I Get Bored, You Get Pics

[vancouver]

I've had this female betta for more then a year. A real meanie, beat up males when I tried to spawn it long ago.

horrible pic of a male plakat.. its actually really nice, but wont stop flaring at its new friend

I drove a good 30 mins to go to a fish store.. had to come home with something. I picked the ugliest female betta that wasn't sick, and bought it.. lol

This betta was/is having some swim bladder/bloat problems, seems to be doing better today after a water change. This is the longest serving member of my fish crew. Almost 2 years probably. dt marble male.

horrible pics of a red vt.. I've had it for about a year

and last but not least a purple dt I've had for about a year also

The females and plakat are in 1/2 gallon tanks, while the ones with long tails are in 1g tanks. I change some water on these guys everyday.

This tank is right beside the bettas, so I steal water from this tank to fill up betta tanks.. It's a 40g square tank, with a breeding pair of rainbow cichlids, and my oscar is in there temporarily too.. The oscar spends the majority of his day trying to bite the rainbows, but he fails miserably. The rainbows don't have a mark on them. Please excuse the hideous amount of algae.. I don't know why I never clean it.

This next pic is hilarious.. my senegal bichir is poking it's head out of a small hole in the bottom of a pot.. I've never seen it do this before.

I don't think this jurupari had either, cause it was checking it out when the bichir went back down in the pot.

This is mr midnight catfish in his house.. only leaves it at night, and when it's feeding time.

Keyhole cichlid

and lastly, an overall of my hideous 48g tank. Will be re done in a few weeks once my 75g is cycled.

Comments welcome

 

[denis coghlan]

Please excuse the hideous amount of algae.. I don't know why I never clean it.

Comments welcome

I don’t know why you never clean it either. All it takes is a quick brush once a week to remove algae. Your tanks would look so much better if you did this, I like your choice of fish though and they all look very healthy.

My comments regarding the decoration are as follows. IMO fish are displayed best when in tanks similar to their natural environment.

For the 40g square tank I would remove all the terracotta pots and that big head thing. (I couldn’t sleep with that in my room, I don’t know how your fish cope!!!) I would then add one single tall piece of bogwood directly in the centre, one that nearly breaks the waters surface. That is it apart from cleaning the algae off the glass. I don’t know what type of lighting you have on the tank, but if it is sufficient I think it would look good if you added some small plant that grow from cracks in the bogwood maybe Anubias or something similar.

For the 48g, when you are renovation the tank when your 75g is up and running I would recommend the following. The tank looks a bit littered at the moment. Do the fish really need all those pots, pipes, tube etc? By now from watching your fish you must know which are in use and which are not, remove the ones that are not used at all. I know that your bichir and midnight catfish will mostly likely mooch around the tank when the sun goes down. So I suggest setting up the tank for maximum mooching!! Get some rounded river rock of different sizes, Put the rocks in from largest to smallest starting in one corner and in the other corner have only gravel. Thus giving the impression you are going from lake/rive bed to rocky shoreline.

At the end of the day, what is most important is that you like the tank. “one mans passion is another mans poison”. So set it anyway you like, these are just my comments and ideas.

 

[vancouver]

The 40g is only really used for breeding.. so I'm not too concerned how it looks.. I just put in a few caves for them to spawn in, and to hide in if they start to fight.. the frankenstein head is where they have spawned all 3 times. It's very smooth, I think that's why they like it. They eat plants, so any plants would just be eaten. As I said though it's really a function only tank, I'm not too concerned how it looks. The rainbows are being moved to 1/2 a 55g tank to breed in tomorrow, so the oscar will be the only fish in there. The light thing has 2 25w incancescent bulbs.

As for the 48g.. The toad house on the far right is where one of the midnight catfish lives 90% of the time, the fake wood thing beside it is where the other midnight catfish is all the time. All those pots scattered is where the senegal bichir hides, the green pipe is where the convict chills, and the wood on the far left is where the irridescent sharks chill.. I could remove a few of the extra things.. I'm going to remove everything, give it all a good cleaning, and try to keep it less littered.

I am going to be moving things around, but I gotta keep the caves for the midnight catfish or they will be freaked. I try to keep the bottom full of stuff for the fish to hide amongst, as the tank is overstocked right now, and I want to give them places to hide so they don't kill each other.

Wow that looks like an essay LOL

 

[MXPX4318]

great looking fish, I love the rainbows, I've got one and he's great, his buddy (a Thoricthyis Ellioti) died recently and since then he's lost a lot of his color, need to find another fish around his size for him to hang with.

Just a suggestion but when you want to show off your fish (even if not showing off the tank itself) take the time to scrub the algea first instead of apologizing for the algea, it'll make both your tank and fish look 100 times better.

Great fish though, the jurupari is amazing I was looking at getting one today acctually maybe I'll go back and grab one up.

Phillip

 

[vancouver]

Jurupari are interesting.. I'd always wanted them, and saw them on sale for $4... was a silly impulse buy.. didn't realize you shouldn't keep more then 1... The runt was killed last week, the other 2 are growing pretty quickly, so I'm going to have to split them up soon.

I don't know why I don't like cleaning the glass.. I've been spending so much time doing water changes, moving fish, and just dealing with the fish in general, I didn't feel like cleaning the algea..

Next time I take pics we'll see if the algea situation is any better

 

[Synirr]

I LOVE those rainbows, what beauties!

I don't blame you on the algae mate, I hate cleaning it too. If I were you I'd invest in a couple of those magnetic algae scrapers. They're the sole reason my glass stays relatively clean. Of course, I can't reach the back wall with it, but pop a black background on there and you can't see the brown algae on it anyway . My 80 gallon lacks a background, so the algae on its back wall is quite an eyesore at times, it gets scraped off once every few months when I feel motivated.

 

[vancouver]

I actually have one of them.. but I hate using it.. in the 40g tank the glass is so thick the inside scraper part always falls off.. then I have to stick my hand in the tank to fish it out and re-magnet it.. if that makes sense..

I just added a pleco to the 48g to clean the algea, and it's been working hard it seems.

The rainbows were $40 for the pair. Even the guy at the store was shocked I was willing to pay $40 for them, but I'm not the kind to barter for anything anyways. I've never seen rainbows around here, so I had to get them. I just wish they'd spawn again. Hopefully once I move them to 1/2 a 55g they will be more interested for some reason

Almost everyday the male and female clean the frankenstein head out, so I have a feeling they want to breed, but with oscar in there they definitely wont try.

 

[Synirr]

Get a bigger scraper then! If the magnet is large enough you won't have that problem and it works like a dream

 

[vancouver]

hmm maybe I will.. now that I think about it I do have some store credit to waste.

 

[MXPX4318]

wow forty bucks a pair, for that price I could buy a whole tank full and wait for them to pair off and have a few pairs. I think they run something like 3 bucks a pop around here (about 1 1/2"- 2"). they look great though love their color, hope you're getting some great looking fish from them.

Phillip

 

[vancouver]

Yea I've heard how cheap and easy to find they are elsewhere.. but as I said, around here I'd never seen them in a good 5 years of cichlid-keeping.. so I figured I would scoop em up.. Wasn't that hard actually to swallow $40, and I only paid half. I drove my sister to the airport that day, and stopped there on the way back, so she paid for one of them. I haven't had any successful spawns from them yet.. I left them with the fry all 3 times, and all 3 times they ate them.

Hopefully once I move them to their 1/2 55g tank, they will be more interested in breeding.. They're in my room right now, so they spend a lot of their time flaring at me and trying to get my attention. The 55 they will be going into is in the fish room I only check once a day, so they will have lots of time to play with each other. I plan on removing the male after the eggs hatch, so hopefully the mrs. will raise them and I can get some rainbows out to other people in the area via a few lfs.

Heres an old pic of them with fry about 2 weeks after I got them.