melev

I mentioned that I expected more shrimp several days ago, but when I looked under her hood so-to-speak, they weren't ready yet. Tonight there was no doubt.

I hoped to capture the release on video, but she refused to cooperate if any light was on. So as soon as the event occurred, all flow as halted, the Azurelite was placed over the corner of the tank, and I shot these with my 105mm Macro lens on the full set of extension tubes. I used a remote flash, hand held off to the side to try to backlight or side-light the tiny subjects.

The bluer looking shrimp were up high near the Azurelite's blue beam.

Keep in mind that they were tumbling down, swimming up, jetting away from each other if they made contact, turning on their axis as they moved through the water. I had the Nikon at the lowest ISO setting, and shot at f/11. Some backgrounds show some coral to get a sense of scale.

With the flash shot behind the subject, it almost looks like an x-ray in this next image. Visible in some of these images are fine hairs coming off their legs that are quite long, and I'm sure this is for locomotion of their tiny bodies to quickly get to shelter normally.

Seeing the images full screen in my editor, it was hard to decide what to share and what to discard. I decided to give you 20 images instead of only two or three.

I'm not even positive what this one is, it doesn't match the rest. Almost looks like food, like mysis.

This is probably the best one of the night. You can see the eyes clearly.