Chronicles…

The reason for a tank in turmoil: a female with a dropped tube


Tau, the tank Alpha Male, displaying his War Paint


The defining characteristic of War Paint color mode: extreme contrast (even on the mask as darker facial blues are replaced with a lighter hues so that the mask communicates fury to other competing males)




The climax of all the instability: a female mouth brooding the future of the species

forumadmin wrote: Nice, but those are really giant watermarks!

Thanks

Yes, I wanted to change things up a bit from my normal images for this series

..great pics !!.....thanks for starting this project....looking forward to the continuation..

One of my holiday goals was to spend some quality time photographing the 240-gallon tank (aka: Mikula Group Tau) and capture the, ever, elusive full-fin-flared shot of Tau. As the undisputed tank alpha, Tau rarely flares. With my camera gear setup, I was treated to a tank in turmoil: Tau was arrayed in his “war paint” color mode as one of the females had dropped a tube. Opportunity granted me a chance, over a three-day period, to shoot the 240, in a state of aquatic upheaval, and chronicle a king continuing his lineage.

I’ll start this thread with the first few images in this new series and I will add more images, later, of the holding female and her successful spawn. For anyone who may not be familiar, Mikula Group Tau is a wild caught group of Cyphotilapia gibberosa (Zaire Blue Mikula). As mentioned above, Tau (Setswana for lion) is the alpha male in this eight foot tank. In this first image, Tau was in the perfect spot for my remotely mounted flash. While his purple hues were lost to the flash and I didn’t get the FFF pose I was hoping for, I was still very happy with this image:







If you like, come back as this thread is updated with new images...