# First ever shots of cichlid tank



## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Well I hinted at and mentioned moving to a new tank for my cichlids (3 female cons, 1 green terror, 1 kribensis, 7 tiger barbs, and stupid pleco, upside down catfish) but never managed to get pictures up. Partly because it has no background (today we are pretending it does, so shut it) but mostly because I had no lighting. Well thank you home depot, 30 bucks later I've got 80 watts of lighting on this bitch. Booya

Anyway, here's a full tank shot (and more are on the way, I'm just posting them individually, I have to sort my gallery out it's a mess and don't want to upload em just yet)

As always, click the picture for a bigger non distorted version


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

The convicts mostly occupy themselves with chasing each other out of the caves and flaring at each other. There's enough caves for everyone, but you always see 2 guys fighting for one cave, and 3 empty caves right next to em. I think they just like being dicks


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

For example...


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Con and GT hanging out, if anything the cons push the GT around. Oh how that will change some day


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

I'm always amazed at the colors on these guys, they were so god damn ugly when I first picked em up.


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

More of the convicts


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

My most colorful con only extends his fins when he's hauling ass around the tank trying to kill someone so he's impossible to focus on. Someday I'll get another pic like my avatar but not day. Here's a completely unrelated picture


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Somtimes the Green Terror has an identity crisis and I swear he shoals with the tiger barbs


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

All the fish are extremely personable and patient with me taking pictures. Most of the time they come up to the glass to see what the hell I'm doing.

By the way, I do realize my cons are female and I keep reffering to them as "hims" and "he", don't know why I do, I just do


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

And my wonderful tiger barbs, highly recomend these guys, they're awesome


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## WolfFish (Jun 30, 2004)

i think you should enter the 5th one for potm.


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## acestro (Jul 7, 2003)

Excellent set up, good luck with the GT. I bet you he'll become your favorite in time.


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## FootClanSkates (Apr 25, 2004)

Nice set up, I love it when people keep female cons together. they seem to be even more beautiful that way.


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## Judazzz (Jan 13, 2003)

Wow, that's a good-looking set-up and beautiful inhabitants!








Great pics too!


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

I fully aggree footclan, I originally did it just because I didn't want to deal with all the crap that goes with insane breeding convicts but I love their style of aggression too. I can watch them chase each other in and out of caves all day long but it's always pretty mellow and never seems very serious. I have yet to see a liplock in any of my fish and it's usually one gill flares and chases the other out of the cave, then the other comes back and does the same thing. Nobody is overly dominant and despite all sorts of aggressive displays, nobody has gotten into any serious altercations either. It was funny when the kribensis and con bumped heads though, since both those fish have different ways of showing aggression the krib kept darting forwards and back at the convict and the convict kept flaring it's gills but I don't think either one could figure out what the hell the other one was doing :roflmao:

Thanks for the comments everyone, ace you may just be right. I already really like the GTs personality and when the colors start showing more it's going to be an amazing fish.


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## FootClanSkates (Apr 25, 2004)

One other thing, I live the look of no baqckgrounds, mainly because out of my 32 tanks, I've got a background on 3 of them : )


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Eh I think for this tank I'm going to do a solid black background. It will accent the light colors in the rest of the tank and cover up some of the equipment. I had another AC200 as well but it's currently keeping my texas alive so it looks really busy through the glass with all that stuff on there.


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## SLANTED (Dec 7, 2003)

Love the setup. Looks like a fun tank.


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Played around with the shutter speeds, nice detail on these. I think they're getting ick. f*ck.

Nice colors though 

Despite being the smallest he's got one insane display going for him, looks like he's going to explode sometimes


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

The higher shutter speeds capture detail alot better than I thought, I hadn't realized they were moving around so much


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

I think this is my big guy that I finally got a shot of his colors


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## shutter13 (Jun 23, 2004)

i love that tank.. im sooo jelous...... but soon my caribes will go in a 75g and my 55 will be similar to yours (cons, GT and tiger barbs)

hows the ich doing?


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## yorkshire (Jul 27, 2004)

I absolutely love your tank








and once again your pics are amazing


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

York, you're too nice bro









Shutter - The ich appears to have had it's ass whooped already. Can't see any spots on my guys which I think the relatively warm 77 degrees contributed to a quick lifecycle and the salt levels are pretty high (18 tbsp in 40 gallons) so that sh*t is getting a proper dose of good old fashioned death.

Here's me working my camera techniques to pan and follow tiger barbs swimming along the front. The background has kind of a neat blurred effect while they remain in focus... sorta


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

The Green Terror becomes more and more like a tiger barb each day... it's not natural that boy


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Notice the colors finally coming in on that GT as well









Speaking of colors, this bastard still wont give me a good picture, but I'm getting closer


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Pics taken this morning if you're wondering why I said the ich was gone and it's still in my photos


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## yorkshire (Jul 27, 2004)

I want your camera















never got chance to photograph my tiger barbs, my rhom troughed them


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

I want my camera too, I've already asked to be buried with it should something unfortunate happen to me in the next few years. Partly because I love my camera so much, and partly because the girlfriend is a much more experienced photographer than I am and has been looking at my camera funny. If I knew she'd get it if I died I just wouldn't trust turning my back to her...

Pics are going to look much better when/if I get off my lazy ass to put a background on. I think the grey detracts from a few photos but eh what can you do?


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## yorkshire (Jul 27, 2004)

elTwitcho said:


> I want my camera too, I've already asked to be buried with it should something unfortunate happen to me in the next few years. Partly because I love my camera so much, and partly because the girlfriend is a much more experienced photographer than I am and has been looking at my camera funny. If I knew she'd get it if I died I just wouldn't trust turning my back to her...
> 
> Pics are going to look much better when/if I get off my lazy ass to put a background on. I think the grey detracts from a few photos but eh what can you do?












I'm in a similar situation, not 'cos the gf wants my camera, but because its my new toy and I'm always sat twiddling with it (the camera) rather than twiddling with her









Maybe i could twiddle with both at the same time :laugh:


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

York, let me just say that in that respect, a digital camera such as yours is much better than a digital SLR such as mine for the reason that it can do video









I think I'm gonna turn this into a general photodumping thread. As I come up with shots I think are worth posting of my cichlid tank I'm just gonna dump em in here. If people want to see em, they can come see em. If people don't, I won't be cluttering up the forum with a trillion "another, other thread for more of my newer than the other new shots cichlid shots" threads


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## yorkshire (Jul 27, 2004)

I think I'll have to try the video thing
















just thought i'd also let you know my gf is 8yrs younger than me


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

As long as you're not 16 amigo it's all cool









Got a good pic of my guys I think I'm turning into an avatar I'm downloading off my camera right now


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## ZMonte85 (Nov 23, 2003)

Very nice pictures!


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## shutter13 (Jun 23, 2004)

i dont advise playing with your camera and girlfriend at the same time...

you will end up like this... click


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## MR.FREEZ (Jan 26, 2004)

you got a great little community tank goin there, i like it alot

i am really jealous that you have fish that are my favorites too.

its gonna be cool to watch these guys grow, especally that GT, i love those guys


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## Death in #'s (Apr 29, 2003)

dam u so dam good at taking fish pics

i cant do it for crap
all i can do is take great pics of my dragons and nothing else


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Thanks guys, as always you're too kind. Freez I definately aggree it'll be nice watching these guys grow, especially considering it'll be alot easier to get quality shots of a fish when it's bigger than two inches big









Death - It's all in lighting, and thanks man.


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## Novato (Jan 25, 2004)

Very very nice!


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## Serygo (May 17, 2004)

Very nice!


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## Death in #'s (Apr 29, 2003)

elTwitcho said:


> Thanks guys, as always you're too kind. Freez I definately aggree it'll be nice watching these guys grow, especially considering it'll be alot easier to get quality shots of a fish when it's bigger than two inches big
> 
> 
> 
> ...










i know

i have a $500 lighting system on my sw tank and it sucks when taking pics with it on

but its great for corals


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## aaron07_20 (Apr 23, 2004)

Wow........you have a nice aquarium...I need to do something with my aquarium..Ive been ignoring it since so much is going on right now with school and crap...I have brown algae all over the back of my aquarium..and Im starting to see poop in my sand..Im getting rid of the sand....scrubbing the tank clean..buying all new stuff....I have the money..if only I had the time...(if you think I waste my life on this site, your wrong! Im usually only on here right b4 I go to bed and in the morning before I go to school..

Anyways..gr8 tank and nice cons..if I were you I would put one or two pink cons in there for even more color..but its looking gr8..


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## DiXoN (Jan 31, 2003)

those are some very nice shots.
i like your tank too.
dixon


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Thanks guys. What's really cool is my green terror is starting to show his colors, I've only had him for 3 weeks but you can see the difference in color already. Here's a pic when I first got him


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Here's a picture of him taken today, 3 weeks plus a day since getting him


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