briztoon Posted December 19, 2007 Share Posted December 19, 2007 Decided I'd start a thread of my own, seeing as I like talking about my tanks so much in other peoples threads. So thanks alex250 for letting me hyjack your thread somewhat, and sorry dude. OK! I have always liked South American cichlids, don't know why , and I always thought of African cichlids as tarted up hookers with too much makeup on. I also like having what I consider a well rounded tank, one with a few different types of fish, not just cichlids. I quickly found out there were lots of different types of fish from South America available. In March I finished planting and cycling my first tank. It's a 6 foot SunSun tank that has a two bar drip filter in the rear of the hood and came with two 900LPH internal power heads. I soon learned it's a pretty big tank as a first tank and to learn on. Here's a pic of what it used to look like. In May I decided to get a second tank, a 2 foot SunSun with the same type of filter. It finished cycling in late June. Here's a picture of it shortly after it was set up. I started stocking my 2 foot tank in August, in September a disaster befell my 6 foot tank. I did an extensive tank clean and filter clean out. Now I knew about only cleaning one filter at time, and to do it in tank water from your tank. I did what I did every week, only on a slightly larger scale. I was cleaning the filter compartments of the drip filter and laid them out on the front lawn as I always did. I left the eheim canister filter running on the tank. What I didn't know was that morning, before I crawled out of bed, the manager of our townhouse complex had gone around the front yards of all the units spraying weed kill. I'd never seen him do it before, but I manage a pub so usually finish work between midnight and 4am, or start work at 6am depending what rotation I'm working. So I was always asleep or already at work when he did this. Anyway, long sad story is I lost 60ish black neon tetras, 30ish marbled hatchetfish, 8 otocinclus, 6 corydoras, 6 apistogramma agassizii red gold, and two laetacara curviceps. Also my three banana lillies died off, along with most of the thin val and amazon swords. The loss of the hatchetfish and apistos absolutely gutted me. Survivors were 6 geophagus sp. araguaia 'orange head', 4 Keyhole cichlids, a pair of orange spot bristlenose, 1 sailfin pleco, 4 corydoras julii and one marbled hatchetfish. Along with 4 logs with anubis and 2 logs with java fern on them. Thus ended the first age of my main tank. You can see some pictures of the tank in the Gallery section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briztoon Posted December 19, 2007 Author Share Posted December 19, 2007 Some information on the tanks and some of the things I learnt. Never, ever, place any equipemnt parts that go in your tank or filters on the front lawn. I now use a tarp that is differnt coloured on either side. I make sure the one same side only is always placed on the lawn and is cleaned fter use. For substrate I have a thin layer 1mm to 3mm river gravel on the bottom, a layer of laterite over this, and then another layer of river gravel over this. Because geo's like sifting and digging through the substrate, laterite enevitably finds it's way onto the substrate surface. And it's losing battle to try and bury it. Stocking list at time of disaster. 6 Geophagus araguaia sp. "orange head" 2m/4f Apistogramma agassizii sp. "red gold" 4 Cleithracara maroni - keyhole cichlids 2 Laetacara curviceps - dwarf flag acaras 60ish Hyphessobrycon herbertaxelrodi - black neon tetra 30ish Carnegiella strgata - marbled hatchetfish 8 Corydoras julii 6 Otocinclus vestitus 2 L110 Ancistrus sp. "orange spot" 1 Glyptoperichthys joselimaianus The schools of tetras and hatchetfish were awesome. The black neons didn't really school as much, though you would get small shoals moving as one then splitting up. The hatchetfish formed two seperate schools of similar size. For what ever reason the hatchetfish never schooled in one big shoal. But the two schools were fun to watch. The apistos were the most aggressive fish in the tank. Each female claimed a log with a cave under it. The two dominant females at either end under the large anubis forest logs. And the two sub-dominant females were left to pick smaller logs in the middle, one chose a small anubis log, and the other a java fern log. However the dominant females didn't have it thier own way. The laetacara pair took up residents amongst the anubis forest on top of the large log at the right end of the tank. And the 4 keyholes took over the large cave under the anubis forest log at the left end, and the java fern log that backed onto it. Also a mated pair of araguaia cleaned off a patch on the back of the right end log and used this as the platform for laying thier eggs on. Plecos went where ever they could fit, however the two caves of the sub-dominant female agassizii were to small for them to fit into. The male agassizii were brilliant, though they cuased me much angst. While the tank was heavily planted and logged, the sub-dominat male often had trouble staying away from the dominat male. There were a couple of intense lip locking and body slapping sessions. The araguaia are my pride and joy. I bought eight 2 inch juveniles hoping for at least two or three pairs. What I ended up with was 5 males, 1 female and two smaller indeterminant ones that I returned to my LFS. The dominat male paired up with the female, and they spawned four times that I know of. However I never saw any young. Then one day I saw the female spit out two dozen fry. I was like, "where the shizbit did they come from". Unfortunately it appeared dad had no interest in helping protect the young. All he was concerned about was protecting the cave he had dug out a month before and rarely travelled more than six inches from. I saw the second largest male eat half the fry in one gulp the next day at feeding time. The female spat the youngsters out to grab a mouthfull of NLS cichlid pellets, and this male darted in, and munch. Plants. A couple of different sword varieties, two small logs with java fern growing on them, two large and two medium sized logs wih anubis growing on them, thin val, and crypts. I also had three other logs in the tank. I use Flourish liquid excel, comprehensive and iron suppliments in small doses, and Sera fert. tablets. The tablets I bury amongst the root systems on water change day, then three days after I add a dose of liquid ferts. I've never used CO2 or found the need to in either tank. Plants generally grow faster in the 2 foot tank for some reason. However all the amazon sword plants seem real slow growers, though thier leaves are lush and green. Link to gallery pictures of tank. http://www.aceforums.com.au/index.php?act=...m&album=119 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briztoon Posted December 19, 2007 Author Share Posted December 19, 2007 Lighting. The tank hood came with four 2 foot 6500K and two 3 foot 10000K tubes. Filtration. The internal power heads that come with the drip filters and tank and the set up of the filter returns are inadequate for these tanks. There simply isn't a strong enough current to keep detritus afloat in the water column so that the filter intakes can pick it up. I also believe these power heads drop significantly below 900LPH, even when cleaned weekly. I realised this after my first tank re-arangement 2 months after set up and stocking. So I bought two eheim pro 2228's. I set one up so that the filter return fed into one of the drip pipes of the filter in the rear of the hood. The other set up at the other end of the tank was set up as per normal, with the spray bar agitating the surface. Unfortunaely this had a negative side effect on my hatchetfish. It stopped them schooling at the surface and forced them down to mid level in the water column. They don't like a strong surface current. So I angled the spray bar down into the tank diagonally. This upset the tetras, it seams they didn't like a strong current passing through thier level of the water column. So I connected the second eheim's return tube to the second drip bar of the drip filter. This caused me to rethink what filter media I used in my filters. Most of my fish are found in blackwater SA rivers or streams, and I had peat in two out of seven compartments in the drip filter. Another two had purigen and three had eheim substrat pro. Now in the eheims I have poly filter wool in the bottom compartment, ceramic noodles in the middle compartment and substrat pro in to top compartment. All seven of the drip filter compartmenst have peat bags in them, with substrat pro filling the gaps. I don't have under gravel jets as I thought they wouldn't go down to well with my cichlids as they are mainly bottom dwelling spieces, or the corydoras and other catfish. Also as has been pointed out in alex250's thread, the holes in the drip pipes for the filters clog up easilly and quikly with plant matter. This is easy to remedy with a 1 meter double ended pipe brush. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briztoon Posted December 19, 2007 Author Share Posted December 19, 2007 Some more pics. Bristlenose under the log and sailfin on the glass. And that's the back end of a curviceps trying to get out of the picture. I could never get a decent photo of them. Sub-dominant male agassizii, out and about. One of two Keyhole pairs. Larger male above the smaller female. You can also see at otocinclus doing his job of keeping the leaves algea free. All four keyholes, a laetacara and an upset female agassizii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D6C1 Posted December 19, 2007 Share Posted December 19, 2007 Nice updates.. I'll be watching this thread with interest! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gingerbeer Posted December 20, 2007 Share Posted December 20, 2007 Sad to hear of the disaster. Glad the red heads made it - would be heart breaking seeing the hatchets go but - one of my list of must haves nevers hads. Would love to see you breed those keyholes - they have some nice colour. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gingerbeer Posted December 20, 2007 Share Posted December 20, 2007 Sad to hear of the disaster. Glad the red heads made it - would be heart breaking seeing the hatchets go but - one of my list of must haves nevers hads. Would love to see you breed those keyholes - they have some nice colour. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chevguy Posted December 20, 2007 Share Posted December 20, 2007 I have always liked South American cichlids, don't know why , and I always thought of African cichlids as tarted up hookers with too much makeup on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gingerbeer Posted December 20, 2007 Share Posted December 20, 2007 I got to agree about the African tarts, however I have always identified Apistos with the old days when there was the circle in the middle of the mall where all the punks sat looking tough but actually quite harmless . Now I reckon Apistogramma sp "Wilhekmi" looks a bit emo. Hope it's not just me...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robdog013 Posted December 20, 2007 Share Posted December 20, 2007 I feel your pain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briztoon Posted December 20, 2007 Author Share Posted December 20, 2007 Thanks guys. I finished the aquascaping of the new set up today, and took some preliminary pictures. I also traded in my pair of orange spot bristlenose and gold spot pleco for a pair of royal whiptail catfish, and bought a pair of juvenile L168. Here's a tease. I'm off to the pub now to play some poker, so I'll finish uploading the pics when I get home and post some more then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briztoon Posted December 20, 2007 Author Share Posted December 20, 2007 Left end of tank. Usually where the laetacara hang out, but they travel right through the planted area. Middle of tank. Right end of tank. I'm hopping the backside of the curved log will provide a good platform for the araguaia to spawn on. Hollow log in right front corner. Should make a good cave for a pair of Apistogramma agassizii. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briztoon Posted December 20, 2007 Author Share Posted December 20, 2007 Fish pics. Didn't really take many photos, mainly of the tank. The new L168's wouldn't come out from where ever they are hiding. Current stock as of today. 6 Geophagus araguaia sp."orange head" 5 Laetacara curviceps - Dwarf Flag cichlid 18 Thayeria boehlkei - Blackline penguin fish 4 Carnegiella strigata strigata - Marbled hatchetfish 2 Nannostomus marginatus - Dwarf pencilfish 8 Corydoras julii 6 Otocinclus vestitus 2 L168 Dekeyseria brachyura - Butterfly Pleco or Flounder Pleco 2 Sturisoma aureum - Royal whiptail Sturisoma aureum - Royal whiptail Laetacara curviceps - Dwarf Flag cichlid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AFJ Posted December 22, 2007 Share Posted December 22, 2007 very nice tank u hav started there...ohh the poor lil fish...sorry to hear bout them...best of luck with it this time...tanks look great! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briztoon Posted December 24, 2007 Author Share Posted December 24, 2007 A pair of the curviceps had thier first spawn today. Photos aren't great as they've laid the eggs on a stone behind the log, amongst the thin val. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SYNiC Posted December 25, 2007 Share Posted December 25, 2007 Lookin' good mate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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