Reporting in from Western Michigan! Anybody else heading to Aquashella-Chicago in October?

[Luciferkrist]

After more than 20 years out of the hobby, I finally have enough time, space... and still not enough money, but enough to get some good stuff!

I am running a 75gal community with a few giant danios, some red-blue  tetras, a pair of Guntea loaches, 3(for now) dalmation mollys, 1 hillsteam loach, 2 random comet goldies I got to start cycling (and are now almost 6 inches, so they will have to go pretty soon!), African banded barbs, and is serving as a grow-out for my baby Senegal bichir and ropefish.

4 10gals

1) With Green Neon tetras and ghost shrimp.

2) With Chili Rasboras, 20+ neocaridina shrimps, and apparently all of the snails! Somehow I only ended up with 2 male shrimp, so the whole tank is about to make my life hell.

3) With 6 Platys, blue gem and sunburst - mostly there to make 'treat' feeders for my bigger carnivores in the future.

4) With 2 Steel blue guppy trios, because I like metallic-blue fish...

Have my 210g on order, that I will either be making a native biotope tank, a polypterus and arowana tank, a massive school of tetras, rainbows and other cyprinidae, or finally get into saltwater! It is going to take a month or two to get everything together, so I am still deciding.

 

All of these pics are a few weeks old, so the growth on the plants is pretty insane - they were all taken BEFORE doing my maintenance and change as I needed to, literally, test the waters before I stocked them, so there are some missing fish! I am still debating on removing the tannins in the platy tank or swapping my tetras and platys tanks.

[Ken Burke]

Welcome! Your tanks look gr-eaaat!
 

Any idea what you want to keep in your native tanks?  There a quite a few native keepers on the forum.  I can’t wait to see your 210 stocked up!

[Luciferkrist]

If I decide to do the large native, I REALLY want a bowfin as the centerpiece, with some smaller sunfish varieties, shads, shiners or darters for dithers and to fill out the space, and maybe the smaller catfish/bullheads species for the bottom levels. My biggest problem is finding plants that they won't all destroy or, if I stick completely native, won't die every year.

I was debating on going to try to catch a small gar, but the species we have are not exactly easy to keep, as the longnose gets HUGE and the spotted ones mostly eat inverts and may be hard to keep fed.

 

Huh...  I just noticed that all the fish I have some odd fondness for are airbreathers - Bichirs, Bowfins, Gar, and Bettas....

[Ken Burke]

Check this stream out:

 

[Luciferkrist]

Geez, those rainbow shiners are looking like glofish! Seems like a pretty cool project/experiment.

[Ken Burke]

I know, right?  @Fish Folk is one of the most knowledgeable people on the forum, and breeds some amazing fish.  

 

[Fish Folk]

Honestly, NANF have become a passion of mine. I'm far from experienced. But I'll say this: Rainbow Shiners are EASY fish to keep. They eat flake food. Just keep them in cold water tanks, and provide adequate aeration. Of late, I've been using a spraybar with my NANF tanks. Here's how it looks:

And here's what the new Rainbow Shiners looked like hours after being carefully acclimated...

You can get just about any NANF you want -- including young Bowfins, occasionally, right here.