In February I had to move myself and all my little fishies into a new place to live. Now, I’m sure that you all know what a mess it can be to move everything you own several miles in the course of one or two days---not to mention the life support systems of various aquaria.
I was fortunate enough to have a place to take my fish to
vacation
until their tanks were ready, but ripping up several
years growth of Cryptocorynes nearly broke my heart. A fully planted
100 gallon tank is quite a sight, until you pull the poor little
vegetables up by their roots and toss them into a plastic trash bag
for a week or so.
Now that things are settled down a bit, and my 100 gallon is
starting its new-growth
crypts, I have an amazing opportunity
that comes very rarely---I get to keep brand new fish in my 60
gallon.
Sure, I could have swapped out the old fish and gotten new and different fish prior to moving, but when you are running a heavily planted tank with fast swimming fish, pulling out the fish can be a trauma only surpassed by that of actually moving the tank. Decorations must be pulled out to get at all those hidden cory cats, tall plants are ripped to shreds as the net pursues fast swimming fish such as the Siamese Algae Eater, and you can get a headache from staring at bits and pieces of bottom debris trying to find that well camouflaged banjo cat.
So, after a move you have a great opportunity to try something new with your tank, and because this opportunity will only come once in a blue moon (let’s hope), my tank stood empty for almost two months... I couldn’t make up my mind what I was going to put in it!
I had many things I wanted to do, but the most important one was that I wanted to do some work with an unusual fish. Breed something never bred before, observe the behavior of an unusual fish, or maybe just grow out a rare large carnivore.
I started out planning on a species tank with SAE’s, and attempting to breed them, but since they are going to be more readily available now that the local wholesalers have caught on that they are in demand, this option is no longer quite as appealing.
I did like the SAEs though, and so my next thought was to possibly do a Southeast Asian biotope. I enjoy danios and gouramis, and several other fish and plants from that area. This plan held my attention for all of a week, and then I got back to the idea of trying to breed an unusual species.
My next thought was for Banjo cats, which have always been a favorite of mine, and have only been bred a few times in captivity. I’m also very fond of their nocturnal nature, and many nights when I couldn’t sleep I’ve crept down to my tank, flashlight in hand to see what they were up to and maybe hand-feed them a little bit of freeze-dried tubifex.
Unfortunately, they make for a very boring tank during daylight hours, and since this tank is located right next to my computer, it tends to be a nice distraction when my computer is taking a little bit longer to do something than my attention span can take.
Another possibility, was to do a big carnivore grow-out tank. I
have available to me a number of very rare carnivores (Scleropages
lechardi, Datnoides microlepis, assorted gars, &cetera). These make
amazingly good pet
fish, where you only really need one, and
they impress most people when you drop a fish (or mouse, in the case
of the Scleropages) into the tank and see the big meat-eater in
action. Another bonus to the big carnivore is that they don’t
typically disturb plants, and look great lurking in the vegetation.
Unfortunately, you can never really keep much with them, including all those little algae eaters like shrimp, Otocinclus &cetera that are almost required in a heavily planted tank.
Looking at all my possible ideas for my tank, I finally chose an option that may surprise you, I know it surprised me.
I decided to Populate it with a few Borneo suckermouths (Gastromyzon borensis), some of Takashi Amano’s famous algae eating shrimp, and a huge community of Heterandria formosa, the midget live bearer we’ve been hearing so much about lately.
The suckermouths are quite unusual and will help keep the snail
population in check, the shrimp will possibly be encouraged to breed
in the absence of predators, as well as helping the single otto to
clean up the algae. The Heterandria, will make for an excellent
dither
fish---both for getting the shrimp to breed, and for me
to be distracted.
One of the reasons I’m so proud of this set-up, is that if (when) I do change my mind, none of these fish will interfere. The Heterandria are so small, that their mouths are too small to eat even their own tiny fry, and the others are quite peaceful and non-predatory. Just about any other fishes that I wish to add to the tank will not have a problem with its current inhabitants. The current residents, if I ever become bored with them, are more likely to provide a nice little snack-food for the new fish than to cause a problem through incompatibility.
So far this tank has provided me with several insights including
the interesting fact that while the suckermouths do not eating algae,
they do an excellent job of keeping the front surface of the tank
quite clean by their constant window-wiper
body
movements. Hopefully there will be an article on breeding the algae
eating shrimps coming sometime soon!