Freshwater Tanks

[mrhappyrotter]

Living room display tank. Critters include cherry shrimp, amano shrimp, assassin snails, snails for the assassin snails, Simp. santanae, Goo obo gudgeons and a lone female diapteron georgiae. Plants include, guppy grass, christmas moss, java moss, java fern and crypts.

This one has lots of shrimp and a lone male Simp. santanae. Plants include red tiger "lotus", crypts, riccia, java moss, and marsilea quadrifolia.

The last two is my peacock gudgeon tank. This one is less heavily planted, but contains java moss, anubias, bolbitis and crypts.

All tanks are 10 gallons in size -- this is one hobby where I go for quantity over quality mostly because it gives me lots of variety and a lot of the things I breed need to be in species only tanks.

 

[karategirl73]

Wow that is awesome!! About how much time do you put into this hobby?

 

[mrhappyrotter]

Wow that is awesome!! About how much time do you put into this hobby?

Too much. LOL. I'd say general maintenance is around 20 - 30 minutes a day on average. That includes feeding, live food culturing and care (white worms, micro worms, baby brine shrimp, etc), and any fertilizer dosing I do.

Water change day, which I try to do twice a week and always do at least once can take up to an hour or more. That's to cover the nine 10 gallon tanks, the tubs of plants, and all the 1.5 gallon shoe boxes of baby killies.

It gets a little more time consuming this time of year because I'm ramping up production in preparation for the local spring auction, which tends to be a great way to recoup some money to help pay for the hobby.

 

[cnycharles]

assassin snails? never heard of them... tell us more!

and nice tanks

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

I love those cherry shrimp. I just set up a 10 gal tank with my son, for shrimp mainly. Has some Endler's livebearers and a bamboo shrimp too. I intend to add some Heterandria formosa and some more shrimp. I saw those assasin snails on Ebay...I'm curious!

 

[mrhappyrotter]

Yeah, assasin snails are really pretty chocolate and creamy yellow striped shells. They burrow through the sand and keep things stirred up. The name comes from the fact that they prey on other snail species -- which is why you may notice that there are quite a number of empty shells littering the tank substrate. I usually leave them for awhile and then every few months clean out all the evidence.

 

[SlipperFan]

Beautiful environments!

 

[The Orchid Boy]

Love those planted tanks! My shelldwellers dig up any plants except for an anubias mounted on lava rock. I have problems with algae growing on the leaves. Ideas?

 

[TyroneGenade]

Pity the santanae didn't come out to show themselves off. They are lovely little fish: http://www.itrainsfishes.net/content/simpsonichthys_santanae_001.php I used to breed the little things. They never read any of the books and so didn't understand they had to spawn in the peat. The just hung eggs all over the mops. Odd little fellows but truly spectacular.

 

[mrhappyrotter]

The simpsonichthys is in the photo -- he's just hiding very well in the corner peaking out at me. He's the only fish in the tank at this time, and one of the inferior males that I didn't want mixed in with the general population. Still beautiful, but not up to par with the better males.

I definitely have enjoyed my first foray into the peat spawners. I also have some nothobranchius rachovii eggs incubating at this time. The last male from that group passed a few weeks ago (over a year old which is ancient for a notho) and the last female is still kicking. Hopefully later this year I'll have some photos of them to post. They're amongst the most spectacularly colored freshwater fish.

 

[TyroneGenade]

I also have some nothobranchius rachovii eggs incubating at this time.

Don't believe the books, the fry are tiny but they can take freshly hatched brine shrimp nauplii from day one. I have a good size spawn on the go right now. They are stunning fish.

The idea of the short-lived Notho doesn't stand up to scrutiny. About 20% of guentheri make 1 year of age. 70% of korthausae/ruudwildekampi can survive to the 1 year mark. N. rachovi are not quite as long lived but can clear a year if well cared for. Sadly, my furzeri still battle to make it to 5 months.

tt4n

 

[Linus_Cello]

Love those planted tanks! My shelldwellers dig up any plants except for an anubias mounted on lava rock. I have problems with algae growing on the leaves. Ideas?

Could be several things: too much light, too many nutrients in the water. Try decreasing the light and adding some more water changes. Another thing to do is to keep the tank dark a couple of days or a week; the algae doesn't have enough nutrient stores compared to plants, so the algae will hopefully die off or decrease during the dark period.

You could also try getting some fish/inverts that eat algae. Problem is what type of algae do you have (brown, blue, green, etc). Not all fish will eat all algae, and lots of fish actually aren't great at controlling algae (e.g., "common" pleco are not good for algae, but ottos, a relative of plecos, do, along with "bristlenose" ancistrus"; if you're really in to plecos, checkout planetcatfish.com )

 

[The Orchid Boy]

I have staghorn and/or blackbeard algae growing on it. I think I need to be more regular with water changes.

 

[TyroneGenade]

Surest way to get rid of the algae is to pump CO2 into the tank. That really gets the plants going and the algae on the leaves just vanishes. To get rid of algae on the glass, particularly the green spot kind, dose with KNO3. Rampant algae is the product of unhappy plants (by the looks of things). Feed the plants and the algae can't compete. For more planted tank advice visit http://www.apsa.co.za .

 

[biothanasis]

Lovely tanks!!!