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Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)

Hi,

John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.

I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.

With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.

I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.

If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.

I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.

I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.

Thank you
Darragh Sherwin

Today In The Fishroom~5/22/11 A. hogaboomorum

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22 May 2011 13:13 #1 by Aquamojo (Mo Devlin)
Some recent photos of the trio of F0 Amphilophus hogaboomorum. I have three of these beautiful fish in a 180 gallon tank. The breeding pair are on the right hand side....the "third wheel" male lives on the left. They breed regularly...and are quite beautiful breeding coloration. Here's the "single" male:



Here's the same male being informed by the breeder that he crossed the halfway point of the tank. You can see from both of those photos that these fish have beautiful trailers on their fins. The adult that we netted in the Rio Cholteca in Honduras had the same...something I didn't associate with fish in the wild.



Here's the pair on their side looking over at the male. Occasionally the female will wander over onto the left side of the tank. The male there will immediately begin flaring and posturing...I think to try and get her interest. I beleive that the dynamics of having that pressure from the "extra" male helps to keep the pair actively spawning. The side benefit to me, is being able to watch the cichlid fish behavior.





The female of the species has a much redder coloration. All of these photos were taken using three Nikon SB-900 flash units setting two side by side and one in the middle and a little further back pointed slightly forward toward the front of the tank. This helps to fill in some of the shadow areas as well as help separate the foreground from the background. In the very first photo, I caught the left side flash and the middle...illuminating the fins and leaving the front of the lead fish slightly in shadow. I liked the effect (all by chance by the way). Most of the lights are focused on an area about two foot square. This is what I call the 'sweet spot" and generally try and wait to get the fish to swim into that particular zone to get the photo. I only mention it becasue when the female hit the sweet spot, she lit up like a Christmas tree.



One of the comments most often asked is how I get the colors to pop on the fish. It's all about the light. The more you can EFFECTIVELY throw on the subject. The more light, the more control over your options on camera settings. As an example, these were shot at an ISO of 100 at f32 using a shutter speed of 1/250. It helps when they voluntarily step right into the staging area. :D

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22 May 2011 13:23 #2 by tsheehan (Tony Sheehan)
Hi Aquamojo

Fantastic pics but how do you manage to avoid the glare from the tank glass?

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22 May 2011 14:04 #3 by denverbre (Denver Breslin)

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22 May 2011 15:17 #4 by Xaribdis (Lorcan O' Brien)
absolutely beautiful shots and incredible looking fish.
L

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22 May 2011 16:36 #5 by Aquamojo (Mo Devlin)

Hi Aquamojo

Fantastic pics but how do you manage to avoid the glare from the tank glass?


I light it from above and sometimes from below.

Thanks all.

Mo

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22 May 2011 17:50 #6 by christyg (Chris Geraghty)
Beautiful fish and great quality photos, fair play.

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23 May 2011 11:24 #7 by Aquamojo (Mo Devlin)

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23 May 2011 12:10 #8 by Viperbot (Jason Hughes)
Awesome shots Mo, fantastic looking cichlids.

Jay

Location: Finglas, North Dublin.

Life
may not be the party we hoped for, but while we
are here we might as well dance.

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