Hi sideburns,
Nice to see you're starting a journal. Good start.
Taking better photos:
- make sure the room is dark, and adjacent rooms are not creating glare on the tank.
- make sure the flash is off
- set camera to shutter priority setting (usually called mode "S")
- set shutter speed to 1/10-1/50 second (play with it and find the best)
- use a tripod, or some kind of stable setting
- use timer to ensure that your pressing the button doen't blur the photo
Because you are using longer exposure times, capturing quality fish photos will be difficult. Also these longer exposure times require the camera to hold very still.
If you're looking for new lights, I buy all of mine from hellolights.com and aqariumplants.com. For some reason, aquariumplants always has the best price. They sell JBJ (strait pin) lights. Very very bright and white (especially for the first few months)
As far as your layout and plant selection, I think you just need to give the tank some time for now, and allow your plants to grow. When things start to get crowded, then you can decide what should go and what should stay. But, you'll need lots of healthy growth to get a hold on the algae/diatoms.
Are you using any CO2?
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