Haven’t posted anything about my African tetra tank for a while…

Everyone is still doing good, and I haven’t lost any fish for a long time in this tank… I did remove all the water lettuce from this tank… it was just growing too aggressively… the water hyacinth I replaced it with is doing well also, but has already proven to require less maintenance, and is not reproducing like rabbits
Slowly my population of Armano shrimp has gone down, I was buying extra large adults and they don’t reproduce in the tank… there are still 6-8 of them, and I still have the one smaller vampire shrimp… it hasn’t grown much, but is out “fan dancing” every time I add food… the heavy population of adult Armano’s were chewing up my java fern tangle that covers most of the bottom of the tank, at the highest population, they were putting so many holes in the Java fern, that I renamed it Java lace… anyway with less armano’s the Java fern is starting to come back without holes…

So, I’m thinking some landscaping is in order… so besides the Java fern, and the water hyacinth, I still have a half dozen Nile lilies in hang on pots, growing out of the tank… but without the long heavy roots of the water lettuce taking over the center of the tank, it’s pretty open in the middle, so I’m thinking about adding some of this…
They are showing it as 24 inches tall… since this is a 45 gallon tank that’s 24 inches deep, this will be a bottom to surface plant and give the tetras something to swim through in the center of the tank… also I still have a group of king tiger plecos I can’t catch out of the tank, with out a major ordeal, as I think they would like to breed, I going to ad one of the resin hollow logs like I have in several other tanks… I don’t like that they are not African in this tank, but they are smaller, blend in with the black substrate… too bad they don’t clean the glass, they are more meat eaters so they clean up the excess food on the bottom… my 3 line African glass cats are doing well, and their color is quite vivid, but in this tank, they are a center swimming fish, so, I can justify leaving the king tigers, as they have adopted the bottom.

I’ve not added any new fish, as this tank is already heavily populated, but I’ve been thinking about adding another male interuptus after I lost one a year ago, my one male has matured and is gorgeous, but I miss the flashing between the males…

This tank was overrun with pond snails, but since adding the assassin snails, which have been breeding, I still see a few, but their numbers are down significantly

All these African’s were purchased as juveniles, and while they all are interesting, only the one male interuptus, seems to be fully mature yet…

This is the water hyacinth from below ( actually 3 plants ) at 6 inches below the surface, it takes up much less of the tank than the water lettuce
I see some baby water lettuce hiding in ( on both the left and the right ) with the hyacinths , that I’ll have to grab out one of these days… hyacinths have black roots, so the plants with green roots are the lettuce..

African tetras can challenge the impatient. It can be 2 years before they get their full wow factor working.

So… looking for a housekeeper… I know that should be typically my job… but because of the aggressive floating plants dropping solids on the leaves below, I’m looking for something that will work over the leaves… don’t have to eat it, just knock it off while swimming and grazing… I’m not finding anything African, if fact a so A as I did buy a group of 3 line glass cats, but they swim midway in the tank, with the rest of the tetras… anything out there that would be an African native??? otherwise I might slip in a few otos

I did find these black Nerite snails, that look just like the substrate… the only issue there, is the assassins I added to combat the pond snails, have been reproducing, nearly as fast as the pond snails, and because of the inaccessibility to try to get them out, I expect theblack nerites, will end up food… but, I think I’m going to try them anyway, even though these new snails are only about a 1/2 inch at maturity

these are the black Nerites I'm looking at, hoping the Assassins don't kill them right away... my substrate is polished black river rocks, about the same size as the snails...

Commonly called military helmet snails or just helmet snails

Be warned - if you have both sexes you'll find sesame seed-like eggs all over the tank walls and decor. They won't hatch. They can be scraped off hard surfaces but not plants or wood (you'll take the top surface off wood if you try)

Hello. An interesting fish. They look very similar to the Red Tail Rasbora. I got a few of these recently and they seem very hardy.

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I haven't read up on these, only that they won't reproduce in an aquarium... curious though, if the eggs were laid on a removeable piece of hard scape, & you caught them right away, if they couldn't be transferred to a brackish, or salt water tank to hatch, or if they would already be dead if laid in a fresh water environment???

From what I can find, these eggs are similar to amano shrimp larvae in their needs. Nerite eggs hatch to a larval stage which needs brackish water of a specific salinity and microscopic algae to feed on.
This website has details, but as with everything on the internet treat it with a degree of scepticism unless you can find out abut the author.