Newbie

I’m a new guy here. I’ve kept aquariums on & off wherever I lived as far back as I can remember starting around 1960: Goldfish, standard tropical fish, local wild species, aquatic amphibians of all sorts and a couple of highly aquatic snake species. I mainly worked at breeding all of these. At one time I kept salt water tanks of various types and had a side business importing rare or unusual fresh & salt water animals suitable for home aquariums.

I’ve mellowed with time and toned down the fish keeping. I currently work with few quality Japanese type Ranchu and Wakin goldfish in a couple of small outdoor pools in a walled & fenced enclosure to keep ‘coons and other critters from getting to them. These goldfish are a sort of a nostalgia thing for me since I spent much of my early child hood in various parts of Japan and these were the first fish I kept. My wife has a trio (1.2) of adopted wild caught but long term captive Ornate Box turtles in this enclosure that do very well. These naturally produce youngsters every year. There are a pair of adults bred from the wild trio making 5 permanent resident Box Turtles. So the turtle population fluctuates depending on how fast we find good homes for the well established yearlings. The 3 original turtles have been with us for about 10 years now.

I also have 4 indoor planted tanks: A 75 gal standard tank with coarse sand substrate, dense gnarly wood and some flat stones add structural height and plenty of caves and crevices. It is densely planted with several types of plants. No CO2 is used. A canister filter and a sponge covered power head are used for filtration. The lighting consists of 2 suspended can type LED arrays and a bank of fluorescent lamps. The LEDs are a new addition and were supposed to replace the 6 fluorescent lamp setup but as nice (and expensive!) as the LEDs are, one bank of 2 fluorescent lamps was found to be needed for good plant health. The residents include 2 types of New World Dwarf cichlids; Apistogramma cacatuoides & Dicrossus filamentosus - two species that should not be housed together but for some reason they do fine in my setup. This tank also houses a pair of unidentified Bristle Nose Plecos Ancistrus sp. which have striking jet black and pure white markings and are the best algae cleaners bar none! A couple of common small tetra species, Endler’s Live Bearers, Japanese pond snails and Orange Dwarf Crayfish (CPO) round out this tank. This tank is about 5 years old in its present configuration (except for the LEDs). The only problem I’ve had is excess algae and that was rectified completely with the addition of the Bristle Nose.

I have 2 identical frameless rectangular glass tanks of non-standard dimensions with a capacity of about 27 gallons. Both are lighted with 2 linear LED arrays clipped to the glass that are outstanding! The substrate is one of the clay pellet types, dark brown to nearly black in color. Canister filters are used set to low flow. Dense wood is the focal point and they are heavily planted with both rooted and floating vegetation which are supplemented with CO2. One tank houses Tinwini Danios. I’ve seen these fish before but was not interested but then I came across a group of these Danios that are darker with much brighter gold color in a aquarium shop that just got them in and bought what they had without any regrets. These Danios are fast and twitchy swimmers compared other Danios I’ve seen; even the other similar but less bright Tinwini Danios I’ve seen weren’t jerky. There is a small group of some type of flattened Loach supposedly from Vietnam in this tank. These are about 2” long and 1.5” wide all black dorsal with small gold spots and white ventral. They have an extra bright gold spot near or on the eyes that are flashed when two get near each other. These loaches are interesting, active and hardy fish. Rili variety of Cherry Shrimp, Black Crystal Bee shrimp, and Sulawesi shrimp, and Yellow Sulawesi snails rounds out this tank. The Danios do spawn in the tank and enough fry survive to keep a sustainable group going. The only problem I’ve had is the tank has no lid and these Danios will jump out from time to time. The jumpers are always females so I suspect they are being chased by hormonal males. Floating vegetation helps with the jumping problem. This tank is about 2.5 years old.

The other 27 gal tank is setup nearly identical to the tank described above. Some plants are different and it’s less densely planted. There’s a group of the same flattened black & gold spotted loach, Crystal Red shrimp, Yellow variety of Cherry shrimp, and another type of Sulawesi shrimp and a mottled colored Sulawesi snail. The main fish in this tank are Celestial Pearl Danios - Danio margaritatus. These might be my favorite small aquarium fish. Their behavior reminds me of White Cloud Mountain Minnows Tanichthys albonubes which is one of my favorite small fish. There are self sustaining groups of White Clouds in my goldfish ponds. They handle the cold of winter fine and are excellent at keeping mosquitoes to a minimum. I’ve always liked White Cloud Minnows. Anyway, the Celestial Pearl Danios are nice to watch close up and spawn in the tank. They are not as fast and twitchy as the Tinwini Danio and I haven’t had any jump out yet. This tank is just over a year old.

Last is a 3.5 gal curved front all glass tank. It’s equipped with one clamped on array of LED lighting and a small ultra thin cartridge type hang-on filter with the flow turned down to the minimum setting. No CO2 assist. The substrate is coarse sand and pocked volcanic or coral stone and planted with one red crypt, and a couple of small leafed plants, Xmas Moss and topped off with some duck weed. The entire substrate is covered with some type of very fine leafed plant that spread from one little clump. There’s a pair of Sparkling Gouramis Trichopsis pumila, some Dwarf Live Brearers- Heterandria formosa, red Cherry shrimp, a few snails and a trio of bright yellow Dwarf Crayfish... I noticed the CPO Orange Crayfish in my big tank would throw off the occasional bright yellow or yellow/orange crayfish. I didn’t think much about this but recently I noticed 4 bright yellows and scooped up a male and 2 female and isolated them in this small tank to see if they breed true. No breeding action yet and for all I know these yellow crays are common. The yellow/orange crays are a sort of washed out orange and not that interesting. But the yellows are striking compared to the orange type.

I prefer the smaller tanks. They are easier to maintain especially when it comes to water changes. And I enjoy getting up close to watch smaller critters anyway.

Even though I’ve been keeping aquariums for some time I’m no expert on fish keeping. But I’ll try to answer any questions about my tanks past and present. My answers will be more anecdotal and opinion based than scientific or current state of the art.
Whoops! I went on too long.

Elapid

 

Thanks for the welcomes. I'll post some zaps soon though the tanks are not special in any way and I'm not much of a photographer.

Out of curiosity I installed Windows 8 Evaluation version on my machine which was a big mistake! It works fine except some older software doesn't work with it including my photo/video processing software and Win 8 cannot be uninstalled short of a complete reinstall of the previous operating system and application software. Windows 8 is optimized for touch screen devices and is no advantage for key board/mouse machines as far as I can see. I'm looking into some open source photo software, or web based software like PICASA or I might buy a copy of newer photo software. When I get this figured out I'll upload something.

Best Elapid

Ps. What is a "trophy"?