TheSwissAquarist

I’ve reproduced worse specimens than that, and they’ve all turned out pretty good after culling. Color: ✅ Body: ✅ Finnage : Could use some polishing up, but get him a nice female and it shouldn’t be a problem. Have you bred bettas before?

Start with 5 and work your way towards that…😅 It’d be pretty cool if you could just point at a school of Sterbais doing the whale thing and say: “ I bred all those in my spare time” . 😂

Get me some too while you’re at it. 😜

Looking good! Now comes the hard bit : plants 🤯!

The worst thing ever if you haven’t got yourself a dedicated fishroom ⬆️!

Swords tend to feed out of the gravel, so definitely bury them and maybe complement them with Easy Root Tabs if you want to give them that extra boost.

Monte Carlo and pearlweed both enjoy CO2 when growing, so unless you want to go down that rabbit hole…? Marsilea Hirsuta is a newish carpeting plant to the hobby and seems to do fine in an average tank. Utricularia Gramnifolia has worked great for me.

Coming along for the ride!

Nice tank! I’m surprised that it’s working out between the gouramis and the angelfish, but they do seem to complement each other color wise. It’s getting a bit crowded in there, so I’d go for just 3 more blue emperors, unless you feel that your filtration is capable of taking some more. 😅

@Colu It could be a sign of blindness?

Colors are coming out full blast though. Poor mystery snail! Is he/she plant safe?

Came home to 4 little glowlight wrigglers! No deaths as well! 🥳🥳🥳

He does, but you can’t message him directly. It’s sort of hit & miss really. That said, you’ve got a chance of you mention rare livebearers! 😂

Gimme dat pretzel!

Going home tomorrow - I hope that I’ll come home to happy & healthy danio fry, and maybe some glowlight fry as well? 🤞🤞 Arles’ Roman Arena

Dwarf sag is good, maybe some Brazilian Hair grass? It all depends of what look you’re going for.

Nice killi strain! I sent an email to Practical Fishkeeping Magazines question column a while back about your build, and they came back with this (hope it pastes alright): Your first step is to find out the fish that are native to Cameroon, and then sort through those to see which of them are traded. A website called Fishbase is the starting point, and on its home page you can choose to only show the fish from chosen countries and habitats. In this case, searching for fish from Cameroon that live in freshwater habitats will do the trick nicely, and reward us with a list of 565 different species. While a lot of those species will fish you’ll never see in the trade, being too big, too rare, or too plain to be attractive to fish collectors and wholesalers, there are quite a few fish that familiar and readily available. You can also sort your results by Family, which is a good way to zoom in on the Alestidae (tetras), Cyprinidae (barbs), Nothobranchiidae (killifish), and Procatopodidae (lampeyes). All of these families contains species that might be of interest to anyone building a relatively small community tank with a West African theme. Starting with the tetras, most from Cameroon seem to be a bit big and boisterous to be useful in the sort of tank you’re planning; Bryconalestes longipinnis, the African Longfin tetra for example. There are a few genuinely small species native to the area, such as Bathyaethiops baka and Micralestes acutidens, but these aren’t traded much, if at all. I’ve only ever seen Micralestes acutidens on sale once or twice. There are some Phenacogrammus species that come from Cameroon, but unfortunately, none are traded as often as the Congo tetra, Phenacogrammus interruptus. Still, one Cameroonian species is occasionally seen, Phenacogrammus taeniatus, though with a length of around 5 cm, this tetra is probably a bit too big for your tank. Phenacogrammus are active fish, and I think need a tank at least 100-120 cm so they can swim about freely. On the other hand, another tetra species you might consider is Nannaethiops unitaeniatus, sometimes called the African Glowlight tetra. This is a lovely fish, reasonably widely traded, if overlooked, I think, because it’s quite placid and unassuming compared with the more showy South American tetras. It’s a silvery-green fish with one black stripe running from nose to tail, and an iridescent, slightly golden stripe above that. Some specimens also have reddish patches on the base of the tail fin and on the top of the dorsal fin, but I don’t remember my specimens having such markings, so this might be a feature of certain populations. In any case, at around 5 cm long, these fish are quite chunky, but being rather inactive, they’re good picks for community tanks with other peaceful species of similar size. One last option is an old favourite, Neolebias ansorgii. This seems to be another variable species, usually reddish with an extensive green patch on each flank, but on some specimens the patch is more of a line, while the base colour of the body can vary from silvery-green through to more of a reddy-brown. Males are more colourful than females, and when they’re in breeding condition, the colouration on the males becomes even more intense, the body becoming much more red. On the other hand, the youngsters seen in aquarium shops can end to look very washed out and plain. Hold your nerve though! Once settled into a shady, well-planted tank they colour up nicely. At a little over 3 cm long, these fish are little gems, and in groups can look amazing. They do need at least somewhat soft water to do well, which is something that holds true for most West African fish: aim for around pH 6.5 to 7, 2-12˚dH. If tetras aren’t an option, what about barbs? We don’t usually think of barbs, or even cyprinids generally, as African fish, associating them more with Europe and especially Asia. But there are a fair few cyprinids from Africa, even if they aren’t as often seen in the aquarium shops as the ones from India and Southeast Asia. Barboides gracilis, for example, ticks lots of boxes. It’s reasonably widely traded as the Dwarf Amber barb, and in a shady, soft water aquarium does well, schooling nicely and completely ignoring its tankmates. As its common name suggests, this fish is quite small (1.5 cm is typical) and easily bullied by larger fish, but is ideal for use alongside small, surface-swimming killifish. Both sexes are transparent with a distinct black spot at the base of the tail fin, but males turn yellow or amber when mature. Keep them in a large group as they are quite shy: not less than 10, but the more, the better. Then there’s Enteromius jae, often referred to as Barbus jae in older books. Even if not widely kept, it’s often seen in aquarium books because of its lovely colours: steel blue blotches on a semi-transparent body, with bright red markings on the flanks and fins. Juveniles are a bit nondescript, which I think limits their appeal somewhat, but once settled in, the males colour up amazingly. Adults are around 2.5 cm long, and again, you want to keep a large group of them because they’re quite shy. They do best in tanks with plenty of plants and shade as they tend to avoid open areas. The species is notoriously variable, and it seems that there are lots of geographical variants found across West Africa, supposedly including some that turn all-over red! These include a number of Aphyosemion species, including Aphyosemion australe and Aphyosemion bivittatum. Among the other killifish species from Cameroon that you stand a good chance of obtaining are Epiplatys sexfasciatus, and Fundulopanchax gardneri, and Fundulopanchax sjostedti. Of these, Aphyosemion australe is one of the best choices for mixed-species set-ups, being undemanding and easy to keep. It’s also widely sold, usually inexpensively, as it’s one of the very few killifish routinely bred on a commercial basis. Like all killifish, it’s a jumper though, so one thing to ensure is that the tank is covered. This brings us to the biotope angle. Relatively few African plants are regularly traded, with various Anubias species being the most common. Other species you might see periodically include the reliably hardy Crinum calamistratum, the fern Bolbitis heudelotii, the bushy stem plant Ammannia crassicaulis, and of course any number of Nymphaea water lilies. But do bear in mind, though, that these species don’t necessarily inhabit the same sorts of places. For example, while we often plonk Anubias in deeper, darker corners of the tank because they can do very well in such spots, the wild plants are more often found in liminal areas between the land and water, such as riverbanks or in the marshes around the edges of streams. Their rhizomes are adapted to creeping along rocks and driftwood, rather than growing into mud or sand, and as many aquarists have discovered to their dismay, these plants will eventually sicken and die if their rhizome is planted underground. Furthermore, some wold Anubias are rarely found permanently submerged, though Anubias barteri, at least, is one of the species that does well submerged, making it one of the best choices for the aquarium. Anubias are robust plants well adapted to flowing water, as are Bolbitis and Crinum, the situation is very different with Nymphaea water lilies. While the bushy leaves at the bottom of the plant don’t mind a gentle current, the long stems that connect the corm to the floating lily-pads are easily twisted and tangled. These are plants of ponds and ditches, or in other words, exactly the sorts of habitats you’d find killifish! In fact, Nymphaea are among the most useful plants for the right sort of biotope, creating plenty of shade at the surface, while leaving plenty of open space below the leaves for your fishes. The only problem is getting the balance right between filtration and water movement. Air-powered filters are probably the ideal, since the current they produce is minimal and tends to be spread out gently around the tank. What you need to avoid is anything that sends out a jet of water that’ll catch the floating lily-pads and drag them towards each other, where they’ll quickly become tangled. So far as substrate goes, it’ll really depend on the plants and fish in question. Anubias and Bolbitis are adapted to growing on solid surfaces, so you’ll want plenty of rocks or bogwood for them. Crinum look a lot like onions, with a bulb that does well only partly pushed into a rich substrate, such as gravel mixed with laterite or some other aquarium soil. They are adaptable and undemanding though, and will grow in plain sand or even gravel if given fertiliser pellets now and again. All three genera appreciate water current, so they’d be good picks for a rocky or gravelly stream biotope. There’s nothing to stop you using sand or even leaf litter in such a tank if you wanted to, but none of these plants will be happy if their rhizomes or corms are buried, so bear that in mind. Since Anubias and Bolbitis especially are plants of the riverbank, attaching them to rocks or bogwood pieces pushed into a sloping bank of rock and gravel (or sand) could look brilliant. Surprisingly, perhaps, it’s the smaller Anubias species, like Anubias barteri var nana that are usually found submerged all year around, while the bigger species with the longer stems and larger leaves, like Anubias hastifolia, that tend to be found around the margins or even above the waterline. So, while it’s tempting to put the taller species in the deeper part of the tank, that’d actually be the wrong way around! Nymphaea, on the other hand, are more for biotope tanks based around a pond or ditch, so a muddy substrate, lots of leaf litter, plus some twigs and choice pieces of bogwood is just what you’d want here. Such a tank doesn’t need to be cluttered, and rocks wouldn’t really belong in such a tank. When building riverbanks, it’s a good idea to use a gravel tidy above a layer of sand or gravel first. This creates a buffer zone between any rocks you later use and the glass floor of the tank. If there’s any slippage, the rocks will press onto the gravel tidy rather than the glass, making it much less likely they’ll crack the glass. You can now use rocks of different sizes to shore up the sand or gravel used for the river bank. Alternatively, you can pile rocks into the appropriate shape on top of the gravel tidy, and then fill the gaps with sand and gravel. The problem with riverbanks or sandbanks in aquaria is that, over time, they tend to subside and level out. Plant roots are useful for securing them (and to some extent, plants help to make riverbanks stable in the wild too, slowing down weathering and erosion). Slates are useful when placed more or less upright, as they naturally form little shelves, but I don’t think they look good mixed with waterworn boulders, so if you go the slate route, you may well need to restrict yourself to slates and slate chippings for the rest of the rockwork. Often, the more hardcore aquarium builders will create a stable superstructure from things like expanding foam and lava rock, using silicone sealant to hold everything in place. This is a massive (and expensive) job of work, but the results can be stunning! Probably overkill for a small tank, though, and if the goal was killifish, a more open tank, with some Nymphaea, bogwood roots, and a substrate of sand and leaf litter would probably do the trick nicely. Hope this helps!

That’s probably a pretty good idea if you’re doing 9 x 20 longs - less screws and you can achieve scale quickly. Can’t wait to see what you do with your new rack!

There’s something for you @JonnyP ⬆️

Those mountain rocks would be epic in say, a carpeted shrimp tank!

Most nano schooling fish, like rasboras & smaller tetras. Endlers!

The King of DIY has done a decent video on this subject (although arguably he has much bigger tanks)

I’ll probably stick with the good old garlic cure you suggested. 😅

Rainbowfish can get pretty frisky within their genus.

@Schuyler has been doing a riverbank setup; maybe you could scale it up?