Hey there,
I'm new around here. Well, new to fishkeeping too I guess, having taken a 15 year break while I moved country and did... other stuff. Anyway, I got right back into it in the last few months. I bought a bunch of books and swatted up big to see where things are at and ultimately decided I quite like amazon blackwater biotypes and fish species. So I leapt off the deep end and set up this heavily planted 380L tank:
It's stocked with a peppered cories, rummy nose tetras, otos and bleeding heart tetras *. The plants are somewhat higher in the tank than this old shot.
Not having much of a clue I stocked the main tank with some dwarf blue ram cichlids which all subsequently died due to water conditions. Water condition is now prestine, fed with an RO unit and filtered through peat which has tinted up the water nicely. In their short life I really came to like the cichlids so resolved to build another tank specifically for them.
The second tank, which I've published a blow-by-blow construction account on fish-keeper.com, is a dwarf cichlid breeding/show tank which has yet to be stocked and in fact was only fully planted today:
The plants aren't properly established yet obviously but it was constructed with some lessons learned from the last one. Tiered backdrop, finer substrate, better selection of plants. You might spot the embedded flowerpot caves. Water is tinted up nicely, very soft, PH around 5.5. I'll probably put dither fish (pencils or ember tetras) and otos in here soon and leave them for a couple of weeks to make sure tank is fully cycled. I haven't yet worked out what cichlid species to use. A pair of rams and a pair of apistos potentially, since two pair of apistos is unlikely to work in a tank this size.
* I'm experiencing some new odd behavior from the bleeding hearts, so far no one has any input on that in the thread I made about it.
I'm new around here. Well, new to fishkeeping too I guess, having taken a 15 year break while I moved country and did... other stuff. Anyway, I got right back into it in the last few months. I bought a bunch of books and swatted up big to see where things are at and ultimately decided I quite like amazon blackwater biotypes and fish species. So I leapt off the deep end and set up this heavily planted 380L tank:
It's stocked with a peppered cories, rummy nose tetras, otos and bleeding heart tetras *. The plants are somewhat higher in the tank than this old shot.
Not having much of a clue I stocked the main tank with some dwarf blue ram cichlids which all subsequently died due to water conditions. Water condition is now prestine, fed with an RO unit and filtered through peat which has tinted up the water nicely. In their short life I really came to like the cichlids so resolved to build another tank specifically for them.
The second tank, which I've published a blow-by-blow construction account on fish-keeper.com, is a dwarf cichlid breeding/show tank which has yet to be stocked and in fact was only fully planted today:
The plants aren't properly established yet obviously but it was constructed with some lessons learned from the last one. Tiered backdrop, finer substrate, better selection of plants. You might spot the embedded flowerpot caves. Water is tinted up nicely, very soft, PH around 5.5. I'll probably put dither fish (pencils or ember tetras) and otos in here soon and leave them for a couple of weeks to make sure tank is fully cycled. I haven't yet worked out what cichlid species to use. A pair of rams and a pair of apistos potentially, since two pair of apistos is unlikely to work in a tank this size.
* I'm experiencing some new odd behavior from the bleeding hearts, so far no one has any input on that in the thread I made about it.
to the forum 
