Had a fun shoot with Hannah today (our 2nd shoot, our first amazing shoot here). Lighting was so on and off. Sun, no sun, sun, no sun! I struggled a bit, but we had fun, so all good!
The full set is up here: http://www.justinfoxphoto.com/girls#/hannah-1/
Hammers are puffing up more and more by the day! New one from this morning on the bottom right corner. Gold tip hammers on the cards!
Morph is also getting bigger.
Small star polyps.
Normal/larger star polyps. They had opened up completely but got pretty grumpy when I took them out and cut off a bit which was hosting an aiptasia anemone. I like how they move with the flow though, very nice.
Sea water storage. Something I should have done ages ago!
I stumbled upon a guy on Facebook, Adam from Aquarium Excellence, who delivers natural sea water around Sydney. He also sells a big variety of drums of all shapes and sizes. I ended up getting a 220 litre food grade drum delivered to me, with natural sea water. His hose was long enough to reach around 1/4 of my house to my laundry! So cool. I now have so much fresh sea water which will make water changes a breeze! I could even do 80% weekly water changes and not dose a thing from now on! Such a luxury! And in an event of a tank crash (touch wood it never happens!) I have plenty of ready to go sea water.
He also sells corals so I bought some green star polyps (GSP) off him. One piece had a pretty big Aiptasia (pest anemone) on it. I thought about keeping it, but then I remembered how quickly these things spread so I took the coral out and broke off a fair bit of the GSP to make sure he was gone for good!
I also took delivery this morning of 3 x small Nassarius Snails from Darren at Reef Secrets in QLD (I got them to keep my sand bed clean). They came overnight (with another hammer coral too) and everything was packed super well, with a heat pack and all snails made it (they buried themselves into the sand bed right away!), and hammer is opened up already!
Photos of the tank tomorrow, not sure if I can capture the snails in a shot as they’re under the sand bed, but I assume they will come out for food!
Photos from yesterday’s shoot with Make Up Artist Lily are now up!
Lily got in touch about a shoot a week ago. I’m meant to be shooting her friend Mazza in a few weeks from now, but Lily beat her to it! The girl was bubbly as, quite awkward… but funny! Once she got warmed up she didn’t want to stop!
Check the intro of this video. Freaky!
Still no fish! I have been having fun visiting local fish shops though (namely Aquaristic, Hurstville Aquariums and Newtown Aquarium too), and picking up coral pieces from each one I visit. I’ve got my eye on a fish (just the one fish I’m thinking for this tank in order to keep the bio-load down), he’s rather special so I’m going to let the tank mature a little bit more before bringing him home.
I’ve got a build thread/tank journal going on Nano-Reef Forums.
Visit: http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/362497-justin-foxs-fluval-edge-2/
Missing her already. My photos from yesterday’s shoot with Amanda are up! Visit: http://www.justinfoxphoto.com/girls#/amanda-1/
I had Melbourne based Model/DJ Amanda Sierras over for a slumber party last night. Such a mad chika! Super smart, super hot and super driven (she’s just about to fly over to Dubai for a 4 month DJ contract!). Just like high school slumber parties, instead of going straight to bed we ended up talking and laughing till the early hours. We’re both a bit buggered, but we’ll be shooting all day today. I’m psyched!
Follow @amandasierras_ (and you can check out our last shoot here).
FTS. New ISTA 50W heater is smaller than the old one and has the temperature controller outside the aquarium. I’m surprised and happy that the toxic hammer I bought a while back is still alive and doing better by the day. One part of it is not opening up. I figure it was because it wasn’t getting enough flow so I’ve twisted the coral a bit and will see if this makes a difference.
Corner shot.
Side on shot showing placement of a few zoas and a couple of morphs. My VorTech MP10 is still on it’s way!
Top down shot.
Tank in situ.
It’s been bang on a month since I bought the tank and got it wet. The cycle has been long, and has tested my patience (I’ve got none!) but I’ve done it right and last week I splurged on a few easy to keep corals from Fragalicious, an online seller in Victoria.
I stumbled upon their facebook page, which they use to sell off their corals in an almost auction like manner. These guys create a facebook event every time they have a new load of corals, they then upload photos of the corals and if you see something you like, you simply write “SOLD” under the picture and it’s yours!
Their prices are half of what fish shops sell their corals for. Understandable as they don’t have the overheads of a bricks and mortar store. It’s amazing how online shops are killing retail shops in every industry, it doesn’t matter whether it’s cars, bicycles or corals, it’s online and it’s cheaper.
I specified for delivery to be today, they sent the corals last night and the parcel got to me by midday. All corals came in an esky which was cold to the touch. All but one of the corals made it. They’re all grumpy and closed, but starting to open already and should look amazing in a few days!
Wheels off!
Toyo Proxes R1R’s. More info on the tyre here.
VERY square sidewalls! Just what I missed about the R-S3’s I had on before the Potenza RE003’s.
Chunky as!
37psi and balanced with black wheel weights.
OK… so the rears are going to be an issue!
Magic man Stu tried his best, maxing out my rear camber.
Today I had a booking at Spinning Wheel Tyres to get a fresh set of Toyo R1R tyres fitted to the Golf. I only recently fitted a set of Bridgestone RE003’s, which have been absolutely awesome in the dry and wet, but I’m sponsored by Toyo now, and I did miss the fat semi-slick like profile of the R-S3’s I had on before. These R1R’s bring back the fat, big time (as they’re 245 wide where the R-S3’s were 235).
Bruno did an awesome job fitting the tyres. These tyres are just so fat that I made the call to remove the 10mm spacers up front. I knew the rears were going to be an issue as I had no spacers on the rear to begin with! As soon as we dropped the car off the hoist we realised my wheel studs were too long up the front (longer studs because of spacers) so we moved the rear studs to the front, and Fulvio at Spinning Wheel lent me a set of nuts just so I could drive home.
Thing is I couldn’t drive home. The rear tyres were literally up against the body!
Luckily Stu (Spinning Wheels’ wheel alignment guy) was in the house. He’s a magic man and managed to max out my rear camber. The rears don’t rub unless I hit a bump, but it doesn’t take much of a bump to rub so I’m either going to have to cut away some fender lining, or I might even have to size down the rears to 225.
Thanks:
Toyo Tires Australia: http://toyotires.com.au
Spinning Wheel Tyres: http://www.spinningwheeltyres.com
Today marks the first collab with 83. Follow: https://www.facebook.com/eighty3 Instagram @eighty83three
Rice from 83 brought Jade over for me to shoot. Was a mad meet and greet, especially because Amanda from Melbourne popped by to hang too.