Farlowella and Cory habitats - wild

[GaryE]

These videos were made by Oliver Lucanus, and provide a great glimpse into habitats.







These are the kinds of aquarium youtube videos I like - windows into nature shot by someone who spends a lot of time in the water.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Love the vids. I am in the same school of waiting to see vids from the wild. I will never get to see them myself so this is the next best option. I was able to meet and chat some with Leandro Sousa at the 2022 Catfish Convention in VA. He has a number of vids on YouTube. I love watching them but there is one small problem. Most are in Portuguese with sub-titles.

But the information and the images are great, One of my favorites deals with zebra plecos in the wild. It is 48 minutes and is not limited to zebras. It is very informative but long. Since I got me first really serious start with breeding rarer plecos with zebras, I have watched this one a few times. I have also donated to his project Ictio Zingu.

One of the more fascination areas the vid below touches on deals with the effects of the Belo Monte Dam. I know he likely read some of my posts on the net about my experience with zebras. I was one of the people who believed that the Belo Monte dam would likely cause the extinction of the the species in the wild. I was wrong about that. But, it is greatly reducing the population. When combined with the illegal removea,l of zebras from the country, it likely has things close to collapse. If you watch the entire vid you will come across their reserach on this topic.

They ran simulations which basically showed that 100,000 fish was the normal population was sufficient for them to thrive and continue as a wild species. The problem comes when they estimated what the dam has likely done to the population. They worked with the idea that the number likely reduced to more like 20,000. The problem with this us that their projections showed that the loss of just 100 fish from that 20,000 was enough to result in extinction.

Project IctioXingu is working to reproduce zebras in quantity to help prevent that, If you can make it through all 48 minutes you will be amaze by what you will learn and see. Once you are on his site you will find an lot of vids that go way beyond just zebras. The information is worth having to put up with the sub-titles.



His YouTube Channel is here https://www.youtube.com/@LeandroSousa_IctioXingu

 

[GaryE]

Leondro Sousa and Oliver Lucanus work together a lot, with a Xingu book and a lot of videos. Our thread has tumbled into a 'scene' with those two. If you go back through the below water offerings, you will find a lot of fish and places I'd love to see, before they're gone.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

There are a number of people I have met over the years who are Icon in the hobby. Because I am a supporter of PlanetCatfish, I have gotten a few TY gifts from Jools over the years. One is an unusual book. It is written in both English and German. The left hand pages are in English and the right side pages are the same information written in German It is entitled Loricariids of the Middle Xingu/Loricariiden des mittleren Rio Xingu. The authors Mauricio Camargo, Heriberto Gimênes Junior, Leandro Melo de Sousa & Lucia Rapp Py-Daniel.

It is a really neat book because in addition to the written information on each species, it also has a picture of the area of the river where they are found. I have met Leandro and I have heard Lucia speak but we have never met. I also have Ingo Seidel's book, Back to Nature Guide to L-Catfishes about which I have a fun story.

I have met and spoken with Ingo at a number of weekend events and wanted to have him sign my copy of his book. But for some reason I forgot to bring it with me the first time we met. I forgot it again the second time as well. And then came the bi-annual 2016 catfish convention where I was a room seller and Ingo was attending. I do not remember if he was a speaker but he was on the dais for the pleco breeding roundtable discussion. The pros on the dais took Qs fro the audience.

I normally arrived at events where I was selling late Thursday afternoon to get set-up prior to the official start of the event on Friday. I ran into Ingo in the lobby of the hotel and we talked for a bit. I had to tell him that once again I had forgotten to bring the book for him to sign. He replied that he was disappointed since he he had flown all the way over from Germany to the states just to sign my book.