Prochaska

Specifically a juvenile Zonatus

Sold as “Montecristo” but these look more like viejas what do y’all think?

Eheim

I like your setup and have my 29g set up the same way filtration wise it has worked well for my Multi colony of x20-25 with x5 Transcriptus and grow out black Calvus! The 29g is the smallest size I’ll keep, I’ve always really enjoyed the little community I’ve been able to create with it! I have GBRs such as the one in my profile and apistos, and have had a pea puffer community, a endler livebearer tank and even a shrimp one too. The small body fish you have in your stocking list will work great, I’d personally replace snails as I’m not a fan and replace them with some Otocinclus if you’re looking for algae eaters!

Peacock Gudgeon is my favorite asiatic fish!

It’s been a week since I added 5 Juli Transcriptus and the smallest Calvus a local store had. The Julis and the Multies had quite the gang war when first introduced. I did so under no light and kept light off for the next two evenings coming home from work. I think the Multies had really come accustomed to all the new territory and rock work of their new upgraded tank in a quick few days and weren’t inclined to easily give it up. Luckily I have had no fatalities in either species. Once the Anubias came in though it really helped me break up even more lines of sight and really help split the tank horizontally into a top and bottom half. The Julis have now claimed the upper parts and the sides of the rock pile and most of the plants. Now them and the Multies rarely notice each other outside of feeding time or one drifting off a little too far from the rest. The Calvus gets along with everyone and hasn’t had many if any real scuffles, he has more or less claimed the territory on the back half of the rock pile. He does sometimes come out in the upper piles of the rock to interact with the Julis. He is an eager eater and usually first in line when the lid is opened! Got a power head this weekend to make sure the water is getting well circulated for the L Sponge and 55 Tidal. Still a lot of time left to see how this little community develops but so far off to a good start!

I used to catch these and other sunfish such as, bluegills, green sunfish, red ear, longear and pumpkinseed in local waterways. They are actually what got me into the hobby believe it or not! I was such a big fan of fishing for these guys I got a 65g marineland as my 1st ever tank to place some wild caught ones in to study their habits and traits. I had success keeping between 3-5 in said tank depending on their size. They are territorial when breeding but not aggressive to each other and therefore like to be in community “shoals” for the aquarium environment. True Bluegills always seemed to get the largest and I would grow out some big bulls to then stock my neighborhood pond with. The pumpkinseed and green sunfish were the smallest and you could easily do 5/6 in a 40 breeder+ sized tank. I had to always exclusively feed them live crickets and worms and once that would get established would take frozen food and some flake. I never used a heater for these guys because they can survive below freezing temps outside and this allowed them to be more peaceful since it wasn’t warm enough to usually trigger spawning outside of sometimes August down here in Texas. I had larger stone sized gravel substrate a large and multi branch tangled spider wood piece in the middle with river rocks around the base and built caves on each back corner with a canister filter. Hope this is helpful and feel free to message me anytime about keeping sunfish! might have grammatical errors will reread later for potential edits.

That blue speckling in the black dot is questionable I would guess a male, does the stomach turn pink/rosy? If so then that’s a female, mine gets really pink when feeding frozen food.

Saw this brute today in a community 90g at a local store. Idk if I’ve ever seen an Angel with such a nuchal hump before! They also just had this monster of a clown knife, he dwarfed this pretty bare 180g.

The Anubias XXL came in and the pots were too large for the co-op rock planters. Nonetheless I split it up and tucked it in as best I could to the rock work. Guess I need to get some of my beloved crypts for these planters now!

Adding a full grown angel let alone a wild one to an already established community tank could be an issue imo and ime, especially with the tetras you have. I had a full size mature wild angel that literally ate everything smaller than him. Rasboras, barbs, tetras and even corydoras. It honestly blew my mind because I have kept A LOT of angels over a very long time and never had one that aggressive and it was wild to watch him go after and eat fish 2.5"+ I've also never had Angels, Festivums or Gouramis get along. They all always wanted to be the bigger, flashy, trailer show fish over the other "look a likes"

Awesome! Thank you for sharing your lake tang experience with me! Do you think that aggression came from them being physically so similar? That’s why I think I can get away with 1 Altolamprologus and a trio of J. transcripts being so different physically from the multies.

Thank you for the kind words, just to think I started out with 3 just under a year ago! I have escargot, whales eye and sea urchin shells for the multies. I also have small pink “raspberry” shells in there for color and aesthetic that they also enjoy moving around like sand.

I recently upgraded my multi colony to this 29g. There are currently 12-16 mature adults with 2-3 Bull males. Also 8 grow out juveniles and who knows how many fry in the 3+ dozen shells. They started burying their shells and breeding immediately after moving in, surprise, surprise. I also settled on the new rock configuration I think. Lots of levels, angled line of sight breaks, and many caves/crevices in the holey rock/dragon stone combo. I think this should allow me to get a trio of julidochromis transcriptus. Still waiting on 2 XXL Anubias for those corner planter stones to help with additional cover and breaks of sight and soaking up those nitrates. I think I should also get a power head just to make sure no debris is really settling all over the rockwork. I have a Seachem Tidal HOB and a Medium Size Co-Op Sponge. Is it possible to maybe grow out a single Calvus/Compressiceps or any of the Altolamprologus species in said tank? I’ve read how they take forever to hit full size, so maybe I could have one for a while before needing to trade em in or sell it? What do y’all think? Any advice or experience you have in the matter would be greatly appreciated!

Yeah just make sure you have root tabs for those plants and if they don’t want to stay in that larger substrate you can always get plant weights to keep them in position