Levi_Aquatics Posted January 6, 2022 Share Posted January 6, 2022 That male is stunning @Dark River Aquatics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beardedbillygoat1975 Posted January 6, 2022 Share Posted January 6, 2022 That tefe male is 🔥! Loved the trifasciata I had. In terms of your experiments with Novak and Father Fish’s principles what are some of your working hypothesis's and what’s been surprising? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted January 6, 2022 Author Share Posted January 6, 2022 On 1/6/2022 at 3:33 AM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said: That tefe male is 🔥! Loved the trifasciata I had. In terms of your experiments with Novak and Father Fish’s principles what are some of your working hypothesis's and what’s been surprising? Trifasciata are amazing! I have a pair of Guapore F1’s kicking around that I held onto from a breeding a wild pair, they may go into this cube when it’s built 😄 So the little 5g with Father Fish’s dirt mix has had crazy amounts of hair algae, I think I used too much dirt and that the setup really required more water changes early on to stabilize (which I didn’t do) so the jury is still out on that, but error on my part is a strong possibility For the plenums I think I really like them but it’s been a learning curve - in the 75g especially. The tank does consume a lot of nitrate & phosphate, although I’m not sure how much is the plenum and how much is the plants. This is a breakdown of input/measurements so far: I dose around 20-21ppm N and 6.5ish ppm P weekly, and the tank consumes a lot of it. It currently hovers at <5ppm no3 and ~1ppm po4 on the API test kits the morning prior to every water change This is a breakdown of the mix I use daily via an auto-doser, although I’m now at 30ml (doubled) daily I also add one normal 1ml per 10g dose of Easy Green after every water change, and have a separate bottle of a DIY mix that adds nothing but 1ppm kno3 and 0.2ppm kh2po4 per dose, which goes in roughly 2-4 times per week. It’s still a pretty lean input compared to other approaches and I ran into some green spot algae early on likely from lack of P, but it seems to be balancing now I have noticed that the majority of the fish waste gets trapped by the substrate even with two canisters running, which is a little bit of a pain but I haven’t run into any real issues from that yet but might in the future - I don’t gravel vac, but do skim the surface of the substrate with a hose + turkey baster to remove crud during the water changes. The 40g has had very positive results with its plenum - it has a breeding colony of green dragon bristlenoses with a bunch of babies, cherry shrimp, and some endlers and gets fed very heavily for the BNs, and it’s never gone above 10ppm nitrate on the API test. It has a lighter plant load, no co2 (for now, although it might soon), low light, and very seldom gets nutrients added - it does get some micros & a dose of K on an irregular basis, usually just after a water change. That tank gets a light 30-40% water change roughly every 4-5 weeks A curious thing with the 40g is that I intentionally added BBA, green beard algae, cladophora, and some hair algae on pieces of wood & rock and they’ve receded pretty much completely. The clado & green beard especially were absolutely covering a few small pieces of wood that went in. There’s still a hint of BBA now but everything else has slowly died back and vanished over the past few months, and the plants are doing very well - there are a lot of crypts, vals, hygro poly, anubias, Java fern, and some others and they’re all growing well and they’re algae free. So that particular tank somehow wiped out all those algaes (and the BBA left is minimal, and only on a single rock) yet the small handful of plants are doing quite well. All things considered, as of right now I’d say the plenum systems do what they’re claimed to do and my next tank will have one 😄 Here are some pics from above of the 75g just for show & tell! 1 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beardedbillygoat1975 Posted January 6, 2022 Share Posted January 6, 2022 Beautiful shots of your 75. Really interesting the differences between the setups and the little differences making the small changes in outcome. The 40 sounds great - have you id’d the differences with the 75? Sounds like the judgement on Father Fish is still out. I had something similar but had a big nitrate spike thought to be due to a dead snail and it went downhill fast. I’m in the process of getting a colony of green dragons - how have you found them? Different from other ancistrus? I have a mixed colony of longfin super red calicos that are just now getting to breeding age which has been a big learning curve caring for the fry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted January 7, 2022 Author Share Posted January 7, 2022 On 1/6/2022 at 5:49 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said: Beautiful shots of your 75. Really interesting the differences between the setups and the little differences making the small changes in outcome. The 40 sounds great - have you id’d the differences with the 75? Sounds like the judgement on Father Fish is still out. I had something similar but had a big nitrate spike thought to be due to a dead snail and it went downhill fast. I’m in the process of getting a colony of green dragons - how have you found them? Different from other ancistrus? I have a mixed colony of longfin super red calicos that are just now getting to breeding age which has been a big learning curve caring for the fry. The greens are fun! No different from any other commonly available line bred strains that I’ve tried, I’ve heard that snow whites can be tough but I’ve found all the variants I’ve tried have been super easy to keep and breed prolifically - currently I have short & long fin green dragons, short & long fin calicos, short fin super reds, short & long fin commons, long fin albino, and Rio Paraguays. My water is pretty hard but even the Rios breed like mad, I’ve found the key to be planted tanks with lots of wood & cover, terra cotta plant watering spikes as caves, and TONS of food. I feed the absolute heck out of my BN’s with canned green beans, zucchini, and Repashy as their staples plus a wide array of other supplemental veggies, and the tanks with babies always have zucchini in them 24/7 with a mixture of other food added daily. Food food food and you will have babies IME, then feed the heck out of the babies and they’ll grow like weeds 😊 Here’s a bit of a photo dump 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted January 7, 2022 Author Share Posted January 7, 2022 @Beardedbillygoat1975 sorry I just realized I forgot to address your question about the differences between the 75g and the 40g - the 75 has a lot of plant mass with co2 injection & much higher light resulting in way higher nutrient demands, with far fewer fish and much lighter feeding. The 40g is fairly low light (one 60w, 5000k LED bulb in a cheap fixture over the center of the tank), no co2, far fewer plants, and wayyy more livestock with a much heavier amount of food going into the tank. I do dose micros & K periodically but it also has virtually no nutrient dosing compared to the 75g which has an automated daily dose of both micros & macros on top of other manual dosing. So I think the two tanks are fundamentally pretty different with different overall intentions, one is a simple breeding tank and the other is designed to grow my nerdy plant collection. The plenum in the 40 is awesome because it consumes a bunch of the waste chemicals produced by the tank and requires less maintenance because of it, whereas the plenum in the 75 is actually competing with the plants for ammonia, nitrate, phosphate, etc. It’s not outright detrimental in the 75 but it was a steep learning curve trying to maintain the nutrient levels because of the plenum & anoxic zone and the tank has bottomed out on both N & P more than once 😜 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beardedbillygoat1975 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 @Dark River Aquaticsis there much difference between the Rio Paraguay and the Wabenmuster? Maybe size? Cool fish! Hadn’t seen those before. I think there is a difference between them but just curious if you’ve thought about it. I see the Wabenmuster fairly often for sale on Aquabid. I’ve got big plans for setting up several colonies with a hope that less competition for resources will lead to bigger and better spawns. I too love those watering spikes, terracotta planters and I’m going to get some more tomorrow as I set up my new tanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted January 7, 2022 Author Share Posted January 7, 2022 @Beardedbillygoat1975 I looked into the difference between Rios & Wabens a while back, and didn’t find a ton of information but was told that the main difference seems to be the size & consistency of the patterning, and that the honeycomb spots on the Rios are slightly smaller than on Wabens. Not sure if they’re actually different species and both are still just considered “Ancistrus sp” based on what I found when I looked into it. Both are super cool though! A local guy up here breeds Wabens and I’m looking to get some from him when I have tank space available for a new strain, they’ve been on the bucket list for a while now 😄 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beardedbillygoat1975 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 After the green dragons I see another ancistrus in my future, peppermints, wabens or rios are now on the list! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted January 21, 2022 Author Share Posted January 21, 2022 (edited) Made a new water box for a pair of F1 Apisto Trifasciata Rio Guapore originally bred from a wild pair I have in another tank. This was also a super fun and rewarding project because it was about 90% funded by the proceeds from selling plants and fish, and marks the first time I’ve exercised some budgetary restraint 😂 The tank is running an unpowered plenum made from an under gravel filter plate plus plastic light diffuser and knitting mesh all lashed together with zip ties. The substrate should stay lightly aerated and anoxic that way (I hope) plus the powered plenum is obnoxious in my 75g and scaping around a lift tube in such a small tank seemed too annoying to bother with. The substrate is Safe-T-Sorb enriched with laterite powder, a very small amount of worm castings, and in some places a mixture of aragonite/garden lime/diatomaceous earth to keep it alkaline for Rotala Ramosior Florida - and all of it is capped with Landen Soil plus black diamond blasting sand in the front. The scape is mainly elephant skin stone, with a few small pieces of lace rock and seiryu that mostly matched the main rocks. In addition to the substrate & hardscape materials, the hardware/equipment list is: -Aqueon 14g rimless cube tank with painted black background -Chihiros WRBG2 30cm light with added metal light shades -Finnex px-360 canister filter with coarse sponge and Purigen -Atomic inline co2 diffuser -GLA brand regulator with a 5lb tank -Woliver 25w heater from Amazon -Jardli external co2 drop checker -Aquarium Coop apisto cave hidden by the rocks The plant list so far is almost entirely stuff grown in my other tanks: -Rotala H’ra -Rotala mini butterfly -Rotala blood red original -Rotala orange juice -Rotala ramosior Florida -Bacopa Salzmanii purple SG -Hygrophila sp “creeping” -Blyxa Japonica -Anubias nana petite -Anubias congensis mini -Eleocharis mini -Cryptocoryne wendtii green gecko -Cryptocoryne Lucens -Marsilea minuta -Marsilea crenata -Micranthemum Monte Carlo -Echinodorus Opacus sp Rataj -Bucephalandra Kedagang mini I realized after setup that the tank was half resting on the 2x4’s used as the stand frame, with the back corner resting only on the 1/4” plywood cosmetic top of the stand and it freaked me out so I ended up adding a 3/4” plywood sheet under the tank which extends outwards to create a shelf. As of today it’s painted up to match the stand with a beefy cast iron decorative bracket to help support the shelf. So far the tank is eleven days old, and I’m still doing a 50% water change every morning and dosing 1ml of Easy Green after each change. The light is on a 6hr photocycle and is turned down to about 50% red, 40% green, 50% blue with the co2 blasting. It doesn’t have fish yet so the co2 is excessive, and will be reduced gradually when we get closer to adding the fish plus the light will get ramped up gradually as it matures. The foreground will probably get filled out with more plants soon too because I get impatient waiting for things to grow in naturally 😜 The only plants not doing particularly well so far are the Monte Carlo - it’s melting like crazy - and the Echinodorus Rataj has some bba that it came with, but so far everything else is doing well enough. The Blyxa is getting very red and doesn’t seem to love the transition from the established 75g into this tank but I think it’ll live All in all it’s going as well as could be expected with a faint hint of brown diatoms and I’m excited to add the apisto pair when it’s ready for them 😄 Edited January 21, 2022 by Dark River Aquatics 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanish Posted January 21, 2022 Share Posted January 21, 2022 You went all out on that build. It is off to a great start. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted January 26, 2022 Author Share Posted January 26, 2022 Cryptocoryne Striolata red arrived today 🙌🏻 2 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanish Posted January 26, 2022 Share Posted January 26, 2022 Your 75g is quite incredible. I love the different textures and colors. I can't imagine the total $$ on those plants!! 😲 I hope you're able to farm them! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted January 27, 2022 Author Share Posted January 27, 2022 On 1/26/2022 at 11:59 AM, Vanish said: Your 75g is quite incredible. I love the different textures and colors. I can't imagine the total $$ on those plants!! 😲 I hope you're able to farm them! Thank you so much! I’m terrified to calculate the total cost 😂 so far I’ve spent far less than retail value by trading, selling plants & fish from other tanks to finance the expenses, having a lot of good friends who are generous with their plant cuttings, etc…. But it’s still scary to think about the total cost! Loving this tank a whole lot though, and for the past couple of months I’ve been selling the cuttings from it (plus fish bred in other tanks) and almost completely financed my newest build so that took some of the sting out of it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted January 27, 2022 Author Share Posted January 27, 2022 Totally forget what this species is, but some nights I notice things that haven’t been focused on in a while and this little one is looking super cool & blue & stuff down in it’s shaded little corner of the tank just doin buce things 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted February 6, 2022 Author Share Posted February 6, 2022 Not a great picture but got a pair of Kribensis Moliwe today and I’m pretty excited! Also got a big male L183 Starlight Ancistrus, they’re all in one of my otherwise empty apisto breeding 10g’s until I can set up something betterer, but today was a good day for fish stuff! And feeling pretty good about this little 14g, added some black neons from another tank the other day and will be adding the pair of Apisto Trifasciata soon 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick_G Posted February 6, 2022 Share Posted February 6, 2022 I just got caught caught up on your journal. Your tanks are looking great. The Crypt Striolata is spectacular! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beardedbillygoat1975 Posted February 6, 2022 Share Posted February 6, 2022 @Dark River AquaticsI have some serious crypt envy. Holy c$ap that things amazing! 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eatyourpeas Posted February 6, 2022 Share Posted February 6, 2022 What an enjoyable read! Your tanks, plants and critters look amazing. Very inspiring, so thank you for sharing! 😍 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted February 6, 2022 Author Share Posted February 6, 2022 Super duper happy with the Moliwes, they’re coloring up very well after the first 24hr, and the female is dancing up a storm! Hoping to get them to spawn out in this tank while I build them a slightly bigger home, then use this tank to raise the babies and move the pair over to their forever tank down the road 😄 3 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Struggle Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 On 2/6/2022 at 4:33 PM, Dark River Aquatics said: Super duper happy with the Moliwes, they’re coloring up very well after the first 24hr, and the female is dancing up a storm! Hoping to get them to spawn out in this tank while I build them a slightly bigger home, then use this tank to raise the babies and move the pair over to their forever tank down the road 😄 They’re coloring up very nicely! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted February 7, 2022 Author Share Posted February 7, 2022 Several weeks ago I got a stem of Staurogyne Bihar from a friend, and it’s been partially hidden in the back of the tank putting on significant growth - it differs from the other species of Staurogyne I’ve had in that it’s huge and it’s totally a background plant unlike smaller species such as Stauro Repens or Stauro Purple. Now that it’s reached the surface of my 75g the leaves have started developing lobes near the base and some slight serration closer to the leaf tip, and it’s super cool looking For another top shot type picture of a funky plant, this is a hybrid Ludwigia Glandulosa crossed with L Repens - it’s become a monster and since this pic was taken a week ago I’ve had to trim it twice. The leaves have a growth pattern similar to Repens, but have the massive size & darker, richer coloring of Glandulosa. Really enjoying it even though it’s almost too big for the tank & scape 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Odd Duck Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 ORD, but your plants are very cool! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark River Aquatics Posted February 7, 2022 Author Share Posted February 7, 2022 On 2/7/2022 at 11:38 AM, Odd Duck said: ORD, but your plants are very cool! Thank you! What does ORD mean? I’m not familiar with the term and Google wasn’t helpful with it, sorry! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xXInkedPhoenixX Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 (edited) Definition @Dark River Aquatics : Out of Reactions for the Day we are limited on the number of hearts, laughs, thanks and etc on posts for the forum. I'm not even sure of the exact number! Otherwise known as a chronic condition most often suffered by members @Odd Duck, @Guppysnail and @Torrey and often spreading to others. Using aquarium salt for the condtion is not recommended as it would just be rubbing salt in the wound. 🙃 Edited February 7, 2022 by xXInkedPhoenixX 2 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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