blackwater tank cycling?

[anewbie]

In unrelated news and much to my surprise my Mesonauta ?egregius? have managed to get advance wrigglers (this is their 3rd or 4th try). Gotta say one big negative of these larger aquariums is getting distortion free pictures is bit on the difficult side esp when they make a point of hiding them from external viewers; still my other mesonauta have never tried breeding in 3 years so this is really surprising to myself (both group are wild caught).

 

[anewbie]

Well sadly i have my first confirmed death; a female. I know at least 5 of the remaining 7 are alive but i suspect all 7 as i frequently see the three males. To be honest when they pass i think i'll turn this into a b. warvani/chocolate cherry aquarium - with the big issue is i really only see one of them - and that is a large male that hangs out near the feeding area. He's not shy per sey but even then he rarely shows himself fully usually wrapped or half wrapped in a blanket (leaf).

 

[anewbie]

Unrelated post but this is the a. sp Blutkehl aquarium - ec is around 25; haven't seen frys since the first spawning 2 months ago but they behave like they are spawning. Content is 4 otto 7 to 9 n. mortenthaleri and a pair of a. sp Bluthekl - they are slightly upset right now because I tinker with the aquarium adding a small canister filter - tank has been setup for 8 months but i felt it needed a bit more filtration than the two corner sponge fitlers. No deaths in those 8 months. If i were to redo it i would replace the morthenthaleri with marilynae as they are a more appealing (to me) species. Unlike some of the other dwarf cichild i have the a. Blutkehl are pretty laid back and mostly ignore the pencil fishes even when she had frys. the male spends a good deal of time displaying to the female day in and day out:

Feel free to critque the tank if you think it is inappropriate for dwarf cichild. As for brightness - this one is a bit brigther than some of the others (in the past the camera has adjusted quite a bit to brighten things); i forget what i ahve the light set at but i think it is 30% max output - this pair doesn't seem to mind - i ahve some species that are more sensitive to light - most of the time the female stays in her little cave on the left and male stays out in the open - his nose is poking up behind the otto in the middle right (the otto is on the leaf); he went into hiding when i added the filter a few minutes earlier - didn't much care for my sticking my hand in the aquarium.... oh well - at least he didn't bite it like some of my fishes.
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I really wish they made an aquarium that was 30 inches long 16 inches wide and 16 inches tall.

 

[anewbie]

Hum i was mistaken the ec in the above aquarium is 20 not 25. i wonder if my ec pen needs calibration.

 

[anewbie]

Did the usual water change (which is nothing exciting as i do it every week). For reasons I fail to understand nearly every water change the otto get very active and come to the front as a group - usually they split in two between the two sides but not always - this is around 8 of the 16 to 20 i have - several kept swimming in and out of the frame; this is when the tank is 1/2 full before refill.

Later when i was wrapping up the other aquariums and reading about some plant requirements (acidic vs alkaline) i spotted this pow wow:

The one in the leaves i consider the 'alpha' male and usually stays in that area; the other one is well maybe an alpha wanna be? There are several females - one in particular i see on a regular basis but i've not observed any spawning behavior or even hint of such. I'd guess their total age is around 18 months - they were very young adults - maybe 9 months when i received them and i've had them around 10 or 11 months.

 

[rasmusW]

Beautiful fish. Especially the one closest to camera.

-r

 

[anewbie]

Here is a picture of one of the female taken a few minutes ago - the male is just on the other side of the leaf; later he came out but didn't chase her away. This area of the tank is of course popular because it is by the edge where they get fed (i do feed on other side also to try to prevent forced territory encroachment though most of the time he doesn't object if a female enters the area; to be honest being naive she has a lot of similarities to the male though she is about 1/2 to 5/8 the size of the larger male.

 

[rasmusW]

Are you sure its a female? It looks very much like a male to me.

-r

 

[anewbie]

Are you sure its a female? It looks very much like a male to me.

-r

I'm not 100% sure of course but it is substantially smaller and when next to the obvious male the fins are a lot smaller. In fact the male i consider the betta came up and displayed to it (though i can hardly tell if it was attraction or aggression). I would not be shocked if i have the sex wrong. All of these fishes should be over 18 months old now so i would presume they are 'full grown'. I would not be shocked if they were all males as non are the obvious females that you see with other species.

 

[rasmusW]

I would suspect more yellowish body color (also when not in breeding dress), anal and dorsal fin tips should be round and not pointy. I think yours presumable female has too pointy fins to actually be a female. And then then its missing the broad black marking on the pelvic fins.
-i know color and fin markings is mood dependant so it’s not the best diagnostic.

-r

 

[anewbie]

I would suspect more yellowish body color (also when not in breeding dress), anal and dorsal fin tips should be round and not pointy. I think yours presumable female has too pointy fins to actually be a female. And then then its missing the broad black marking on the pelvic fins.
-i know color and fin markings is mood dependant so it’s not the best diagnostic.

-r

So the colours are totally warped because of the tannis; having said that i basically agree with you and i was just going off the size of the fish and in theory they were sold as 3 males and 5 females; though i would not be shocked if all 8 were males. The problem these days is finding them. I've never seen what i consider an obvious female and this one was the most female like just off the basis of size and lack of aggression by the male i called alpha.
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Also my ortega (the ones that we believe were hybrid) colouring changed completely when i moved them to clear water aquariums (er aquariums with clear water); they actually had more colour than i thought in their tanis environment which made most of it disappear (or visually be invisible). After your post i went through the tank with a flash light but could only find 3 more - 2 very obvious male and another that was no more female looking than this one. I had 8 - i know factually 1 died a couple of months ago - posted in this thread. I know 3 or so months ago at least 5 were still alive. I suppose if i want to stick my hand in there and start pulling up driftwood and leaves i could assertain what is still in the tank but it i sort of don't feel like going that far. You know folks keep saying add better structure to your tank so you finally add better structure and you can't find anything. Heck in my 29 i have in theory 4 wolli and i haven't seen #4 since i put them in and #3 i only saw once - and it was a weird encounter. It was a large fish - it came out from under a leaf - the female then saw it as she was grabbing a piece of food and it immediately laid on its side in a submissive form and the female poked it once and went back to hiding (i only see hte female once every 2 weeks or so now).
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Maybe i should stop adding structure it makes these sort of things too painful.
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Ok i just went back over there - i found alpha, betta and that one and i'm pretty sure it is a female - the fins look wrong but the size really suggest female the entire body is shaped different than alpha and betta.
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It is more than just the shape of teh body it is how alpha and betta reacts to it - when alpha and betta see each other there is more of a display of aggression with this fish they display to it but don't chase it away.

 

[Mike Wise]

Have you considered that it might be a sneaker male?

 

[anewbie]

Have you considered that it might be a sneaker male?

It might be; it very well might be. I'm leaning torwards all 8 were males. The only hesitant is i've had an ortega that looked like male and a hongsloi that looked like a male both lay eggs and breed (the hongsloi was domestic but natural form without red; the ortegai were the 'wc' hybrids). I just don't know. The most i know is the obvious males are very very passive around it - as it spend a good thirty to sixy minutes poking for food with the males mostly ignoring it.

 

[anewbie]

Brief update: It has been around 12 full months since i put fishes in here and a few things i learned:
leaves are important - not so much about decay and humic acid and what have you but so fishes have a blanket to keep themselves warm at night. No one ever talk about how they use them as blankets but what can i say - more seriously they are really excellent for breaking line of sight and avoiding direct confrontation.

Of the 8 a. Bitaeniata I put in i know 1 died and as of today at least 4 are alive - the other 3 who knows. As far as schoolers - i'm finding the two fishes i like the best are the emerald rasbora (picture a few pages back) and these guys:

(Gasteropelecus maculatus); they are a bit large for a smaller aquarium like 29 but they are sure easy to find and fit well in 100. I've not much luck with the marbles and i'm not sure why they jsut seem to vanish over the passage of time. The Thoracocharax stellatus which are similar size to the marbles (Carnegiella strigata) have done fine. Hum have you noticed how all these hatches fishes are in different genus. Well hopefully that mean they can't cross breed.

I did add this fellow 4 or so months ago:

I had ordered 6 for another aquarium and 5 were DOA; the sender then resent 6 and they all arrived doa so only this little fellow made it so he ended up here. Not really a species to be kept alone but i havent' seen them for sale since. I do have a special order from a fellow of columbia fishes and it might have a few of these (as well as supposedly a. lineta) and if so i'll move them to the discus tank.
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This tank is lousy for breeding. The problem is you just can't tell what the fishes are doing - it is too large - too dark - and too much stuff to have any chance of seeing much less feeding frys.
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Plants are doing well (no pictures); a year later they are slowly growing but growing. One of these days i'll figure out how to tkae some better pictures of the full tank. If i see that more of the apisto are around i'll see if i can confirm a female.
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In other aquariums there are more wolli than i know how to wool. They just keep breeding and keep hiding - i see the first set of frys more often than the male (which is never).
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This does pose a question are wolli a passive fish cause they two females seem to have staked out their own territories and seem to be co-existing (though they did lock lips once and i have no clue what that means).
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The a. sp bluketa has gazillion frys but dad doesn't seem to mind.
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a. ladisalo are showing no desire to breed but more weird no desire to chase each other away (i have 6 in a now dedicated 40B - well dedicated if you ignore the swordtail frys - i did remove the adults). Unlike some species i never see the female even flare at each other they happy hang out in one large group. The male is about 3x larger than my wolli female but shows no flaring or other hostility to the other (small) male in there.
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One other unusual thing - in this aquarium there is a sandy area behind and i planted this little guy:

This is a 'platinum anubia purchased from aquariumplantsfactory but as you can see i'm doing something wrong cause it turned green still for an anubia has it has interesting texture to the leaves.

 

[rasmusW]

The plant looks a lot more like bucephalandra than anubias, to me..

-r

 

[anewbie]

The plant looks a lot more like bucephalandra than anubias, to me..

-r

It does and i'm not really sure what the genetic makeup of the platinum anubia - i doubt it is a 'natural' plant found in the wild so maybe it is something they glue together in a test tube? Still they sell it as an anubia and it definitely has a more anubia like rhizome but I agree the leaves are more buce like with regards to texture non-uniform shading. Btw this is a bucephalandara helena which is next to it for comparison: