King Louie's Keep

A friend of mine gave me this 38 gallon aquarium back in December, after I mentioned I was thinking about a betta tank for my desk here at home. Obviously this one is too big for my desk (I have a lovely bookshelf tank for my betta), but this one is shaping up to be a beautiful addition to our living room. And I sneakily put it on a stand for a 55 gallon tank, so...there's room for expansion.

It sat for several weeks while I was setting up my betta and frog tanks, and I finally added substrate, rocks and driftwood a few weeks back. I was able to seed the filter from my frog tank, so the cycle only took about two weeks, and last weekend after a lot of hemming and hawing (and reading and reading and reading) over whether to get one or a group, I added a single male pearl gourami - King Louie the First.


Pardon the filmy glass - it's biofilm, but the water is clear. Cleaning day is tomorrow.

Parameters, for anyone interested:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 10
Ph: Around 7.5ish (maybe a smidge higher)
Gh: 9 dGH
Temp: 79-80f

Just an Aqueon 30 filter on the back that came with the tank - I'll be upgrading that soon.

Lighting is a 36 watt Hygger on the 24/7 sunrise-sunset mode. Which I love, but I may need to swap the top out for a glass one so the light spreads better.

Current plants are some anubias (I can't remember which ones - the fish shop guy talked me into them when I was looking for Amazon swords), some anacharis from my frog tank, some rotala that I'm not sure is going to make it, and some Java fern starts from my betta tank. I really, really want some vals for the back wall, so those are on my radar to order in soon. Possibly a sword for the middle, though I'm still thinking about that.

I also have a spider plant propped in the hood to help with any nitrate spikes.

I'd originally planned to stock from the bottom up, but got too excited and added Louie while waiting for the local fish shop to find me a Leopard Frog Pleco (L134). Then I spent several days feeling bad about that since Louie was clearly stressed about being the only fish in the tank (I know better...hence the original plan, but...yeah. My bad.). He's doing much better now, coloring up, eating well, and even let me stand near the front of the tank tonight without flying off to hide (the frozen bloodworm treats may have helped).


My current plan is to add another larger piece of driftwood on the other side pointing center, and more plants, obviously.

In addition to Louie, the stock I have planned is:
1 Leopard Frog Pleco (L134)
1 Clown pleco (L104)
6-8 Sterbai cories (because they can handle the higher temps needed for L134)
8 Cherry barbs (will be added last, and only after the plants grow in and the tank matures a bit)

Tomorrow I'll go to the store and see what I can find for another nice piece of driftwood, and possibly the two baby plecos!

Thanks for looking. I'm really excited to see how this tank matures over the next year or so.

King Louis is fine alone, but probably misses cover up near the surface. They like to hang in the weeds and watch the world.

Having a King in the tank is a problem sometimes, and you can expect the other fish, when added, to vote him out of his status. The usual treatment when royals get into your tank is to leave them be, but try not to have them breeding. That causes all sorts of problems, and takes enormous resources out of the running of the tank. You get perfectly wonderful sterbai in there, and he'll be talking about casting a pearl before swine. It causes resentment and class warfare.

Thanks @GaryE . So you think he won't be okay with the sterbai? I don't really have any intention of breeding, but I figured any fry would become food. I don't want to create a stressful situation for them, though. I had just decided this morning to get only the one pleco (L134), and a bigger group of cories, but I could switch that again.

I forgot that I do have some frogbit in there, but the filter flow is battering it around. I need to get something to protect it from the flow until I replace the filter next week. I was thinking something with a spraybar so I can direct the flow so there's some calmer surface area for Louie and the plants.

Nice start.
You might consider entering it in our May Tank of the Month contest which will feature tanks sized at 31 US gallons and larger.

Fishmanic said:

Nice start.
You might consider entering it in our May Tank of the Month contest which will feature tanks sized at 31 US gallons and larger.

Click to expand...

Will do!

Jamie D. said:

Thanks @GaryE . So you think he won't be okay with the sterbai? I don't really have any intention of breeding, but I figured any fry would become food. I don't want to create a stressful situation for them, though. I had just decided this morning to get only the one pleco (L134), and a bigger group of cories, but I could switch that agai

Click to expand...

Choosing sterbai is the besytof all your choices. They'll do well!

GaryE said:

Choosing sterbai is the besytof all your choices. They'll do well!

Click to expand...

Excellent. I love them, and can't wait to get a nice group! We'll see what the fish shop has today.

Well, I went back to my original stocking list. I'm sometimes wishy-washy like that. But while the fish shop didn't have an L134 or Sterbai yet (next week, they said, possibly), they had two clown plecos left, and I'm a sucker for a fixer-upper pet (just ask the myriad of dogs I've had over the years, and the two runt ADFs I'm currently hand-feeding every night). *sigh*

So, this is Drizzle, because his dark parts are a tad bit darker than shown here (and they've gotten darker yet just in the past 24 hours), so he looks like a chocolate drizzled in caramel.

I think it's probably an L448 instead of L104, due to the stripes on the face, but no matter which one it is, the poor thing is a bit beaten up, and was just sitting under the bright tank lights near the filter intake at the shop, not even trying to hide under a potted plant like its tankmate. I brought it home and after it posed for a few pics, it promptly ran for cover under the piece of driftwood on the far right of the tank and he/she has been hanging out there ever since. I put a couple of micro algae pellets nearby, though I'm sure he'll probably prefer to graze on the wood for awhile, and King Louie seems curious but is being mostly polite.

Hopefully a few weeks of calm and stress-free living will have that fin damage healing.

I also got another piece of driftwood for the other side of the tank, and I think it really fills in that center space nicely!

Tomorrow is payday. Time to order more plants! And I found a length of tubing in my office that I think will make a good "corral" for the frogbit up top. A project for a little later this week.