Rivercats 55g Planted

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Rivercats

Rivercats

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Jul 25, 2012
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13,144
Location
Missouri
I recently had 2 55g tanks open up and decided to make one into a planted tanks strictly for nano fish and perhaps shrimp down the road.

Stock consists of:

13 Scarlet Badis
10 Clown Killifish
30 Chili Rasbora
5 Burmese Rosey Loachs
1 Unknown Spotted Loach (came in with the Rosey Loaches)
8 Aspidoras Albater
5 Aspidoras Spilotus

Some of the plants came from the 220g and some were left from when the tank had goldfish. There are also 5 floating Water Hyacinth. Plant need to do some serious growing. Sorry the pic's aren't the greatest as I really need to get a good camera.
 
Burmese Rosey Loach on the left with the Unknown Spotted Loach that came with them...
Aquarium Advice - Aquarium Forum Community - Rivercats's Album: 55g Planted- Nano fish - Picture

Apisdoras Spilotus... Aquarium Advice - Aquarium Forum Community - Rivercats's Album: 55g Planted- Nano fish - Picture

Purple Pencilfish on hold in a 6g Fluval with 3 Blue Cobalt Gobies waiting for their new Nuvo 24g Nano Rimless tank to cycle... Aquarium Advice - Aquarium Forum Community - Rivercats's Album: 55g Planted- Nano fish - Picture

Scarlet Badis along with the beautiful thread algae I brought with the Anubia Nana Petite rocks from the 220g.... Aquarium Advice - Aquarium Forum Community - Rivercats's Album: 55g Planted- Nano fish - Picture
 
Well it seems the mystery loach has been identified! It seems it is a female Burmese Rosey Loach. I've never seen one before so I was quite surprised. So I have 5 males and 1 female. No wonder she always has company swimming with her!
 
Great start! I'm glad we will get the chance to watch a couple of your tanks from the start!
 
Looks terrific so far! This is one of my future projects too so definitely going to be following the progress on this!
 
Zimmanski said:
Great start! I'm glad we will get the chance to watch a couple of your tanks from the start!
Click to expand...

Well I hope my daughter will teach me how to do the pic's so I don't have to wait all the time!

Some of these plants took a real beating from the 8+ inch goldfish and others are small things I could remove from the 220. Once the stems grow taller and color up and all the plants tucked in all over the rocks and DW it will look pretty sweet. You know me I'll keep tweeking until I get it how I think it should look. AND... drum roll.... I have CO2 ready to roll on it. I just have to change the hosing for the inline diffuser I had asked you about. I think this will really help some of the plants.


Thank you Goldfish Loach Boy!
 
azmodan said:
Looks terrific so far! This is one of my future projects too so definitely going to be following the progress on this!
Click to expand...

I've kept Nano fish before but never in a large tank and never with so many different species. So in that respect this is new for me. I've always read about how different nano fish interact when there are large groups of them like you find in the wild. And all these fish are wild caught.

I do have 5 large peat balls I brought in from the UK to help and started the tank with a couple large Indian Almond leaves. The water has tannins which is why it looks a touch darker. Plus many of the nano fish like floating plants so that's why I added water hyacinth.

Trying to get pic's of the Clown Killifish and Chili Rasbora is a joke (maybe when they grow some) but they are both pretty cool little fish. The Chili's have a lot of color and the Clowns are so unique.

The Apisdoras's have already had 26 fry hatch out in the 2 weeks I've had them.
 
Rivercats said:
Well I hope my daughter will teach me how to do the pic's so I don't have to wait all the time!

Some of these plants took a real beating from the 8+ inch goldfish and others are small things I could remove from the 220. Once the stems grow taller and color up and all the plants tucked in all over the rocks and DW it will look pretty sweet. You know me I'll keep tweeking until I get it how I think it should look. AND... drum roll.... I have CO2 ready to roll on it. I just have to change the hosing for the inline diffuser I had asked you about. I think this will really help some of the plants.

Thank you Goldfish Loach Boy!
Click to expand...

Haha, the co2 bug bit you good! Welcome to the dark side
 
So later down the road when maybe the plants have grown in more you may try some RCS or other types of dwarf shrimp?
 
azmodan said:
So later down the road when maybe the plants have grown in more you may try some RCS or other types of dwarf shrimp?
Click to expand...

I've been leaning towards Yellow or Pumpkin shrimp. Plus a few Blue Neon Gobies.
 
I've got 13 Aspidora's which are in the cory family so no pygmy or dwarf cory's in this set up. Plus so far in 2 weeks I've had 26 Aspidoras fry hatch in the tank. I see one every now and then.

I am actually considering CPD but want to wait till the 30 Chili get bigger and see how busy the tank looks. Those little guys are so active along with the Rosey Loaches I'm worried that CPD's will be unsettled and really shy up with them. No rush so time will tell.
 
Rivercats, I noticed you were talking about thread algae that came along with your nana plant. I was under the impression that all algae is either kinda bad or very bad. Is there good algae?
 
Kiskadden said:
Rivercats, I noticed you were talking about thread algae that came along with your nana plant. I was under the impression that all algae is either kinda bad or very bad. Is there good algae?
Click to expand...

No algae is good IMO but some small amount is generally present in most aquariums. Now if you keep certain types of fish that require algae in their diet to stay healthy then allowing some to grow in the tank or better yet growing it on rocks outside the tank and adding them in is better but in general algae is a sign your aquarium is out of balance between light, CO2, and ferts.

My 220g was algae free for well over a year and then I changed my dosing regime, added more lighting to already high lighting, and began using CO2. It threw my tank out of balance and thread algae began appearing. It took weeks to pinpoint the problem and correct it. Now the 220g is algae free again. My dumb and I know better mistake was to not hydrogen peroxide treat the rocks with the attached Anubia Nana Petite on it to kill any algae before adding them into the 55g. I moved the rocks before all the thread algae had been eradicated from the 220g. I'll carefully spot treat it during the next WC but have to be very careful with these Nano fish.
 
Rivercats said:
I've got 13 Aspidora's which are in the cory family so no pygmy or dwarf cory's in this set up. Plus so far in 2 weeks I've had 26 Aspidoras fry hatch in the tank. I see one every now and then.

I am actually considering CPD but want to wait till the 30 Chili get bigger and see how busy the tank looks. Those little guys are so active along with the Rosey Loaches I'm worried that CPD's will be unsettled and really shy up with them. No rush so time will tell.
Click to expand...

Oh, Ok, you're totally right. I didn't know anything about aspidora's, and I didn't even think about how shy CPDs are. I'll have a species only 10 gallon with some of them soon, so I wasn't worried about shyness.
 
Fishperson said:
Oh, Ok, you're totally right. I didn't know anything about aspidora's, and I didn't even think about how shy CPDs are. I'll have a species only 10 gallon with some of them soon, so I wasn't worried about shyness.
Click to expand...

This is one lively little tank! You know how when you look down into a stream full of active little fish, well that's pretty much how this tank is. Every type of fish in there except the Scarlet Badis are constantly zipping around. But even the Scarlet Badis are beginning to get less shy and are swimming around more and more. I really like CPD's but I knew they probably would not have been very happy, even a large group of them in here. So I opted for 30 Chili rasboras who aren't in the least bit shy and have incredible color even with as small as they are right now. Some are about 3/8's of an inch long but as red as can be. I would like to add some freshwater gobies down the road but we'll have to see.
 
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