Jahmic's 20L zoa garden
- Thread starter jahmic
- Start date
Thanks Gabe. 
I'm definitely happy to see coralline starting to grow on the rocks and the brown algae receding a bit. Getting a FTS was frustrating though...I have to underexpose the image then adjust the white balance and exposure so much in lightroom that the image loses a lot of sharpness from the heavy editing. I'm going to play around with the dimmers on the LEDs next time...but I actually had the whites cranked up fairly high and the image still came out REALLY blue.
I saw that. It's tempting me for sure...but I don't get paid til next Monday so I figured I'd wait and see if it's available when I actually have some cash on hand, lol. While we're on the subject...see any zoas you like in my thread to help bring down the cost?
I'm definitely happy to see coralline starting to grow on the rocks and the brown algae receding a bit. Getting a FTS was frustrating though...I have to underexpose the image then adjust the white balance and exposure so much in lightroom that the image loses a lot of sharpness from the heavy editing. I'm going to play around with the dimmers on the LEDs next time...but I actually had the whites cranked up fairly high and the image still came out REALLY blue.
Munch;217596 said:
Buy mine
Lol...no place to put it. I would if I could...but even if I put it in my storage closet with access from outside my house, I'm sure the bucket or at least the loc-line would freeze in the winter. I've been thinking about using a long rubbermaid storage bin with a bulkhead on it and placing it on a shelf under my sink. I could run my RO into it and just keep a pump and heater in there to be ready to mix salt. For now though, I'm just waiting to use up enough of my salinity salt that's left in the 225 gal bucket so I can dump it into the smaller 120 gal bucket...I think the larger bucket is close to 7 gallons and would be enough for 2 water changes.
Upgraded from the AC50 to the AC70 and made a little mini-fuge. Added a baffle in there to try to get the macro to tumble...and it seems to have worked out pretty well. I'm running a 10W submersible halogen bulb; hopefully I get some decent growth.
I cut back the light cycle in the display significantly to try to keep dinoflagellates from coming back; turns out that's what I had when I saw "algae" taking hold after blowing all that detritus around the tank. I'm not sure I'll have enough macro in this HOB to really help stabilize my pH at all...but I suppose it couldn't hurt.
The fuge has only been running since last night, so I'll update in a couple weeks once I know how it's doing. For now I may slowly increase the light cycle on the DT and see how things go. Right now the blues run from 2-8 and the whites are only on for an hour from 4-5.
I cut back the light cycle in the display significantly to try to keep dinoflagellates from coming back; turns out that's what I had when I saw "algae" taking hold after blowing all that detritus around the tank. I'm not sure I'll have enough macro in this HOB to really help stabilize my pH at all...but I suppose it couldn't hurt.
The fuge has only been running since last night, so I'll update in a couple weeks once I know how it's doing. For now I may slowly increase the light cycle on the DT and see how things go. Right now the blues run from 2-8 and the whites are only on for an hour from 4-5.
Haha, yea I've had some kinks to work out being that I tried to do this on the cheap. So far so good though, and I'm thinking the fuge should be one of the last changes to the system. I am looking to add an ATO just to cut out the tedium of manually topping off the tank daily...but other than that I think it's time to figure out where my frags are happy and start letting things just grow out.
3 months with no updates...pitiful.
I've lost a few frags in that time, but others are thriving and doing well. No surprise there I finally managed to get my camera dialed in to taking pics under blue lights; I was making some huge adjustments to the pics before that were causing a lot of graininess...but I should now be able to just take pics and make a few minor changes. That's the good news...the bad news? I just uploaded the pics into Lightroom and the program automatically adjusted my pics and screwed up the WB, lol. I'll work on getting that sorted...in the meantime, here's a series of completely unedited, uncropped pics that I took earlier today. Exposure is off on a few as I was just clicking away before the lights shut off...but you get the idea. Believe it or not...every one of these pics were taken under 100% royal blue lights.
Enjoy the photobomb
a little out of focus...a little cyano...I'll clean the tank before the next session and get the tripod out, lol
I've lost a few frags in that time, but others are thriving and doing well. No surprise there
I finally managed to get my camera dialed in to taking pics under blue lights; I was making some huge adjustments to the pics before that were causing a lot of graininess...but I should now be able to just take pics and make a few minor changes. That's the good news...the bad news? I just uploaded the pics into Lightroom and the program automatically adjusted my pics and screwed up the WB, lol. I'll work on getting that sorted...in the meantime, here's a series of completely unedited, uncropped pics that I took earlier today. Exposure is off on a few as I was just clicking away before the lights shut off...but you get the idea. Believe it or not...every one of these pics were taken under 100% royal blue lights.Enjoy the photobomb
a little out of focus...a little cyano...I'll clean the tank before the next session and get the tripod out, lol
So...again....some of the pics I wouldn't touch, but others could use some minor adjustments...and others are just throw-aways IMO. Just posting the set to show the progress in getting the camera setup properly. I'll probably go back and edit a few later, and will definitely shoot more to get some cleaner images. :wave:
I don't know that it was an update...I think it's just how the program is built and how RAW files are read. But then I was always taking pics of the other tank under halides and only ran into issues taking pics under these blue LEDs, so I could be wrong if this just recently happened for you. The explanation that I came across was this:
Lightroom processes the image according to the RAW data stored in the image file. When you make white-balance changes in camera, the settings DO NOT apply to the RAW image data; the WB setting on your camera ONLY effects the JPG preview/thumbnail, and the actual full-size JPEG file (if you choose to take one). So basically, when you import the RAW image into Lightroom, the first thing you see is the jpeg image preview with the corrected in-camera white balance...but then Lightroom processes the RAW image data, and you revert back to a very blue picture. It sucks, and there is no solution in Lightroom. You can do things like adjust each image after import, change your import settings, and even set your "in camera" default settings within Lightroom...but the huge limitation is that the sliders in Lightroom don't allow for enough adjustment of the image to get the correct color rendition back. Amazingly...the small processor in your camera actually has more capability than the programming built into Lightroom, lol.
My workaround has been to shoot in RAW+JPEG...which I always do anyway. You still get a high quality image, but you're a lot more limited in how easily and "cleanly" you can adjust the images on the PC. Photoshop did an OK job editing the JPEG...but clearly I could've used some help with adjusting the highlights and shadows independently in that last FTS.
Lightroom processes the image according to the RAW data stored in the image file. When you make white-balance changes in camera, the settings DO NOT apply to the RAW image data; the WB setting on your camera ONLY effects the JPG preview/thumbnail, and the actual full-size JPEG file (if you choose to take one). So basically, when you import the RAW image into Lightroom, the first thing you see is the jpeg image preview with the corrected in-camera white balance...but then Lightroom processes the RAW image data, and you revert back to a very blue picture. It sucks, and there is no solution in Lightroom. You can do things like adjust each image after import, change your import settings, and even set your "in camera" default settings within Lightroom...but the huge limitation is that the sliders in Lightroom don't allow for enough adjustment of the image to get the correct color rendition back. Amazingly...the small processor in your camera actually has more capability than the programming built into Lightroom, lol.
My workaround has been to shoot in RAW+JPEG...which I always do anyway. You still get a high quality image, but you're a lot more limited in how easily and "cleanly" you can adjust the images on the PC. Photoshop did an OK job editing the JPEG...but clearly I could've used some help with adjusting the highlights and shadows independently in that last FTS.
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