Yanagi

Forgive the quality.. I managed to lose the settings on the camera and spent an hour trying to get things right again. I failed. Only got 1 LED cranking at the moment. You can tell which end it is over, lol. This little guy, 'Bandit' is going back to work tomorrow. He's been a jerkwad since he hit angelfish puberty and I'm over it. You do not challenge my dominant male and get away with it! I love this guy, I swear he's a friendly little lap dog reincarnated as a fish!

Quite, lmao. I didn't intend to breed them, it's just a matter of if or when they do. If they lay again I may slip a breeder net under the male and his nest like I've done with bettas in community tanks in the past and see how it goes. Coming, LOL. I was hoping it would clear up a bit more. The plants are in a shocker of a state and the black beard algae had started to grow on the driftwood in the tank outside. ERUGH!!!! Tomorrow I've got work so there will be a plant buying spree on my lunch break. I'll talk about what I plan on doing with the plants when I update with pictures so you can sort of visualize it.

Tank is full. Planted. Fish in it. And I'm sitting here grinning like a fool thinking to myself, 'That's mine!'.

After much struggling, it was brought inside. Approx 40kg of river gravel and red sea flora base was placed in it and the driftwood arranged. The driftwood was later moved away from the corner to allow for planting. Then the process of filling began. As I wanted to do it as gently as possible I placed the powerhead off a cheapy internal filter into a 20lt bucket and was pumping that water into the tank so I wasn't having to lift heavy buckets up over my head to be able to pour it into the tank. I filled it with about 40lt of RO water and the rest (stopped counting after my arms felt like dropping off) some amount of tap water. When planting is done and I am ready to move my fish, it will be filled with water drained from their current tank. I dosed seachem prime, seachem stability and seachem clarity. I would normally be dosing Nutrafin Cycle too but it appears I don't have any and I don't want to go to work on my day off, lol. Then I stuck a well developed filter that has been with this tank from day 1 on it and also a 1000 l/ph internal down the other end to move the water around. Then I had issues with the canister being up so high it began to suck in air and wasn't pumping through. I dropped it down lower than the tank and the hoses were too short.. I managed to extend them and it decided to still suck in air. So I turned the damn thing off and hooked up the little internal filter to the in pipe and it alone was pushing water through the canister. This morning, the tank is almost crystal clear. I intend to heat up the water then start moving some of the plants from the current tank. Sorry, picture quality will improve when I have something decent to take pictures of. Just using the ipod for now. :)

Doesn't look like a cory (wrong shape, wrong pattern) or oto (barbels) fry to me. Honestly couldn't say what it is, what a strange critter. Raise it! If you are going to move it into a real tank make sure you acclimatize it extremely slowly to avoid a big temperature shock.

Love the oranges + metallic. Always been one of my favourite colours. Makes me want to have a few Splendens again... Or toss some girls in with my Imbellis and hope they hybridize some peaceful orange bettas with a more splendens appearance.

By carding them you are only encouraging them to flare. Remove it and arrange the jars so that they can all see each other. Perhaps float them in guppy traps (with lids!!!) in the sorority tank until they get used to each other.

They may wonder what exactly you are a breeder of. Love this thread, LOL.

Ok guess I'll re-write it. Eheim is your top of the range canister filter. It has all the best media and is jam packed full of it. The pipes that come with it are resistant towards algae growth and all that awesome stuff. They also stay pretty soft and supple as opposed to cheaper pipes that turn rock hard after a while. Aqua One is your good budget option. They ( think all of them?) come with bioballs which just need to be thrown out as they are entirely useless when completely submerged. You get a small amount of so-so media, better off replacing it with eheim media. The sponges are ok though. I wouldn't even look at any other brands at all. The exact filter you need does depend on what you intend to stock in the tank and how heavily you will be stocking it. If you plan on keeping a long finned male Betta in this tank then ignore the following information because it will blow the fins right off the fish. You want a minimum of 4x turnover rate of your total volume for tropical fish. So 180 x 4 = 770l p/h is a minimum of what you want. To achieve that I would be looking at Eheim Professional 2226 Aqua One Nautilus 1100 Hope that helps.

?? Did I get moderated? My comment is gone...

They are perfectly fine living solitary lives. If you want to get him some tankmates I'd look at upgrading to a bigger tank. Most other fish you could (note; doesn't mean you should! ) add to a tank that size are small fin-nipper types.

Neon tetras, or any tetra really need to be in far larger groups than just 3, they won't be happy and IMO the tank is too small.

Wow, what a tank!

Diet, water change schedule, temperature?

I have a funny feeling here, correct me if I'm wrong.. you like crowntails? LOL Very nice. I love the black lace + butterfly boys in the 2nd post, 2nd pic.

The floating plant is amazon frogbit and the plant on the bottom is banana lily.

Thanks. LOL @ MT. I had a couple of unexpected expenses and I am looking at a trip to melbourne soon so it'll be a while before I can pimp out this tank, so for now I'm just making plans. Here's my to-buy list: I think I am going to go with 2x 30w LED floodlights (centered) and a twin T5 (Across the back) along with a little cheapy LED strip in blue for moonlighting. Hydor in-line heater A few bags of Red Sea Flora Base (already have the river gravel mix to blend it all in) And my plants. I am going to try and stick with an amazon theme but I love my asian plants as well so I'll try to stick with what LOOKS like it could belong in the amazon. Willow Hygro Zosterifolia Assorted Crypts (Love Wendtii and Willisii) Assorted sword plants Assorted Anubias Hygro Corymbosa and Lilaeopsis + Staurogyne in the foreground. I may also have misc. ferns (java, narrow leaf) growing on the driftwood but I've lost the majority of them to java fern disease. :/ We'll see what survives. I'd like to get some vallisneria across the back too but I've never been able to grow it very well, but I've always had quite low lighting. I think I'll give it another go but it probably won't like my water conditions.

Slightly better pic The hood is black too, honest!

He looks like quite a happy boy. :)