensive either, so I could maybe just buy it again or something.

Thanks for the tips. Lots-o-stuff to learn here..

[kien]

I don't even bother with AF. It's not the speed of focusing it's just there's too much to focus on and 9 times out of 10 it grabs the wrong subject (like, say, a spot of salt creep on the glass that I *thought* I had cleaned up 5 minutes prior, but turns out I didn't :neutral:)



Do you use all of your focus points ?? If so, try using just the centre focus point :-)

K.

edit: I have some spare cycles this weekend, just let me know. I can come over and we can play with your gear.. er.. I mean, perform important experiments with your (and maybe my) equipment.. er.. I mean.. oh nevermind! You know what I mean.

[Delphinus]

That would be awesome!! I've never tried playing around with different focal points. I'll have to see what I can do about that then.

I thought I might try taking some photos with one of the regular (ie non macro) lenses and see how it goes but I think the minimum focus distance is kinda huge in comparison... Seems kind of defeating if you have to stand 6 feet back? Also it's not even in option to stand that far back where I have the tank. :(

[christyf5]

But if you stand back you get the photo in focus and you can then crop it afterwards? Thats what I do anyways. Either that or take photos at night with the room lights off, the fish don't seem to be as bothered with me hovering hear the glass.

[Delphinus]

Just trying out some of your tips, thanks guys. Although that said, only 2 made it past the cull tonight, most of them I missed the focus. And wouldn't you know it the one good tang shot was right when he swam in front of the dirtiest patch of glass. :redface: But it's the only shot I've managed so far out of easily one hundred where you can see the little yellow pencil line markings.

Also the trigger seems oversaturated somehow, he's not quite THAT blue. I should mention he's only blue like this when he's anticipating food; otherwise he's green. I don't know if it's a mood thing changing the colour or just a trick of the way the light hits him (ie., maybe because he's out in front he looks blue but if further back in the tank the angle is different and thus green?).

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0016.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0023.jpg

[christyf5]

Those pics are great Tony! That trigger looks awesome!

[Delphinus]

Just messing around with a camera tonight, there were a couple keepers.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/IMG_0026.jpg

Check out the girth of the lavender .. I think he approves of the autofeeder.
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/IMG_0027.jpg

That's the best shot I have of him tonight. He's a fast little bugger and impossible to photograph. You can tell they are from the surf zone. Also as soon as he realized I had a camera he made himself scarce. As soon as I put it away he was out again and up at the glass, taunting me. "Hey, what's up? Aren't I pretty? You need a photo of me to show other people how pretty I am." I'm pretty sure it was the camera actually that had him spooked. People he's more or less associated with food so is generally pretty friendly otherwise.

I'm amazed at how much this guy can change colours. At times he (she?) can be as blue as a tropical cloudless sky.. Ok, you can't see it HERE in this particular photo, just use your imagination OK? Sheesh.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/IMG_0028.jpg

Doesn't really fit in the theme of this thread but too lazy to post it somewhere else..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/IMG_0032.jpg

And, hmm ok I guess I did manage a second sorta-passable shot of the lavender. I love how his caudal fin is becoming swallow-tail-ish-esque..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/IMG_0034.jpg

Thanks for looking..

[kien]

wow, those guys are nice! If only I wasn't already overstocked.. :redface: :lol:

[globaldesigns]

That would be awesome!! I've never tried playing around with different focal points. I'll have to see what I can do about that then.

I thought I might try taking some photos with one of the regular (ie non macro) lenses and see how it goes but I think the minimum focus distance is kinda huge in comparison... Seems kind of defeating if you have to stand 6 feet back? Also it's not even in option to stand that far back where I have the tank. :(

Hey I would love to come over to, I can bring my Canon 30D over, with all my other gear. We can probably get some neat pic's

[Delphinus]

Anytime! Would be a great way to share tips and stuff.

Some more pics, just playin' around tonight..

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0009.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0007.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0006.jpg

And, ok, this guy isn't one of the new kids but he posed so nicely I had to oblige and take a picture. :) Still looking for a buddy for him ..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/DSC_0003.jpg

[Lance]

Tony, the pics are better every time. Nice work!