My Suppliers.

If your in Providence and looking for a great fish shop I suggest AquaLife on wickenden street. I believe that this is the best shop in the state, especially for freshwater fish. I'm not into to salt water fish but from what i can tell they only carry fish that have a successful track record. But freshwater fish is definately their thing. The aquatic plant selection is fair enough. In fact if you are not satisfied with the plants it's probably because your at the point where you should be ordering them online. The selection of food is the next strongest part of the store for me. Not only do they carry a huge variety of dry goods and a fair amount of frozen foods but also 6 kinds of live foods. Two of which are fish, which i'm meh about. The rest are blackworms, tubifex worms, brine shrimp and ghost shrimp(though ghosts kinda count as pets so). Hard tack is good as well. Good selection of filters and replacement parts, tanks and subsrtates. Decorations are 50/50, lots of natural materials like driftwood and stones but sorely lacking in the artificial side of things. You always see the owners and they always have advice for you. Four star rating.
http://www.aqualifecentral.com

I also use Repashy Super foods purchased from Invertebrates by Msjinkzd. Rachel is an independant importer of nano fish and shrimps. Great person to order from, orders always show up on time and progress is quickly updated. The repashy food i get from her is a gel food you mix at home. The food once mixed is stable in the tank for 24 for hours or so and allows the fish to browse naturally throughout the day. I'm using this for the first time inthe rearing of paradise fry and the fry are definatly growing twice as fast as they did last year. All the fish seem to have a preference for the Soilent Green. http://msjinkzd.com/

During the summer I grow most live foods i use in a bucket in the backyard. I pretty much find a pond scoop up some pond mud and leaf litter and toss it in the bucket and harvest what grows. I also grow my own squashes and what not tp feed the herbaceous fish. During the winter i also grab a bag of frozen prawns, thawed and crushed any size fish can take it. I also am not afraid to get decaying leaves into the tank, not only for the natural look but also for the infusoria that grow. I feel these little guys eat  disease organisms or at least compete with them for resources.

The Filter Myth

     Most people are under the impression that filters actually clean the water. And while they do remove large particles and trap them in a sponge or similar device, all this really does is concentrate the debris in one area where a bacterial colony can easily access it. What the colony can't take care of can simply be rinsed away weekly or monthly. Perhaps even yearly depending on the filter and the bio load. Unfortunately, i have never found a filter i liked or was confident in their effectiveness. Hob filters always seemed to clog up quickly and canisters always seemed way too over priced. Under gravel filters while i liked them, i liked the look of sand better.
     I discovered matten filters at some point and i thought they were good but unattractive. Also the material seemed always out of budget. In one article i read where folks were strapping moss and other plants to the matten filter masking it and i thought this was a great idea, if only the material wasn't so pricey.

Look Closely at the right side. You can make out the uplift tube of my sponge filter.

    What I'm running now and am incredibly happy with are sponge filters. I use over powered air pumps to run them. My 45(actually water 20gal) and my 55(actual water 30gal) have two sponge filters each, run off of an air pump rated for 100gallons. These are planted tanks that are not co2 injected but i due dose excel and they covered with glass so i believe co2 levels build up under the glass and the pumps find a balance. Which is more important then increased co2 levels in my case. I believe the plants can deal with low levels of co2 if it is stable. I do weekly water changes of 5 gallons on each tank. I strapped anubias frazeri and barteri to the filters and they quickly rooted into them. Faster then i have ever seen these plants root. I also have tied    red myrio and other stem plants to the sponges with success.
     In the environment that i created i believe the plants on the sponges due well because nutrients of all types are constantly brought to the plant's roots allowing the plants to divert resources to light gathering or co2 gathering. Root disturbance happens twice a year when i give the sponges a through cleaning with a garden hose and a couple of squeezes. I use the hose because it takes only a few moments versus squeezing with tank water that can take forever with fairly poor results.

Let's play find the sponge in this one.

     In smaller tanks of ten gallons or less i don't even use sponge filters. I believe water movement is more important then actual "filtration".I use a 30 gallon air pump to run an air stone in a ten, a sponge filter on a five and three air stones in three different 2gallon containers. I'm using the five gallon to rear some fry and it's a wee bit over crowded. The ten gallon is so thickly planted that 10 ottos, a pair of drape fin barbs, their fry and lonely male betta can all hide to the point of invisible.The 2 gallon containers are the winter homes of my paradise fish and paleatus cories. also thickly planted.

This ten gallon is runs just an air stone for water movement.

     I truly believe water movement is vital in an aquarium environment. I also believe plants are the best nutrient exporters around and should be in every set up. In the average, moderately planted tank this should all work. In an over stocked or impossible to plant tank then a hob or canister filter is necessary, if only to add additional space for bacteria colonies. The water Change volume also has to change. Where as plants will use up the final stage of the nitrogen cycle or even use ammonia directly your filter will not. Slowly this will build up and your fish will be just as dead.
    Terrestrial plants grown hydroponically in the system will lead to complete nutrient exportation, i.e . the plants with sequester the nutrients in their leafs outside the aquarium versus aquatic plants that sequester the nutrients in the aquarium. If the leaves die on aquatic plants they stay in the aquarium releasing the nutrients back into the water, with hyrdoponic plants the leaves fall to the floor and outside the aquarium.

Drape Fin Barbs, Filament Barbs, Paradise fish and other fish that I have Bred

The Drape fin barbs are breeding non stop. I have fry ranging from freshly hatched to looking like the adults only much, much smaller. As you can see the tank is heavily planted which ensures the fry have both cover and microorganisms to eat. The barbs are housed with a male betta splendins and i see no signs of fin nipping of course the two species seldom meet in the jungle of that tank. Also in the tank is a trio of male formosa and 10 Oto cats. The otos came from the outside ponds and i figured the heavily planted tank was perfect for them and aside from the occasional egg they might eat should leave the drape fin fry alone and perhaps even breed themselves.


The Filament Barbs Spent the summer out in ponds and have seriously put on at least an inch in length and girth! The color is amazing on top of the lime green shine they have aquired pink/red high lights. The dominate male and female are more red then pink especially around the lips. The juvenile I put out with them has taken on his adult colors minus the reddish high lights. Interestingly i left two fry in the house, feeling that they were too small to sucessfully compete outside. The fry still had the typical tiger barb stripe they have when young but within hours the larger of the two had faded out his stripes, three days later he is rocking the adult colors. YOu can spot him getting chased in the video. Oddly enough these Barbs did not breed in the tubs.
                                                             
This little guy is one of the five bristle nose plecos i housed out inthe ponds with the Filament barbs this year. He is approximately 1 year old and about two inches bigger then his father yet is the sub male. Seems age wins out over size in this species. Unfortunately these guys didn't produce fry int he ponds, the dominate male did have eggs in his cave when i pulled them in and once in the new tank he immediantly went back to being a dutiful male so hopefully the eggs make it. Even their muddy brown colors were enhanced by the summer out.

On the right we have my dominate female paradise in her winter home. These guys were super productive this year. They produced ten fry, half of what they did last year, but these guys are only a year old and the fry were actually much sturdier. I was shocked to see a paradise fry in the Filement barb pond, this one was the biggest of the ten. How he made it I don't know.

Other fry spotted are black neon tetras and various live bearers. Given the tank mates i doubt the tetra fry will make it. The molly/platy/guppy fry never survive for me, must be something in the water i'm missing. I have gotten some to grow up, in fact the adults breeding now are those fry. I have also bred Kribensis.

Drape Fin Barbs Breeding Rapidly

Gave the Drape fin tank a trim the other day and was pretty shocked over the quantity of fry. There was about ten fry of various sizes hiding under some driftwood and java moss. While this number isn't huge, when you consider this tank is only a ten gallon and houses the Drape fin Barbs, a male betta splendens and a trio of least killiefish males, you'd think the fry wouldn't stand a chance. Aside from predation, you'd think they would be out competed very easily. Not to mention I've only had these guys a couple of months. It's interesting to note that the old pros in my neighborhood seem to be having issues keeping these guys alive never mind getting fry. I wish i could take credit but considering i simply through them in a ten gallon tank on my porch, it's all nature's course in this case. I think the temperature swings help to stimulate them, after all very few places in the world sees no temperature changes between day and night.

I actually believe live food int he form of micro fauna in the tank is vital to these guys. My impression of them is they meticulously search the tank for small things to and while they certainly gorge themselves at feeding times, it does not take them very long to start searching for food again. I believe they have a high metabolism and much like dragonets in the ocean require a steady stream of food. Seems like the folks around here doing the worst with them house the fish in bare tanks set ups. I would assumed a sponge filter would provide food for them but it seems not to be enough.

With this in mind i trucked down to the nearest pond and scooped up some leaf litter and muck. This gave me a starter culture of various little buggers. I'm not concerned about disease i let the culture grow for a couple weeks with water changes, giving plenty of time for unwanteds to work themselves out.Surprisingly though, as my copepod, daphnia and other critter populations increase in the bucket, mosquito larvae seem to be disappearing. Next year I'm running two buckets, one for mosquitoes and another for other critters.

The Drape Fins seem to be plant safe, though truly the tank has such dense planting i really couldn't tell the odd nibble from simple wear and tear. Obviously, after two months if they were voracious plant eaters the tank would be bare. I believe. like the larger Filament barbs I keep, they make an occasional snack of duck weed or anachris(i mean who wouldn't?) in a moderately fast growing tank you won't even notice.

Drape Fin Barb Fry and how To Grow Utricularia

Fry!

your guess is as good as mine as to where the fish are.

 The Drape fin barbs have produced fry! It's nice to be the first to spawn a fish in your local circle. From what I hear over at Aqua life, I am the first to have spawned these guys, Of course since the tank they are in is dense so i have no interest in hunting down fry and moving them to another tank for rearing. I figure since I barely see the adults in the underbrush that the fry should have an okay time reaching a non edible size in the tank. The tank is full of daphnia and other freshwater inverts so growth should spectacular. For anyone interested these guys are housed in a ten gallon tank on my porch under a car port. Temperatures have been as low as 57degrees over night. The parents have definitely fattened up in that tank.

All bladderworts look pretty mush the same.

     Also in this tank is some kind of  Utricularia. I'm simply not knowledgeable enough to identify individual species. My specimens must be natives that got caught when I caught my daphnia. Whats cool about these guys is the little traps in the corner of the stem axis. They aren't big enough to take anything larger then daphnia, mainly built to catch infusorians really. They grow much like moss but much more rapidly then mosses in my experience. The tank is under a car port, so is constantly in moderate shade. They tank has no water movement, outdoors, natural air flow take care of gas exchange. I dose 1ml of Excel every day. Inside the tank is going in front of a window and will have a sponge filter. This may effect growth or cause the plant to die, much the way turbulence kills duck weed.

How I Feed My Fish

     Fish food companies promote multiple daily feedings. While some fish, such as growing fry or fish with higher metabolism might need multiple feedings daily in a new tank, in a properly aged tank they should be able to find enough food to carry them over to your next feeding. Though specialized feeders such as algae grazers should be fed food like slice squash that they can slowly graze over. I prefer fresh veggies in this case as other fish are less likely to eat it versus an algae wafer.
     I start with a good flake. I used to be on the wall about flake food, thinking it was messy but if you can buy large flake that can easily be sized down for smaller fish. I find it very hard to find  appropriate sized pellets for all my fish. When i went the pellet route I ended up with five different cans for three tanks! Flakes can be crushed to feed even small fry or left whole for my driftwood catfish.
     Another food i find to be versatile and eagerly accepted is Repashy gel foods. Repashy foods are a powder that you mix with boiling water to create a gel to feed the fish with. This food is incredibly easy to mix, make, store, and feed. It's a gel so can be cut into any size but once fish realize it's food they simple bite chunks out of it. The gel takes along time to dissolve int he tank so overfeeding is not a real concern, just don't add more till the first cube is gone. The gel can also be poured over drift wood or rocks before it cools creating a natural feeding station. Down side is if you have scavenger snails they will also get to it and their population will explode. This food also makes feeding night time fish a breeze.
     For plecos and other grazers i use slice and chunks of any squash, cucumber and the like. I try to rotate between green and yellow veggies. I also only feed this twice a week unless i am raising fry.
      I live feed at least once a week. Tubifex worms and black worms will live indefinitely in a freshwater system so very little pollution is created in their feeding. In the warmer months i mostly feed mosquito larvae. A five gallon bucket filled with stale water and a handful of grass clippings will produce quite allot of critters, not just mosquitoes that your fish will love.You'll also get a variety of sizes to feed different sized fish. Weekly harvesting is a must.
    Once a week i also feed frozen food. Since I keep fish of different sizes I usually feed market prawns. these can be thawed out and crushed to various sizes and the relish it. I break off the tail fan and toss into the tanks with nosy fish like loaches so they can work the meat out. Plecos will rasp the shell down to nothing.
     Once a week i fast the fish. IN this case i don't even open the tank lids allowing any extra nutrients, fertilizers and what not to either get taken up by the plants or bacteria. This is usually a Monday. Tuesday becomes prawn day where i let the fish gorge themselves, this is the day i also do water changes. I feed fairly sparingly throughout the week. Though I'm sure the micro fauna in the tank keep the fish fat.
   

Expanding Foam!!!!!

I have been playing around with expanding foam this week, look:

     I was going for a swampy mouth of a cave kinda look. I realize it doesn't look super realistic, though i hope once i get the pothos and other plants to grow it it'll look better. Even with out the plants i feel the foam looks organic. The shapes did naturally occur for the most part so that helps.
      I did foam in some terracotta pots but I actually prefers the planters i made by simply carving some foam once it was dry. since this tank already had fish in it I did not foam directly onto the tank, instead i had to glue the pieces in place later. This was dumb on my part and would have been much easier it i had simply relocated the fish for foaming the tank. But I prevailed.
      I used crazy glue and black silicone. The super glue is not recommended for foam but I found it  held the pieces in place long enough for the silicone to skin and dry over night, so it worked for my purposes. Of course i used the liquid glue versus the water proof gel so things got a little runny and glue did hit the water. It skinned immediately and i scooped it out. Might want to shut power filters off for this, i use sponge filters so wasn't worried about things clogging and what not. After gluing i left the lid off the tank for a few day to let fumes rise out.
     I think all the folds and crannies will eventually build up the organic material that epyphitic plants will need. The foam structure it self will allow roots to anchor into it. Plecos are going in this tank so i made sure just the edges of the foam were under the water, i worry they could chew it up or at least scrape things off.
      I foamed onto a Plexiglas sheet i had and actually cut my face when the plexi broke. Because of this i would recommend foaming onto card board if foaming backgrounds or decorations for a filled tank, The foam should peel easily from cardboard or it can be soaked off once the foam hardens.
   

The Benefits Of Tubifex Worms

     Strangely enough tubifex worms are frowned upon while daphnia are exalted as awesome livefood, I find this odd considering every where that I've seen wild daphnia, I also found tubifex worms. I find them to be a very useful life food, of course i purchase them from a dealer and clean them.

      My method for cleaning the worms is simpler then most methods. I purchase them on my way to work and get them "dry", meaning I don't get any worm water with them. When I get to work I fill the bag with bottled water. If work is slow i may change the water in the bag once or twice. The worms sit in this clean water for about 8 hours. You could replicate this procedure by simply putting worms in            

a container filled with bottled water in the fridge over night. 

     Since I have several nocturnal fish I feed out worms as soon as i get home. I don't worry about quantity, the worms will live in the substrate until the fish find them. I do worry about where i dump them in. I find the worms wont travel far from where they hit the substrate, so if you drop them up front in the tank you'll find any survivors wiggling upfront where any body can see them. I try to drop them towards the back of the tank. 

     What i like about the worms is the survivors will filter the water somewhat while, their physical actions help aerate the substrate, assuming it's sand or soil like. Their ability to live in the tank means the fish get to hunt them down. The fish spend more time actively looking for food and dashing down to gobble it up and less time engaging in bored or socially negative behaviors. The worms can also be used in place of weekend and week long feeding blocks. They'll consume some waste versus making it.

     Naturally they should be fed in conjunction with a quality flake or pellet. Though if squash or cucumbers or other vegetables are taken then one in theory could develop their own diet. I personally rely on flakes to fill in the missing nutrients in the fishes diets. Despite the small size, because tubifex worms clump together fish of any size will take them. Though anything over 3 inches or so misses out on hunting opportunities. 

     I use quite a few different live foods and find tubifex to be the most versatile. Providing not only nutrition but behavioral outlets for small fish. Also since very little waste is produced by the worms, water quality improves versus feeding dry foods that rot very quickly if over fed.

The new 55 gallon or how I dirt planted tanks with diggers.

      Taking advantage of petco and it's dollar a gallon sale I snatched up a 55 gallon tank for 55 bucks. hoorah! The tank fits my dresser perfectly and I had purchased the T5HO in anticipation of a 4ft upgrade. The tank is about 2/3rds full to allow for some emergent growth and some hydroponic growth of pothos and other clinging climbers. 

     I usually use Miracle Grow Organic Choice potting mix under my gravel in planted tanks but this tank is for Filament barbs and 4 medium sized catfish who are potential diggers. My strategy so i can  have the benefits of potting soil in the tank,while reducing the chance that the fish Will make a mess, is to use it only directly under the plants and away from the hides.  

     I first put down an inch of pool filter sand. I arranged the hardscape, which in this case is replica rocks that are hollow. I like the false rocks because not only do they allow for hiding spots but displace less water. Unfortunately they all pretty much look the same so you've gotta be careful when arranging to hide this fact.The rocks were arranged and once i was satisfied i pushed them down into the sand. I then hollowed out where i wanted to plant, moving the sand out of the way, down to the glass. 

     I then filled in the hollows with the potting soil. Make sure to stay at least two inches away from the rock formations with the soil, because if the fish modify the hides, they'll dig out there. I then poured another inch of sand over the everything. I planted in such a way as to  fish a straight through dash of the tank, to minimize plant disturbances. These plants were from my other established tanks and had well developed root systems and are well anchored,. Still, i wanted to reduce the chances of fish weaving in and out of them and getting tangled.

     I chose really robust plants for this tank, seeing as it was full of heavy hitters and potential plant eaters. Mainly this tank is full of crypts(lutia and spiralis), willow hygro, amazon swords, dwarf sag. and tiawon lilly(get it from a fish club memeber). Strappy and tough leafed plants that also bend easily enough. I will also add sunset hygro, and some other more "delicate" but fast growing plants just to test the barbs appetites. 

     The barbs don't seem to be too voracious in their plant eating, more opportunistic then anything and with the roots from floaters and duck weed i believe they'll be distracted with these easy marks and will be less focused on eating my hardier plants. If they insist on eating these plants, i have no problem just doing anubias, java fern, african fern and mosses for plants, other then the price.

     Since i was using fairly well aged filters and decorations in this tank i had no problem setting up the tank and adding fish immediately. To be on the safe side i am adding an instant cycle product to ease the transition. 

Drape Fin Barbs

     I just got a pair of these and they are awesome. These caught my eye after i read about them in tfh. They are definitely not the size i though they would be, they are barely bigger then my thumb nail. But in the shop as well as at home males are already displaying to one another and to females.
     I brought them home and put them in a ten gallon, weedy tank I've been keeping on my porch for the summer. It's under a car port so it never gets direct sunlight. I had a reasonable sized daphnia and copepod colony in this tank. I say had because within 24 hours they had wiped the colony out. These little guys have appetite.
     They are also prone to jumping and repeatedly tried to do so. I would not open top these guys unless there was an intense cover of floating plants. From what i googled about their native range, the average temperature in January is 61 degrees. Though any care sheet style web posts puts them in the 75 degree range. either way my pair is spending the rest of the summer outside until i finish moving some tanks around to make room.
      And room I'm hopefully going to need because by day two they were spawning. Or at least in the early morning I caught them assuming the inverted posture under the crypt leaves. I did not witness any eggs but this pair is really small so it may be a dry run for them or just the excitement of the move.
     They seem easy enough to feed, though not as voracious as other barbs. They may become more savage at feeding time once they eat the tank out of inverts. The tank I'm planning on housing them in will be a thickly planted 20 hex, with paradise fish, peppered cories and oto cats, set at 75 degrees or so. I pretty sure a small colony could do well in a ten gallon tank. Heavily planted a must, my pair so far is very bold, I believe this is due to the heavy plant cover they know they can dive into if required.
     I understand these little guys are fairly common in Europe and with their small size, interesting behaviors and outstanding looks i can see why.

Trachelyopterus galeatus:The Usesless Cat

     My all time favorite fish is my driftwood cat, Trachelyopterus galeatus. Of course everyone in the know calls them useless cats,, meaning they are definately not a cleanup crew canditate. Like the stiped rapheal these guys are impressive when they get big but you'll hardly ever see them and they are utter gluttens.
      My female is not overtly predaceous. She has the capacity to eat full grown sailfin mollies, which she has done, but if the fish is guppy sized or smaller she will not eat it. That would require work. Oddly enough the only time I've ever seen her awake and feeding during the day was when i had a batch of hungry bristle nose pleco babies in the tank so i threw in a banana slice. She charges over and devoured it. Plecos are another fish she largely ignores.
     Despite her bulk i would not house her with synodontus catfish. I one point i did house her with synos and they, despite being half her size simply tormented her to the point where she refused to leave her cave to feed at night.
     Besides eating bananas, other weird qualities of this fish include growling at me. If I'm doing tank maintainance and she feels disturbed she rumbles out a warning, don't know who she's warning, i assume it would other catfish if any were present because if i press my luck she madly dashes around the tank as if on fire. She really is too gentle to be housed with rough and tumble fish. Medium sized pleco push her around.
     Despite the species have a reputation for glutteny, i find she will occasionally not eat for up to a month, or at least i don't get to witness her feeding. She never seems to loose condition after these fasts and appetite is normal afterwards. She seldom leaves her hide during theses times.
     Speaking of hides, she either crams herself into the smallest one in the tank or nestles up to an object longer then herself. She will not enter a cave that is equal to or larger then herself.
     Max size for these guys is supposedly a little over 8 inch but after five years she is only about 6 or so. Recently she has taken up the habit of digging out her hide which she decided is just snuggled up to that fake rock in the picture. This new habit aside i believe them to be planted tank safe, despite her size her movements are careful and graceful. From what I've read they are a social species, though she obviously isn't suffering from being alone, non the less i want to expand to a smalll school of them soon, hopefully to breed.

Life inside the glass box.

     It always amazes me how traditional styles of doing things always seem to work better or at least just as well as modern ways. Aquarium rigs have gotten so expensive and techie, with devices that monitor your tanks and send messages to your phone updating you on ph readings and what not. As if a drop in temp or raise in ph will force you to rush home to save the day.
     Personally I found that HOB filters ended up being less efficient then the Air driven sponges i run now. They are certainly less expensive to run. I use a single air pump rated at 100gallons to run three sponge filters, one in my 20 hex and two in my 29 gallon, as well as several air stones in the paradise jars. Maybe once a month or two i will squeeze the filter into a bucket during a water change but that's it. Aside from some tannin staining the water is clear.
     These are planted tanks that may not be Amano "quality", are certainly places of healthy plant growth. I don't use CO2 in these tanks, obviously it would be just off gassed. I do, however, use flourish excel. Algae is almost non existent, except for brush algae.
    Maintenance is a weekly water change. Anything under 10 gallons gets a 90% change, under twenty gets a 50%. The 20 hex and the 29 gallon get five gallons a week removed from them and the 45 gallon gets ten gallons removed. The week looks like this: Tuesday the fish get fed chopped prawn till their sides bulge, 2 hours later i do the water change, adding excel and fertilizers at full dose. Wednesday through Sunday fish are fed every day alternating between a meaty food and a vegetable based food. Excel is added at the recommended. Monday fish are fasted, tank lids are so much as opened as I'm not hope all day.
     I believe the fast helps the bacteria keep up as my water quality is really good for such over stoked tanks. The fast keeps the fish regular and forces them to feed on whats in the tank, algae and copedpods. The feast insures that, for at least one day a week every fish in the tank gets more then enough to eat. Of course I'm never afraid to skip an extra day or have an extra feast day if the opportunity arises.

Paradise fry and Oto cats.

     I spotted Paradise fish fry in the to container yesterday. Right now they look more like a strand of hair with two eyes. It interesting to note that, in my presence at least, the females show no interest in eating the fry. several swam by the blue female and she ignored them, even though she has the most veracious appetite. the male in back on a nest after i cleared the duck weed from his circle and Dunkin donuts cup. This is about the time last year that the original paradise went into the pond so I'm hoping the fry will be much larger at tear down.
     The Least livebearer (heterandria formosa) are also reproducing, though the Crystal black shrimp have yet to do so. They have however put on weight with at least one definatly being a female. The container they are in seems to have an endless supply of copepods so perhaps that interferes with their breeding.
     The Black spot barbs/filament barbs (puntius filamentosus) seem to be doing well despite two days with night temps slightly below 60°. Their feeding seems less intense which is normal after a spawning event, of course it might also look less intense viewed from the top. They don't seems unhealthy just not quite hungry.
     The ancistrus plecos seem to be doing fine, though i only get to see up to three at a time. Little buggers hide out like all good plecos. I often see the little stunted one so if that one seems okay the rest should be good.
     I was at Petsmart the other day, which i sometimes do to pick up magazines or other hard tack that Aqualife lacks, and they had Oto's on sale for a buck a piece. I've had good luck with other sale fish from this place before so i snatched up ten. For better or worse i released 5 into the shrimp pond and 5 into the paradise pond. Both of which were getting coated in biofilm and algae. Normally i would have quarantined  them but they looked fat and ich free so i took the risk. Ich also spends part of it's life cycle settled in a substrate and the only substrate in this setup is in the paradise container and with the cories constantly stirring the muck up i feel safe. My larger concern is where to put them this winter. I'm low on tank space but the thought of breeding these guys in an environment full of food was too much to resist.
     I guess my next step is to put in a fresh order of Repashy foods to feed all those baby otos i might possible have in the nearby future.

Why i like contianer ponds.

     My first container pond for tropical fish was a necessity. I sometimes visit petcos and on one occasion they had paradise fish on sale for a $1. I always read good things about this fish and had some extra tank space at the time so thought what the hell. What i hadn't taken into consideration at the time was lack of quarantine space. Fortunately the I had set my fancy goldfish in a pond so their pond, normally an indoor one was available.
     So i filled the container with tank water tucked it under a bush. tossed in some floating plants and said good luck guys. Soon after all the gold fish died. I had set the container up underneath my car port, so it was protected from the worse of the sun but it was still on cement so i feel it just over heated. I left the container set up to grow mosquito larvae and daphnia. The feeding of the paradise fish became sporadic, once a week at best. water changes were really just top offs. They were out there from July until mid September.
     I started breaking down the pond, I found the adults fat and simply radiant with color. More surprisingly i found twenty five fry that were about an inch long or so. They were fat bellied and in good color. I moved the adults into my twenty hex. They spawned once in the house, no fry survived. Within the month the parents were dead. Probably due to the Angelfish.
     I had moved the fry into a spare five gallon, filled with pond water and some plants from the pond. One thing i noticed immediately was all the little critters scurrying around. My freshly set up five gallon freshwater had about as much biodiversity as a salt water tank. The fry were large enough to take chunks out of shrimp pellets and eat flake. as they grew the little critters disappeared. Once the critters disappeared, the growth of the fry slowed, despite an increase in manufactured food intake.
     I picked out two females to rear up, giving them each a 2 gallon, planted tank to grow up in. Ninety percent water changes each week and just an airstone for water movement. Over feeding of tubifex worms and blakworms kept a small population of inverts prowling around the dirt bottom tanks. A picked out a brilliant male from a local shop and set him up the same way.
     This year i set the pond again, putting the trio out with 4 paleatus cories around memorial day weekend. Despite two unexpected nights down to 45 degrees, the fish are thriving, the male having already built a nest and hatched a clutch for both females. The cories have scattered eggs along tank. More importantly all the fish are already showing color improvement and bulk up. i feed twice a week, thawed, crushed prawn and some sinking pellets. The rest of their food is from whatever grows in the pond or falls in. i purposely set it up under a tree for this reason. What changes are just top offs for evaporation, with a little over flow. Filter is a powerhead that moves water from the lower container to the upper and then over flows back. Duck weed runs rampant.
     What we have learned from saltwater tanks is that biodiversity is important in aquatic environments, marine tanks are crawling with copepods and other critters that scavenge and fish and corals eat. Freshwater tanks, do to how they are set up, using always sterile materials, lack this diversity. Even when introduced to the tank, freshwater critters have a hard time finding a niche to survive in. The summer pond allows our fish to benefit from being in a more natural environment, full of more natural prey items and algae , while simultaneously reducing our work load.
     The other benefit is size of containers. For instance, I would not house my paradise fish in 2 gallons of water all year round, but i have to concerns housing them in such a way for the winter, knowing that from may till October, they'll have more then adequate space to roam. That owner of larger fish, who might just might be meeting tank requirement  for a species, could perhaps use a summer pond to house the fish. This would ensure, for the summer at least, the fish is more then adequately housed.

Just a Little Hello.

I've been keeping fish since i was little. Good old goldfish in the bowl and that teenage ten gallon on the bureau. It's been in the last few years that I've become really dedicated. Moving quickly from live plants in the tank to emergents to aquaponicly growing houseplants in replication of a submerged amazon canopy. One of the things that always stuck with me when reading aquarium magazines was the adventures folks had gathering fish in the wild or the science of raising live food. People raising endangered or extinct species in their basements. The diversity of technique in fish rearing was fascinating.
     One thing that always frustrated me was the lack of courage in fish keeping. the unwillingness to step outside the box. People would often parrot advice with little to no personal experience in it. Then folks like me start growing plants in air driven systems and raising fish with no filters, just flow and people freak out. Get almost hateful.
     So for this space I'm simply going to write about how I keep the species I keep. how I house them, what I feed them and how many fry they spawn.  I'll talk about trips collecting daphnia in rhode island or local plants. Guess that's it for now next time it's how i raise paradise fish, paleatus cories, blackspot brabs, crystal black shrimp and bristlenose plecos in container ponds in the summer.