Alien Anna
Fish Gatherer
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2002
- Messages
- 2,087
- Reaction score
- 2
Hi Everyone,
after much agonising about the water parameters I put my SAE in with my mollies and guppies in my 120 litre Juwel tank. It's 38" long so for the volume it's quite a long tank, and it's also only lightly planted, so there is plenty of swimming space. Also plenty of algae - enough for a school of SAEs to eat for a year without any supplements.
His previous tank was a 100 litre Juwel corner tank, heavily planted with tons of bogwood and a little over-stocked for him to make adequate territory, but the main problem was lack of swimming space.
I am hopefully getting some more SAEs next week, but in the meantime I wanted to share with you how much happier my SAE is in his new tank. He took a couple of days before he figured out how to do lengths, and it was obvious from his swimming motion that he wasn't used to stretching his fins, but now he's darting right from one end of the tank to the other, playing with the filter current and hanging upside down off giant vallis fronds, eating the algae off them. He is so much more active and he's eating algae like there's no tomorrow. Remember I used to complain I had an SAE that wouldn't eat algae? I thought it was all the live food I give them but now I'm wondering if it was simply that he felt cooped-up and restricted?
The high pH (pH 8.5) and small amount of salt doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest. I acclimatised him rather rapidly from pH 7 over an hour and a half, so I was anticipating more problems. When I get my new fish they'll be in pH 6 when they arrive, so I hope they adjust as easily.
after much agonising about the water parameters I put my SAE in with my mollies and guppies in my 120 litre Juwel tank. It's 38" long so for the volume it's quite a long tank, and it's also only lightly planted, so there is plenty of swimming space. Also plenty of algae - enough for a school of SAEs to eat for a year without any supplements.
His previous tank was a 100 litre Juwel corner tank, heavily planted with tons of bogwood and a little over-stocked for him to make adequate territory, but the main problem was lack of swimming space.
I am hopefully getting some more SAEs next week, but in the meantime I wanted to share with you how much happier my SAE is in his new tank. He took a couple of days before he figured out how to do lengths, and it was obvious from his swimming motion that he wasn't used to stretching his fins, but now he's darting right from one end of the tank to the other, playing with the filter current and hanging upside down off giant vallis fronds, eating the algae off them. He is so much more active and he's eating algae like there's no tomorrow. Remember I used to complain I had an SAE that wouldn't eat algae? I thought it was all the live food I give them but now I'm wondering if it was simply that he felt cooped-up and restricted?
The high pH (pH 8.5) and small amount of salt doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest. I acclimatised him rather rapidly from pH 7 over an hour and a half, so I was anticipating more problems. When I get my new fish they'll be in pH 6 when they arrive, so I hope they adjust as easily.
