My aquariums

[Ram419]

Wow, such large tanks and all very nice! Thanks for sharing!

 

[anewbie]

Sometime i get bored and redesign things so i turned this sump:

Into this sump:

 

[anewbie]

Sometime i put leaves and wood into my aquarium and they turn black:

(it has some pencil fishes and a trio of a. ortegai; for those not familiar a. ortegai can be quite territorial and vicious so the trio needs lots of room and hiding places; in this case they have a 65)
and sometime i put black background on the aquarium:

 

[anewbie]

My emersed Green Wavy Buce is getting ready to flower:

 

[MuddyWaters]

I have the hardest time with submerged buce plants. Black Beard Algae- even in a tank with 50ppm CO2. Drives me nuts.

 

[MuddyWaters]

Anewbie do you have a hard time with your discus fish? Do you use RO water and do like 90% water changes or are they a little easier than they are purported to be? I've heard both sides. I don't have the room right now, but would love to keep them at some point.

 

[anewbie]

Anewbie do you have a hard time with your discus fish? Do you use RO water and do like 90% water changes or are they a little easier than they are purported to be? I've heard both sides. I don't have the room right now, but would love to keep them at some point.

I've only had them two months. There was a period of about 10 days where one of the 10 kept swimming full steam around the tank hitting things but s/he has stopped that - i read somewhere that could indicate he dislike water and so i did several large water changes.
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Fast forward - these are wild caught discus and the water is ro water; the ph runs around 5.7; there are some leaves in the tank and some peat in bags in the sump. The 'regular' water change is ~2 gallons per hour drip system. I did check nitrate level the other day and they were sub 5; which is about the best you can tell with api liquids; though there are more sensitive test kits out there.

I will occasionally do an 'out of band' water change but right now i'm mostly depending on the drip system.

As I noted i've only had them for a couple of months so it is too soon to make a statement on 'success'; remind me to comment in 24 months. I will say they were very moody when i first got them but for the past 4 weeks i've seen no mood swings; they are rarely startled by me; they never hide in the corners when i'm in the room and other tantrum behavior they used to throw when they didn't like something so in that sense they seem to be doing well. One is unusually skinny so i'm worried it might have a parasite but i've not seen any white poop yet (all the poop on the bottom has been normal black rat like discus poop).

A couple of comments - for better or worse and i'm unsure here - i feed them some freeze dried black worms twice a day with a lot of alternative food consisting of greens. The greens come from nls algae bites; fluval bug bite for bottom feeders (which is bug bites mixed with peas) and some hitatch discus food. They love their worms and if i don't feed them at least some worms they do throw a tantrum. I DO NOT feed them any messy foods like heart beef for two reasons - first i don't think it is healthy for the fish and second it will pollute the water like no tomorrow.

There are a lot of other fishes in the aquarium (most cardinals; but some blue rams and a pair of a. lineta); all of the other cichild are doing fine so far. I have a special love for blue rams - the rams and a. lineta made a deal - the a. lineta get one side of the aquarium and the 6 rams get the other side.

 

[anewbie]

I have the hardest time with submerged buce plants. Black Beard Algae- even in a tank with 50ppm CO2. Drives me nuts.

Oddly none of my emersed plants - buce or otherwise - have gotten bba.

 

[anewbie]

 

[anewbie]

 

[Colin_T]

View attachment 340680

What is the black & white fish guarding eggs, it looks like a sturgeon?

 

[anewbie]

What is the black & white fish guarding eggs, it looks like a sturgeon?

Pseudohemiodon aff. apithanos

 

[Colin_T]

Pseudohemiodon aff. apithanos

That's a really interesting fish.

 

[anewbie]

That's a really interesting fish.

It is one of the better purchases i made. I have 4 and i guess at least one is a male and one is a female. I actually saw them doing something weird a few weeks ago so was not overly shocked to find the eggs. Sadly i don't have a spare tank to move him or attemp to raise the frys but if they breed on a regular basis i'll probably try to hijack my neon green 20 long at some point.

I think i've purchased about 30 species of fishes the past 9 months as i fill out the aquariums and i'd put them in the top 5 - they do frequently change colours and when i first added the geo they were really ticked off and were grey/black for a while but after a month or so they have settled down and are back to large chunk of white (i think the black/grey is pissed off and white/brown is happy); i need to add another 50 or 100lb of substrate to the tank the front has gotten a bit shallow and they definitely like a good layering of substrate to dig into. In the back of the aquarium i have a couple of very large L172a - not quite as interesting but one of the smaller ones (I have 4) stays in a wood notch in the middle to the tank and catches food as it gets trapped there - there are a pile of mystery snali shells by the large one in the back so i guess he has been snacking on them.

Other fishes that have been real winners are the l. dorsigera (non-red form); a. sp winkelfleck; keyholes (which have this sack in front like a bullfrog); anyway - if i had the room i would have made the tanks larger - it just changes how everything behaves.

 

[anewbie]

few new pictures:
Lady guarding her eggs:

lineta aquairum:

green neon aquarium:

discus aquarium - note that cripus has now reached the top of the aquarium; to be honest all plants are growing quite rapidly in this low tech aquarium; the past 2 weeks i've slowly lowered the temp to 81-82 range - so far the discus haven't shown any objections to the lower temp. When i first got them they used to throw a tantrum anytime the temp dropped below 84.