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Aquatoon

Hi all,
X3NiTH said:
and some pod creature that you can see next to the Nerite for a sense of scale.
Click to expand...
Fantastic photos, the thing is an "Ostracod", basically a Daphnia like crustacean with a bivalve shell that it can clamp shut, some fish will eat them, some aren't so keen.

I think the "nematode" is a Planaria, you can see a gut etc that a nematode wouldn't have. It is travelling downwards and you can see the eyes (from the ventral side) at the head end. Have a look here:<"Planaria:Microscopy UK"> you can see some similar images, with the gut visible in a translucent body.

Plan07f.jpg

cheers Darrel
 
X3NiTH said:
The macros in this thread have been taken with a Nikon D800E with a Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 lens. Where supplementary lighting has been us it is an Nikon SB800 that is running in Remote mode and the camera flash set to Command Mode, flashgun is suspended above the water surface and is pointing down into the tank at the subject matter. Lens Aperture was set to about f/22 if I recall correctly.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't you get a huge reflection in the window if you flash also from the front?
 
Cods not Pods! Thanks Darrel, I racked my brains trying to work that one out, ran through Copepoda, Isopoda and even as far as looking at mussels due to the double shell, totally forgot about Ostracods. Are you sure the worm is Planaria though, I can clearly see the pharyngeal shape of a predatory nematode and that what at first appear to be intestines may actually be ovaries, looking at the tail there is a very faint anal line that is present on female nematodes. If I need it I've got an unopened pack of Fenbendazole powder (Panacur) that I bought to treat the original shrimp tank, I never used it because the bio load of worms got to a point that if I treated the tank the die off would have turned things toxic, I held off feeding for a few days and cut back the amount when reintroducing food, the worms seemed to have sorted their population out or that the shrimps ate them, so I never used the Panacur.

Gilles said:
Wouldn't you get a huge reflection in the window if you flash also from the front?
Click to expand...

When using the D800E with the flash in Commander Mode there is a small amount of light that will be picked up on the front aquarium glass if the lens is far enough away from the glass to capture the reflection of the pop up flash of the body (I can block the light being picked up by obstructing the flash enough for it to not show or I could put IR film on the flash and it won't show but still fire the strobe), when in really close the flash is out of the frame. The camera pop up flash set in Commander mode doesn't provide enough light to illuminate a subject, it's function is to provide enough IR light for the Strobes IR window to detect so it can fire off, (information can be sent from the camera to the strobe using this method). The actual method for the above Macros is that I'm not using the 800E I'm using an Nikon SB-800 Strobe in SU-4 mode for the fill light (different from Remote mode in that the strobe will fire if it detects any flash and it doesn't have to be Nikon) and taking the images for a change with a Nikon V1 with FT-1 adapter and Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D. I'm shooting in Manual mode and Manual Focusing (shifting body position). The V1 also has a SB-N7 strobe in the hot shoe with the flash pointing directly towards the ceiling away from the frame (only want the IR signal for the SB-800 to detect and fire).

I should say that one of the reasons I'm using the V1 is that the crop size of the sensor means I can multiply the focal length of the lens by 2.7 getting me real close to the subject in my field of view, however the V1 is only 10Mpx (sensor crop x Mpx gives effective 27Mpx cropped resolution). The D800E is 36Mpx Full Frame so I could get further in by cropping the image but if I intend to shoot video the V1 60mm combo gets me way closer.

Here's a few more pics from today, some side illuminated and some from above. They appear to like the Catappa Bark!

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3870/14953207439_c1f15c6c98_k.jpg

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3906/15136930501_818768bb67_k.jpg

Turning gravel into boulders!

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3850/14953352167_3d0908486b_k.jpg

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3860/14953246350_a57378f229_h.jpg

Here's the tank, you can just make out the tiny Ostracods on the Catappa Bark.

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5595/15136938931_7f16d7c8ee_k.jpg

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5554/14953361957_c40cf37d1c_k.jpg

🙂
 
dw1305 said:
Hi all, ~95% sure.

cheers Darrel
Click to expand...

Thanks Darrel, the 5% will keep the Panacur in the box for the moment! Whatever they are eating it's not the shrimp!

Edvet said:
Nice pics!
Are the black (gravel) stones treated or lacquered? they seem so shiny
Click to expand...

Thanks Edvet, yeah I think the stones are varnished, it's MARINA Aquarium Gravel it's all I had spare that had some weight to it to keep the mesh down that once held the sponge and Cladophora which is now convalescing in a bucket of water beneath an overgrown conglomerated layer of frog bit, phylanthus and salvinia. I'm probably going to scoop some of the gravel out and place some shrimp friendly substrate in there so they can scavenge out in the open rather than behind all that Anubia. I've not moved the bulk of the shrimps over yet and only 2 CBS, 1 CRS and 2 RCS (one is a berried green variant) occupy the tank for the moment, this is because there appears to be slim pickings in there for scavenging and if I don't feed enough Sera pellet the CBS gets too hungry and it chases the CRS (Geronimo) around the tank until it gets on it's back and tries to eat its brains out from through the shell (that's what it looks like), Geronimo is having none of it though! Weirdly they won't eat the Shirakura Special when I offer it in this tank, if I put it with the hoard they can devour 4 pieces overnight.

Trying to keep the over feeding to an absolute minimum so as not to cause a substrate population explosion and diatom outbreak. I wish you could get a shrimp feeder in glass that you can hang on the inside glass wall that has a feeding platform underneath a food introduction tube (a bit like a hanging cage bird seed feeder but with a bigger platform to fit many shrimp). I could do it in plastic but it would look a bit naff, glass would be best but I don't have the tools to do it, shame, for redoing my Lilly's I keep telling myself it's Pipe dreams every time I eye up a set of 15mm stainless benders! Lol.

🙂
 
I have jaw dropped after finally looked on your photos. Unfortunately I can only see them on PC, tapatalk on my phone and tablet shows only links to images.
May I ask you to insert images as BBCode, please? So I (and maybe others) can see your beautifl images via tapatalk. (You can find BBCode option on Flickr in Share menu).
 
Big clown said:
You can buy glass feeding trays and glass tubes to get food onto the tray
Click to expand...

Now imagine welding the two together and sticking a couple of suction cups on it! 🙂

Alexander Belchenko said:
I have jaw dropped after finally looked on your photos. Unfortunately I can only see them on PC, tapatalk on my phone and tablet shows only links to images.
May I ask you to insert images as BBCode, please? So I (and maybe others) can see your beautifl images via tapatalk. (You can find BBCode option on Flickr in Share menu).
Click to expand...

Here's the last pic as BBCode (I don't use Tapatalk so I was oblivious to that issue, until now thanks!). I'm not sure I like it that it doesn't zoom the image within the page when you click on it but takes you to its Flickr page instead, if it took you to the full res page great, but it doesn't. 🙁

14953361957_c40cf37d1c_k.jpg

🙂
 
Last edited:
Alexander Belchenko said:
Well, now I can see image in tapatalk. But the choice of the images inserting method is up to you.
Click to expand...

Okay BBCode from now on then, I suppose it's only two clicks further to get to the HiRes images but for some folks that might be two clicks too far.

tim said:
http://www.aquariumplantfood.co.uk/glassware/aquarium-glassware/gush-shrimp-pod/gush-shrimp-pod.html
Maybe you could use this not cheap but should work.
Just seen it's out of stock😳 Maybe drop john at apfuk a pm see when they'll be back.
Click to expand...

Yeah I've seen the gush pods, nice aren't they! Too big for my tank and too enclosed though, I rigged up a bottle a couple of months back to catch some shrimp and the food I used (Sera Pellet) leached into the water in the bottle overnight and turned it blue, I think there was 1 shrimp in it when I got there in the morning and it was trying to find the exit (all the others escaped, including the snails). Having something that doesn't hinder the flow of water across the feeding table to let wafting food smells permeate the tank is probably preferable, besides I'll miss out on some great feeding frenzy photo opportunities if there's too much glass in the way.

🙂
 
I dosed 300ml of Macro into my 28L tank yesterday when the Macro dosing pump timer triggered on continuous late afternoon which left it running for hours at 1ml a minute, I was trying to film the population explosion of Ostracods and needed the light at 100% so used the power adapter for the mini400 tile instead of bumping the light up on the controller (main tank light would be affected by this change) and I plugged it into the timer the Macro dosing pump uses and switched it over to manual from auto, but the tile just kept flashing on and off repeatedly (??? It's fine on the controller at 20% why not on its own power brick at 100%) so I gave up and put everything back the way it was but somehow the dosing pump ran outside its programme later on, I have no idea why it did this and I can't explain the light malfunction either, maybe plugging the tile in through the timer has knackered it. I only noticed the problem a couple of hours after a 50% water change when the tank water appeared to be looking yellow when it shouldn't and noticed the outlet dripping! I did another 50% waterchange just in case. For the moment none of the shrimp or fish appear to be affected by it, if anything the shrimp appear more active today. Tank pH dropped by 0.5pH as a result which I feared might have made things interesting today for balancing co2 injection as the water change was coupled with a savage trimming of my glosso requiring an injection fine tune, thankfully it only required a tiny increase in aeration to get the fish away from the surface at lights on today. Had lots of pearling from all the decapitated glosso stems, hopefully it gets the message and starts growing sideways, maybe the extra macro will help!
 
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