A macro lens may not serve you the best in aquarium conditions unless you are really going for really close shots, which are really tough in aquarium conditions (no tripod, no flash). The shots you see here were shot mostly with f/2.8 zoom lenses (Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L and Nikon 28-70mm AF-S Nikkor f/2.8). In general though, I really like the Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro and for Nikon the f/2.8 105mm Nikkor Macro (now available with VR).

Though, if you are shooting in controlled conditions (a fish tank in your home) you could get amazing results with a sharp, fast macro lens.

I’ve seen people use rubber lens covers to do this better, not sure how good that works. Any thoughts on that method?

- Turn off pumps and filters while shooting. Reducing water motion will help improve the clarity of your images

- Filter the water with some activated carbon. This will help remove dissolved organic compounds that can make the water appear yellowish.

- The less water you have to shoot through, the better. Subjects in the front of the tank will be clearer than those shot through several inches of water.

- Trigger the shutter with either a remote release or the self-timer. This will help reduce camera shake and result in sharper images. Obviously only useful if using a tripod.

- Turn off the camera’s on-board flash. Direct flash will make the image appear flat or two dimensional.

- If your camera supports remote flash, experiment with lighting the subject from above (either directly, or bounce the flash off the aquariums light reflector). Nikon’s Creative Lighting System is particularly nice for this — Nikon plug
- Shooting at a high ISO will give you more flexibility with shutter speed and aperture, but will add noise — a real problem for tightly-cropped macro shots.