Long Overdue Update

So it's been a long time since I've done anything with this blog. In my defense things got a little busy... I got a job offer from a company in Chicago, had to find a place and move within a month, go to some training within that month, take down all the tanks and get everything ready for the move. All while still working and going to school haha. It's been about a year since I've actually posted anything. There have been some losses and some gains during the whole process. I lost the vast majority of frags I had in the frag tank from the move. My fish died from being kept from new water for to long. My banded brittle starfish almost kicked the bucket, but I got to him just in time. Here's the newish setups.

40 Gallon Breeder
This tank has mostly remained the same. Same corals, same livestock, everything. The few changes that were made include moving the hang on breeder box that was on the 20 gallon over to here as a refugium, building a small frag rack for the side of the tank and keeping all the surviving frags over here. The fish have been replaced and are all doing amazing. Yes, I know... People will say that a blue tang belongs in a bigger tank. Well there is plenty of room for him to swim around, plenty of places for him to hide and we've become very good buddies haha.

Corals Under LED's!!

For the longest time I've admired the color of corals under blue LED's. To me they look so much more eye catching than when they are under other actinic lighting. Capturing that color in photos has always been on the back of my mind, but every time I've tried it I failed miserably. Until yesterday.

After I finished with the water change and frag rack replacement yesterday, I figured I would grab the camera again and try to capture that amazing color again. Photo after photo just kept turning out too blue or purple. I took a look online and realized that I had forgot the most basic step in video and photography: White Balance. I felt so stupid afterwards since I had taken so many video and photography through high school and college. I set the camera's white balance to custom, took a picture of an empty spot on the frag rack, set the custom white balance to balance off of that picture and started shooting again and with a couple minor adjustments to some of the other settings, I had my photos. Now all I need is a macro lens... These are some of the results:

 

 

Just some photos.

Just some photos from the frag tank and display. Everything is going good so far.