Blue rams breeding!

Proof that your animal husbandry is up to snuff: finicky species start breeding for you. Without you doing anything special to make it happen!



The female in front of the breeding stone - eggs are visible on the stone below her.

Rearranging hardscape

I also took off the HOB(!) and moved the CO2 diffuser to the other side of the tank so that the bubble stream would be caught in the XP3's output current. The plants also got some trimming!

Retail therapy

The PetSmart in Gainesville has a nice setup - I was in there last night admiring the bettas (in particular an all-white crowntail male that wasn't albino) but I'm not going to buy a betta (because this would require another tank, which I don't really have room for) but I needed some more ferts for the planted tank. So this afternoon I swung by the Manassas aquarium store, which seems to have at least two names but goes by The Cozy Clownfish online. I suppose a betta will have to wait until a Fluval Chi falls into my lap, then I'm sure it will be fine to have another tank for a betta! LOL Unfortunately Fluval's really awesome small aquarium lines are all enormously expensive. So no plans on the horizon there.

However, I did walk out of the LFS with two new inhabitants for the planted tank: a female blue ram, and a red tiger lotus. The rams appear to have hit it off right away (I was worried that they wouldn't get along, but the store keeps the blue rams separated one per tank, so that may help with compatibility issues.) She's a quite a bit smaller than my male but he hasn't been bullying her and they've been swimming near each other a lot. I doubt any fry will survive this tank but it would be interesting if they did decide to breed!

Plecos love swords

My pleco has decided I don't feed him enough, so he's going to start munching my Amazon swords. D: So I blanched a slice of cucumber and sunk it with a lead plant weight (I don't use them in the tank, but they come with new plants so I keep them for applications like this) but the pleco has not discovered that this new thing is food. Neither has any other fish in the tank so far, but then I just fed them some flake food so they're still combing the sand for leftover flake bits. I've also started tossing the algae discs in after lights-out in and attempt to let the bottom feeders get more of them - the neons love the algae discs too but they're supposed to eat the flakes!

Today while I was doing a water change I also cleaned my XP3's impeller and housing, and I'm hoping that the cleaning has solved my air leak issue - so far it seems to have worked. I've got some silicone lubricant coming in from Amazon, using that is supposed to prolong the life of the O-rings. I certainly hope it will work!

I picked up a cheap T12 bulb at Wal-Mart today, so now the fish don't change color based on where they're swimming. Pics will have to be in a later post. The cherry reds, after I got over how HUGE they are, have really spiced up that tank with their color. They're also not skittish at all, which is great - they didn't need any time to start begging in front with the others at meal time!

New fish!

The bright, bright orange is due to the tank lighting - I added on a T12 lighting strip in addition to the T8 strip already there (18" is too wide for one strip to light the whole tank, and my fish love to swim in the area not lit by the one strip) and that bulb is some sort of plant bulb that adds a bit of purple to the light - and it makes anything remotely orange colored really pop! It's amazing - the saulosi females are yellow under the T8 and orange under the T12. If both bulbs were the same spectrum it would be better - I'll have to check if I can get a regular T12 at Wal-Mart. Trouble with keeping the purple is that I'd have to get a planted tank T8 and those are more expensive - kind of pointless for an mbuna tank too!

Movie!

Not much new going on - actually, more like I've been too busy with other things to do much more than sit and admire the tanks before bedtime. My cichlids should arrive tomorrow, but I haven't gotten a call from the shipper so I'm a little worried.

The planted tank is doing fairly well, although I have a mild ongoing outbreak of black hair algae, that seems to prefer older leaves. As I've run out of the liquid ferts I was using, I've decided to go dosing-free this week and see how things shape up - I buried a half-dozen or so more root tabs in the sand to tide the plants over. I'm pretty sure there's some imbalance or other going on - between the BHA, a couple older anubias leaves yellowing, and the cardinal plant leaves going somewhat pale, I know something's up but I'm not sure what. The crypt appears to have stopped melting - I'm shocked, I expected it to lose all of its leaves, but it stopped short of that point and appears to be filling out a bit. I had pruned off quite a few leaves that were partially melted or hosting a lot of algae, and it looks like all the new growth is coming in an interesting bronze color!


And now the promised movie:

Mystery sword plant

Do you know what I am?

Today I got a couple of shelf brackets and used them to hang my shop light a couple inches above the tank, so that it wouldn't be resting on the frame. (I was in constant fear of knocking it INTO the tank.) Not the prettiest of arrangements, but it works. If I built a canopy, no one would ever know... :D

The last of the electric yellows have been given to my parents, along with the little socolofi - everything is prepared for the arrival of the new fish on Thursday!

New aquascape

Taking the "scorched earth" route for dealing with incipient weird algae infestation; I trimmed the affected leaves. Then I removed some of the sandstone - I may do some more hardscape editing later now that I have some "extra" pieces to work with. I doused the rocks I took out in a bleach solution to remove the algae growing on them, though, so I have to let them dry properly before I put them back in. The melon sword is continuing to put out new leaves at a rate of about an inch and a half to two inches per day!

Metriaclima estherae

The blurry fish is the tank boss, a 6" Pseudotropheus sp. "acei"

Improving my camera skills

I found my camera manual! This sounds like I went and found an actual booklet, which I kind of did, since I pulled out the box full of extra stuff that came with the camera... but the manual itself was already installed on my computer, I just forgot that I had already done that way back when we got the camera. Ooops. Then after skimming through the interesting-looking parts of the manual I discovered (through much trial and error) how to set the shutter speed in the mode wherein the camera fixes the aperture for you. Then I discovered that if I set the shutter speed fast enough, the photo comes out black! So I dialed it up until the leaves closest to the light started getting overexposed, and here is the result.



In the front on the left side of the photo, two cories are hanging out and sifting for food in the sand; one is an albino, the other a newbie - today I purchased three panda cories, so now I have six total. Three albinos and three pandas. Back when I was setting up this tank, I tried some emerald green cories, but they darkened their color to the point that it was difficult to see them against the black sand, so I returned them to the store. Next I bought the albinos - no problems with fish changing color there! I'm hoping that the pandas won't darken up too much despite the black sand and background, since they're bred to be white with the namesake black spots. I couldn't find any good stock at the time or I might have gone with these from the beginning!

How to net your fish

You know how it goes in the pet store - the fish swim like crazy to get away from the fish net! They apparently think that some hideous fate awaits if they get caught. But the store tanks are kept fairly bare so there's no place to hide, and eventually the fish is bagged. Not so easy when you're dealing with 75 gallons of water full of very large rocks! If my fish were scared of the net, I'd never be able to get them. But they're actually not scared, since I don't chase them with it - mostly I'll use my fishnet to help me clean the sand. Since I switched from tan to white, occasionally the fish will dig holes where I didn't clean out all the tan stuff and spit the darker, larger bits on top of the white. Since the white sand is mostly very fine, I use the fish net to sift it and remove whatever tan bits are showing. So they got used to not being chased around by the big blue thing! Then Jonathan made a good suggestion - put an algae disk in the net and catch the fish when it comes to eat the food. I've managed to net four out of the five fish I need to remove from that tank that way - the last guy is one of the smaller fish, and by that point the algae disk had started disintegrating, so he was leaving the big piece in the net for the larger, more dominant fish and going after the bits floating around in the water. I'll make another attempt to net him out tomorrow. The four I nabbed are currently in my quarantine - I'm hoping to rehome a couple of them tomorrow, and the rest on Tuesday. They aren't happy with the cramped quarters but I think they'll deal for the few days they need to be there. Who knows what the baby acei thinks - he's safe in a fry net inside the quarantine tank until the bigger fish leave.

The red zebra has colored up a bit in the absence of the larger yellows - and, strangely enough, the acei dominant male got more aggressive than usual and chased the others around. There are five of them in there, one of which is only about two inches long - the oldest of their fry. I think I'll try to find another large-ish acei (around 4") to put in there to bolster their numbers a bit and spread out the aggression from the dominant male.

Order is in; tweaking filters

Well today I bit the bullet and made my fish order! So next week I'll be having nine new fish arriving. Now to really find somebody to take the 5 extras off my hands. Hmm. Gotta call around the LFS in the area, see if either of them might give me some store credit if I give them these fish!

On the filter front, I haven't been too happy with the surface skimming on the cichlid tank - it appears that having the skimmer "behind" the outflow sets up a surface current that doesn't bring the water by the skimmer very much. It's not bad at all, I'm just feeling perfectionist. Probably a sign that I need to clean that filter's sponges anyway. But since I was in a meddling mood, I swapped around some of the filter pieces and raised the outflow to only a couple inches below the water line, for increased surface agitation, hoping that it would aid the skimmer. Even if it doesn't, more potential oxygenation can't hurt! Especially in the summer. After the air conditioner quit. This weekend probably won't be too bad but it's going to go back up into the 90's next week - and the fish can't sweat to cool themselves down! If it does get too hot, I'll have to run the tanks "topless" until we get the AC fixed. And figure out something for the planted tank, because I can't run the lights without a splash guard!

The XP3 on the planted tank is having its own issues - I've got an air leak somewhere, not sure where yet. It's the one I bought secondhand, so I'm hoping I'll be able to fix it without having to replace any of the seals. I've tried plastic wrap under the priming cap, next will be reseating the quick-disconnect to make sure the o-rings are sealing properly. I'm not getting any water leaking, which is good. Just air getting into the system - and it can't be the CO2, the diffuser is on the other side of the tank!

A face only a fish nerd could love

The inspiration for my foray into the world of planted aquaria: an unidentified Ancistrus sp. - trade name, "bristlenose pleco".

Helpfully displaying his dorsal fin:


The Ancistrus genus of pleco is probably the most popular group among experienced hobbists who are looking for a workhorse algae-eater that doesn't get too big - unlike the monster common pleco, these guys get to be about 6 inches rather than the tank-busting 18+" lengths that common plecos can reach. Also unlike common plecos, bristlenoses will continue to eat algae throughout their lives. I have a "common bristlenose" variety in my cichlid tank, and he's held his own against the aggressive cichlids very well. I'm sure the spines help a lot.



If you've only seen the plecos at the chain stores, you're missing a lot! There are many varieties of pleco much more beautiful than these, but aren't they cute? Much cuter than those furry rodents people keep as pets. But then, YMMV...

Stock list changes on the horizon

Last night Jonathan and I were sitting on the couch watching the cichlid tank, and he admitted to liking the Ps. saulosi that I had before a string of truly unfortunate events ended up killing off all of them. And I'm a bit tired of the yellow labs, so the new plan is to get rid of those four fish, and add in some red zebra females and a small starter-colony of saulosi, somewhere around nine fish total most likely. And I managed to find an online store that sells both! I'm waiting for a call-back from them, actually - they're listed as "closed" on Wednesdays so if I haven't heard from them by Thursday afternoon I'll call back myself. I'm not in an all-fired rush to put in an order as they have to check to see if they have what I want (if I'm going to pay premium for adult red zebras, I want them sexed first!) and I can't be home all day for the last half of the week to accept delivery - and I can't ship things to "work" either, considering my job as a math tutor takes me all over my area. So basically I'm hoping they have what I need right now and I can get them to ship it overnight on Friday - especially since this weekend's weather is supposed to be a break from the 100-degree misery we've been having! The only thing that's going to hurt about this plan is the price - I'm quite, quite sure that it's going to end up costing somewhere in the high vicinity of $100. If only the stores around here carried better stock and more variety! PetSmart has no business selling auratus and kenyi to the kind of customer who shops there in the first place. They should replace those fish with saulosi and find better distributors for the rest of their African cichlid stock! That way I wouldn't have to go through all the trouble of finding online retailers.

As far as the little locally-owned place goes, it's a nice shop but they aren't carrying mbuna right now, and if I'm going to put in a special order I might as well just order the fish myself and have them delivered right to my door. Less stress on the livestock that way, and I get more control over the whole process.

Cardinal Plant

Most of my plant purchases have been impulse buys - not exactly the best strategy when dealing with chain pet stores. Quite a few of their "aquatic plants" are grown emersed (above water) meaning that their foliage will die off in the process of converting to immersed growth, if the plants are even capable of that. I got suckered by a PetSmart potted "Cardinal Plant" - helpfully labelled "true aquatic" - which is a lie. The plants in those little plastic pots are emersed growth - cardinal plants are native bog-dwellers - you can tell by the pretty purple-red that the underside of the leaves have. True immersed growth of a cardinal plant lacks the red pigmentation and is instead a bright green. However, rather than returning the plant, I decided to keep it and see if it would make the transition. The main root mass died away, but I spotted some aerial root growth, so I uprooted what was left in my sand substrate and cut the plant stem apart to form many smaller plants, which are actually putting on the proper bright green leaves of immersed growth. Here's how they look now:



There's still some emersed-growth leaves hanging on, but I read that stem plants such as cardinal plant have to be pruned rather aggressively to maintain good aesthetics. That's certainly true of Hygrophilia difformis, or water sprite, as you can see in some of my previous photos, where they look like trees with bare lower stems. I ended up following the "aggressive pruning" strategy, whereby one cuts off the leafy tops and replants them to achieve nice-looking bushy growth. Since switching to a shop light, I think the growth has become even bushier - the plants no longer seem to be rushing towards the light. (In fact, one of the stems kinked sideways of its own volition about the time that I switched from T12 lighting to T8 lighting.) I hope the higher light will allow thicker growth from now on.

This week in fish

Ooookay, so, maybe I should have remembered to post more often since things happened this week - basically, I found out that an aquarium store in town that had gone out of business was actually acquired by a different fishy enterprise - a "service" company expanded and added a retail side. And that retail side is quite possibly the best I've seen since Pets Etc. in Leesburg shut down! It's small, and the location is hideous (from my perspective) but the tanks themselves are very well kept and it's clear that the people running the show really care about their livestock. I bought a male blue ram for my planted tank.



In the cichlid tank, the sparring between the midranked yellow labs has progressed to jaw-locking stage - but still no tattered fins. The red zebra had been hiding most of the time. As the tank dynamics have changed, I've started thinking about changing the stocklist - the socolofi duo has never been meant for that tank anyway, and two of anything mbuna is a recipe for disaster. So I stuck an algae wafer in my larger fishnet, and the fish totally fell for it. Probably because I've been using the fishnets to sift the remnants of the tan sand out of the white sand, rather than chasing them around. So I waited until the little socolofi swam into the net, and swished him right out and into my quarantine tank. Not sure where he'll go next, but I'll find a new home for him before too long.

Strangely, since I took out the socolofi, the red zebra has actually taken up a spot on the front side of the tank - looks like he took over the territory the socolofi. Guess the little guy managed to intimidate the newcomer even though the red zebra is the bigger fish.

New arrivals

With a larger aquarium for my cichlids, I've been considering expanding my stock list to new species - unfortunately, about all that's available around here are the standard Petsmart varieties, most of which are terrible quality and probably hybrids to boot. But they had a beautiful group of Metriaclima estherae - red zebras. The largest of the group was just big enough not to be dwarfed by all but Tiny, and I assume he's a male - the orange color is rather pale, with blue shimmers on his scales. I'm happy about this, because I'm not really interested in turning the 75 into a breeding operation (and red zebras and yellow labs will crossbreed). I already have one acei baby who's taking up my quarantine tank for lack of other space to put him! Putting a new cichlid in an established tank is always a chancy business, but I've been keeping a sharp eye on them, and feeding more than usual. Next, I'm going to have to put them on a diet! The two middle-ranked yellow labs are still "fighting" - more a ritual display than actual damage. It's ironic that they're not doing each other damage, when the female yellow lab died of her wounds, even after I tried treating her. I did get one spawn from that group - the offspring are living with my parents in a 36" tank. With the way things are going, I'm thinking of whittling down my species into groups of three and adding some variety, if I can find big enough fish. Kinda difficult when most places sell only juvies. The funny thing is, the flying fox is picking up on all the aggression and getting into the tail-chases, which is amusing. Big bad African cichlids chased around by a skinny Asian fish!

In the planted tank, I've added a melon sword - the checkerboard barbs seem to really like it. Perhaps not unsurprisingly for such dark-colored fish, they spend most of their time in as much shade as they can find, which has meant hanging out underneath the driftwood, until now.



I'm going to have to get better at fish photography, as "auto" doesn't seem to be able to get the colors right! The photo makes the tank look much brighter than it looks in person.