Freshwater Tanks

[esmithiii]

Vitz- let's see some photos!

E

 

[reefnut1]

I have 2 20gals and a 55 that i raise guppies to sell to the lfs to buy reef stuff.

 

[liquid]

I have a 10 gal FW/planted tank at work based on soil substrate. Fish in the tank are currently native darters seined from the creeks in the local area: orange throat darters and rainbow darters.

I also have a 30 gal FW @ home containing the following australian rainbowfish: M.boesemani, G.incisus, G.wanamensis, C.bleheri, M.praecox. It also has a silver dollar or two and some kuli loaches.

Shane

 

[Anonymous]

vitz, you definitely must post some pics of that tank!

 

[Anonymous]

Rich-N-Poor

No joke, it just seemed like a lot of fish to cram into a twenty gallon.
All the rainbows I have ever seen have been like 2 inches long or longer and it just seemed like a tiny tank to have 68 fish in...

forget the total gallons for water quality... how do they all swim 8O

Not criticizing you Vitz... just surprised.
I don't feel so bad now. Maybe I will get that Tang for my 75 ...

fwiw-the raibows are all about 3" avg TL-the bosemani's spawn repeatedly.the rainbows are very mellow fish, and 'cruise' only occasionally.all the fish are healthy, show great color, and get along swimmingly :wink:


how did you get 68 fish? by my count, the list shows about 30 :roll:

the 20 long has always been my favorite size small tank-becuase of its proportions-i've always liked tanks that have the height and depth equal.

esmithiii,seamaiden-i'll try soon to post pics-problem is the crappy webcam-doesn't react to the lighting to well.

the gravel bed is also tiered-the right rear 2/3 is raised to about a 4" depth with ceramic 'branches' as well as the left back corner.the front of the tank is about 1.5" deep.

liquid-praecox rainbows are another one of my favorite fish

 

[Anonymous]

can't forget the female blue gourami-4" :wink:


fwiw-water changes of about a gallon/day are used to water all my houseplants-they also do very well.

 

[liquid]

Hehe, I *almost* went with a school of M.praecox in the 10 gal @ work. Another option was going with a blue-eye species like P.gertrudae or P.connieae. BTW, here's the best rainbowfish website I've found to date:

http://members.optushome.com.au/chelmon/

And a little eye-candy:

M.praecox:

P.connieae:

P.gertrudae:

Who says FW fish aren't as kewl as marine fish.

Shane

 

[brobak]

My planted 75g asian tank.
http://www.phortawesome.com/tank for the rest of the pictures.

 

[Supergenius74]

Actually my pride and joy is my 120 g freshwater tank. It's my 4th and final freshwater tank, its home for 7 full sized silver dollars, 3 full size pleco's and 1 large Oscar. It use to have nice plants in it but the silvers ate them all, now i just have some java moss. I built the stand myslef and it uses a fluval 404 filter and 2 heaters. This will one day be my reef tank but for now it makes a nice looking fresh water tank. The pic is my avatar, Definitly a low-maintenance tank.

 

[Ryan22]

I have a 55 gal African Cichlid tank mostly psudos that were born in the tank. One huge frontosa and a few small yellow Labetochromis (sp). I have a 10 gal planted tank on my desk at work mostly guppies, a few assorted tetras and a few corys. I just started a 55 gal planted tank at home recently. I needed a place to put all the baby guppies I was accumulating in my tank at work. I put it together out of old equiptment I had around the house. I set it up like a river tank I have a penguin and a fluval 304 on one end so all the flow go's the long way across the tank, It backs up to a couch in my basement so it can be viewed from three sides. I built a canopy and I'm using the lights of America 65 watt lamps to light it. So far so good, but I've just gotten past my first algea bloom. I already have more baby guppies though 8O

 

[Dewman]

Vitz,
Sorry, I am an idiot. In my haste, I misread the plants and counted them as fish.
I am still learning my latin

Sounds like you have a great tank.
I hope some day to have some of those rainbows. Man they are beautiful.
The LFS has all planted FW tanks and he has some Austrailian rainbows that are over 5 inches long. Absolutely beautiful. 8O

 

[Anonymous]

Dewman:

np

it keeps me happy :wink:

fwiw-i've seen lots of fw 'reefs' that are just as pretty as sw :wink:

(sometimes even nicer lookin' :wink: )

rainbows are among the most underappreciated fish around-mostly due to the fact that even when available-they aren't colored up yet.

liquid-another great group of really attractive fish are the dwarf s.a. cichlids-the apistogrammas,specifically.

the a.caucatoides is beautiful-and the nannocara's are nice, too

 

[esmithiii]

All these FW aquarists and no one has a link to a decent FW forum?

 

[liquid]

There's #aquaria on X-Net for chat that I know of and I'm subscribed to the Aquatic Plants List (email list). I've used AquaLink on occasion when I want a bulletin board, but that's pretty rare as most of my learning has come from reading a LOT of FW books and trial and error.

Shane

 

[Anonymous]

well, one here would be sweet... :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

Hey liquid, how did you train you fw fish to pose like that?

Great pic's!

Louey

 

[liquid]

Vitz: You'll have to convince Chucker, Microchip, and Jameso first.

Louey: I only wish I could take pics of fish like that. Those pics are from Adrian Tappin's Rainbowfish website that I linked in earlier.

Man, I can't wait until I get this potting soil substrate tank figured out and dialed in so I can set up my 125 gal FW/planted tank. This will kick some serious butt as the substrate is CHEAP (2"-3" potting soil, 1" pea gravel).

Shane

 

[esmithiii]

Liquid- Can you recommend some good books on FW fish? I am looking for the equivalent of Borneman's book for fresh water. I plan on having a planted tank and want to do it right.

Ernie

 

[Supergenius74]

I use to spend alot of time at this board before i started coming here, nice people and mostly FW. http://tropicalfish.site5.com/tfc/index.php

 

[liquid]

Most of my reading came from the Aquatic Plants Mailing List:
http://www.actwin.com/fish/aquatic-plants

And from TheKrib.com:
http://www.thekrib.com/

To be honest, the only book I have purchased to date is:

Ecology of the Planted Aquarium: A Practical Manual and Scientific Treatise for the Home Aquarist
by Diana L. Walstad
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 92-1394237

This book was seriously cool as the author did a superb job of citing literature in each chapter. There was anywhere from 50-150 references cited per chapter and they were all very relevant to the topic at hand. Diana is a proponent of using soil substrates and her tanks typically are very low-tech and straight forward.

I did get a fair amount of them thru interlibrary loan so I could preview the books before I purchased them. Takashi Amano's Nature Aquarium World series was pretty kick@$$ for sheer beauty of his tanks:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books

I believe it's a series of 3 or so books if I remember right. His tanks, however, are much higher maintenance (heating pad for substrate, large waterchanges, etc) but they looked very beautiful.

You might also try:

A Fishkeeper's Guide to Aquarium Plants: A Superbly Illustrated Guide to Growing Healthy Aquarium Plants, Featuring over 60 Species
by Barry James
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books

I have not picked up this book yet, but I plan to.

My recommendation would be to start with those books on interlibrary loan and see which ones apply to you and what you want to acheive and how much work you want to put into the tank. Also, check out the "Customers who bought this book also bought:" links in Amazon's web store.

To find inexpensive books, you might try http://www.bookfinder.com/ and http://www.booksense.com . I was shocked at how inexpensive I could find books for on both of those links.

hth

Shane