Swords are in (they sent me two. one will stay, the extra one will be grown out then sold.) and i tried positioning the tree bark on the substrate like i wanted to. unfortunately that bark still floats so its hard to keep it down like that. released all the pleco fry and shrimp. do not know what will happen.
Tank looks much more complete now. put some dried leaves in the corner to water log them and when they sink they will be spread over the sand. I think the tank reminds me of the Amazon a bit, what do you think?
Two main structures are the driftwood pile on the left of the tank:
Thanks! It really looks great in person, the pics only show a general idea. the full effect with the shimmer can only be experienced in real life (or through a good camera which I do not own haha!)
I am finally happy with this tank. I added more neon tetras for a school and also added pygmy cories.
When the pleco fry grow a bit more they will be sold and moved out, because clearly it is not possible to house 50+ BN plecos in a 40gallon lol. I'm also thinking about re-homing the platies to lower the bioload, but I may just let them live out the rest of their lives in comfort here. They are used to this tank.
Hey Newman! I like the new set up, and the branch placement is brilliant! Nice work!
For me, if I were doing a tank of this type, I would probably suggest the addition of a few things:
1. A nice piece of driftwood that's comes up from the back corner by the sword plant, and maybe branches along the back of the tank.
2. In front of the suggested driftwood, the addition of another two swords to compliment the first sword already there....in the wild, these guys grow in patches, and it would add a bold bright green. It would look nice.
3. In front of the sword patch, add a nice long and thick piece of driftwood running at a diagonal such that the back end starts at the back of the tank towards the left side (maybe a third of the way from the extreme left side), runs in front of the swords partially obscuring them (not too much...just a bit), and ends close to the right front part of the tank.
4. Last, I would add several plants of Echinodorus tennelus in front of the large piece of driftwood partially obscuring the large swords. I would concentrate on planting most of the tennelus just right of center of the tank and following the large driftwood to the right. This will slowly spread and form a natural carpet.
Make sure that you use some good root tabs, too.
I think that the addition of the driftwood would add to the mystery and stark, dramatic atmosphere that you have going on in there. It's dark with a slight eerie glow from the LED lighting. The leaves will tone the substrate down even more. You will have a lot of nice lines in there that all lead the eye toward the bright patch of green swords....a happy spot in an otherwise "bleak"looking design. It would be phenomenal! Especially seeing the fish swimming around the branches of the driftwood you have in there already.....it would look original and would be extremely eye catching.
Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll see what I can do. I get my DW from my backyard, I can't really afford to buy it haha. Depending on what I find, it might work along with what you have suggested. I do not think there is enough light to support a growth of carpet, since the light is centered around just the sword (in a spotlight), but I'll see how it plays out. I happen to have pygmy chains growing in my shrimp bowl, so i already have a source for them.
It looks like i have one sword plant in here but there are actually two. So I would just have to raise another one once these start to reproduce for a total of 3 right? that's how many you recommend?
Could you maybe do schematic in microsoft paint to show what you mean with the DW placement and the plants you want to add? if it is not too much trouble, thanks!
Well i suppose its time to update the thread. recently added a large piece of DW, I think it looks nice. finally sold off all of my pleco fry.
just keeping a few albinos and the breeder pair for now. might sell in the future and try a rarer pleco.
One of them hatched! here is a pic comparing the fry with the egg and some crushed flake which turns out to be too big for the fry even though it's crushed! also the fry has a yolk sac so it wont feed for a while.
Also update on the L260 plecos. Update pics! These guys grow much slower than my albino BN juvies. my BNs are about 2"+ a piece and these L260 are still around 1.5" each. i hope they are eating and growing! pics taken at night so that i could catch them out and about on the DW. the fishe's color can appear washed out at night as we all know.
cory is still doing well He is bigger now, and I am worried that my angel might eat him since he likes to hover in the water column since he grew bigger.
Also update photo of the L260s. I know i have at least 5 of them left, hopefully all 6 though.
yeah $&%^&#$ those stupid F'ing snails. I hate them. every night i feed the catfish, they swarm the food so that the catfish barely get a bite out of the snail clump.
I have begun to siphon them out twice a week since i do water changes twice a week now. i use the food to lure them out then siphon out about 100 of them each time. helps control them a little.
Thanks! I hope the L260 get to breeding age some day. they grow very slow.
Put a couple yoyo loaches in there and that snail population won't last long. If those pleco eat meat at all you can crush the snails and they will eat the meat. Used to do that for my scarlet badis.
crushing snails doesnt work. they plecos will likely pass on the crushed snails, and believe it or not they will live on after being crushed - they are just that hardy. (especially the bladder snails). then they will continue breeding so crushing only kills a very small amount of them and doesn't really stop the problem. I have to manually remove them.
I wanted yoyo loaches for a long time but they are fast and aggressive feeders. they will undoubtedly out-compete my L260 for food which are very timid and slow eaters. That is the reason i am not keeping a group of cories in here too. I LOVE cories but can't keep them because they too will out-eat all my L260.
haha ... feel free to save and send me some of those blue ramhorns eventually! xD
Still, I know how that feels. My 40gB was INFESTED with Malaysian trumpet snails which are obviously insanely hard to kill ... they finally stopped being so numerous, tho. Hopefully they'll either die off or you'll find a way to get them under control. It's bound to happen eventually ... hopefully the L260s[ha! I got that right the first time without looking back!] will start really working for their food and not let those pesky snails get it.
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