Greetings And Salutations...and Pics!

[acropora1981]

So I've been doing aquariums for 15ish years. I've been mainly into the reef hobby for about 10 years, with brief forays back into freshwater. Anyway, I've setup a nice little 16 gallon south American themed simple planted aquarium. Its go 3 neon swords(1M/2F), 14 cardinal tetras, 2 schwartzi Cory cats, 2 german blue rams(1M/1F), and a gold ancistrus pleco. Plants are anubias nana and java fern (aka, the easiest plants ever).

Plant nutrients supplied by Tropica, root tabs are seachem. No carbon supplementation as of yet, nor is any planned. Only problem so far is that the java is falling apart a bit. It was pretty ragged when I bought it, so I think it may have just been doomed. Give it a few more weeks then toss & replace if necessary. Also will likely add a few freshwater shrimp.

Lighting is 1x 65W PC pink/daylight. Filter is a HOB eheim liberty. Stealth heater. There's a sponge filter in there as well that will be removed shortly. Was used to cycle & age the tank. Fish are fed NLS flakes with garlic, NLS GROW pellets, mysis shrimp, and live: brine shrimp, daphnia, fairy shrimp and insect (blackfly, I think) larvae.

Here's a pic:

And a video:


About me: Marine and Freshwater biologist educated, own my own business, drive a tiny blue car, blue jays fan, live in Toronto, love to go to all night house music parties and keep baller reef tanks.

side note, here's my reef:

 

[onebto]

That's some good looking tanks thanks for sharing them with us

Regards onebto

 

[Littlemonkey]

Love the tanks.

 

[Assaye]

Gorgeous swords!

Great tanks and welcome to TFF!

 

[acropora1981]

thanks peeps!

Yeah im loving the swords... I never knew I could love freshwater fish this much! I can't believe how nice the swords are looking though for sure.. plus the Rams seem to have picked a spot, sort of like a cave...and the female has the pink belly spot, and the her egg laying tube is kinda out? Pretty excited

For a while there my slogan was 'freshwater is crap.'....totaly wrong! Its so easy to care for and the fish all seem to be a bargain price in comparison to my marines... only diff is you can't frag fish.

 

[Assaye]

thanks peeps!

Yeah im loving the swords... I never knew I could love freshwater fish this much! I can't believe how nice the swords are looking though for sure.. plus the Rams seem to have picked a spot, sort of like a cave...and the female has the pink belly spot, and the her egg laying tube is kinda out? Pretty excited

For a while there my slogan was 'freshwater is crap.'....totaly wrong! Its so easy to care for and the fish all seem to be a bargain price in comparison to my marines... only diff is you can't frag fish.

Ha ha, so true about the fragging. You can kind of frag plants . . . I guess, lol.

I have a pair of male neon swords but they're nothing like yours. Yours have a great body shape and stunning colour - genuinely in love! Great to hear about the rams as well =)

Freshwater is great and so cheap. I only started out in June and I'm addicted. 7 tanks up and running with two more in storage just waiting for some more space in the house. Been planning a marine tank for months but I spend all my spare cash on freshwater, LOL!

#40##, the more I look at that reef the more I love it. What stock do you have?

 

[acropora1981]

thanks peeps!

Yeah im loving the swords... I never knew I could love freshwater fish this much! I can't believe how nice the swords are looking though for sure.. plus the Rams seem to havadsfe picked a spot, sort of like a cave...and the female has the pink belly spot, and the her egg laying tube is kinda out? Pretty excited

For a while there my slogan was 'freshwater is crap.'....totaly wrong! Its so easy to care for and the fish all seem to be a bargain price in comparison to my marines... only diff is you can't frag fish.

Ha ha, so true about the fragging. You can kind of frag plants . . . I guess, lol.

I have a pair of male neon swords but they're nothing like yours. Yours have a great body shape and stunning colour - genuinely in love! Great to hear about the rams as well =)

Freshwater is great and so cheap. I only started out in June and I'm addicted. 7 tanks up and running with two more in storage just waiting for some more space in the house. Been planning a marine tank for months but I spend all my spare cash on freshwater, LOL!

#40##, the more I look at that reef the more I love it. What stock do you have?

Thanks! Maybe I'll go get another few of those swords!

Stock in my reef...good greif... here we go:

Blue Mushrooms
Superman Mushrooms
Ricordea Mushrooms (Orange, Pink, Green, Yellow)
Zoanthids -Eagle Eyes, Dragon Eyes, Plantinum Pumpkins, LA Lakers, Fruit Loops, magicians, Purple Death Paly's
Palau Green Neptha x4 (extinct in the wild), Xenia elongata, red sea xenia, blue xenia, leather coral, purple cespitularia, frilly gorgonian
green Branch hammer, green branch frogspawn, acanthastrea lorhowensis, duncan, orange plate (fungia sp)
Montipora digitata orange, montipora digitata purple, montipora capricornis orange, monti cap green/purple, montipora danae 'sunset', stylophora pink, stylopora 'ponape', acropora sp various about 5 species, pocillipora damicornis crystal green.
Entinacmea quadricolor/'rose bubble' anemone, Tridacna deresa clam
1 pair Bangaii cardinals
various snails

I think that about does it lol

actually, here is an updated pic the one above is a few months back.

 

[acropora1981]

The page wouldnt let me add a pic to that post...anyway here is a pic from yesterday.

 

[simonas]

welcome to the forum

fantastic tanks love the second pic it looks great, what size tank is the reef?

 

[acropora1981]

welcome to the forum

fantastic tanks love the second pic it looks great, what size tank is the reef?

Thanks, its a JBJ 28 gallon Nano Cube. I dont know the exact dimensions.

 

[seffieuk]

would love to see you also spend some time in the Marine section any chance of you posting some photos of your reef there - us salties don't come up North of the Forum very often salt creep you know, keeps us stuck

Seffie x

 

[acropora1981]

would love to see you also spend some time in the Marine section any chance of you posting some photos of your reef there - us salties don't come up North of the Forum very often salt creep you know, keeps us stuck

Seffie x

I'll try to shoot a few good shots of the reef with my new camera tomorrow or Monday, and then I'll post some shots of it over in the marine section, with a description of some of the automated systems etc.

 

[seffieuk]

Cool, will look forward to that

Seffie x

 

[Assaye]

The page wouldnt let me add a pic to that post...anyway here is a pic from yesterday.

Stunning colours!

I have such a soft spot for those clams - I loved looking at them in our coral tank when I worked at a lfs. How are they to feed? Freshwater clams are practically impossible to keep unless you really know your stuff with molluscs, so it'd be interesting to compare the two.

You're making me want to go and set up a reef now - I can't afford it, LOL!

 

[acropora1981]

The marine clams in the genus Tridacna (the giant clams) are almost entirely reliant on symbiotic algae housed in the mantle (the frilly part that sticks out). Those are the most commonly kept in the marine hobby. They do benefit from phytoplankton additives, especially when they are young, but the care is similar to corals; lots of light, cleanish water (though they actually do a little better with some nitrates, like soft corals). Most of their food is in the form of sugars (specifically, glucose) produced by their symbiotic algae(zooxanthellae), and by directly taking in the algal cells from the mantle cavity(they're conveniently housed in small tubules that are actually an extension of the digestive tract!). So ...yeah they're fairly easy. The easiest species are usually considered to be T. squamosa and T. derasa, followed by T. maxima and finally T. crocea, and then there is T. gigas, which gets very very large (1 meter long, 450 kg) and isn't really suitable for most reefs unless they're HUGE (300 gallons plus, with a large footprint). Mine in the front there is Tridacna derasa.

lol I did my some of my honors work on T. squamosa (I bred them here @ University) so I have a particularly large amount of useless data about them stuck in my head!