Aquaria and Fish

I currently have two tanks of my own, and help to manage Emily (my three-year-old daughter)'s two guppy tanks.

Borneo Tank

The Borneo tank is a 1.8m, 315l tank, that attempts to emulate a backwater from a fast-flowing mountain stream in Borneo. The substrate is sand from the Nepean river here --- the grain size is variable from 1mm to 8mm across.

The tank is filtered by an Eheim canister filter. For hot days, there's a bubble bar the full length of the tank --- I turn it on when the water temperature reaches 30C.

Fish are:

30 Harlequin Rasboras
3 glass catfish (should be ten)
6 clown loaches
1 pearl gourami (I really want 2, but there have been supply problems)
2 Crossocheilus siamensis to eat the algae
A whole heap of Ancistrus babies I put in to fatten up, but that don't really belong there. When they're a bit bigger I'll pull them out and sell them.

Plants include Cryptocoryne pontederifolia, Limnophyllum sp. (which isn't doing at all well), Ceratopteris thalictroides (mainly to provide the Gouramis somewhere to build a nest) and Hygrophila polysperma which got in by mistake --- I found out afterwards it's from India, not Borneo.

Care

I change ten percent of the water weekly. Sydney water is very soft (less than 2kH) so I add salts to increase the hardness to 3kH, otherwise the pH drops rapidly during the week between water changes,

Water parameters are:

pH 6.9

kH 3

Temp 29C

NO3 <40ppm

Tragedy!

Early this year, after a really hot spell, I had only 23 Rasboras in the tank. I bought half a dozen more to bring the tank up to full strength. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry (Lesson: Never be in a hurry when you're dealing with a biological system) and neglected to quarantine the fish before introducing them. After six days, I had only 6 rasboras and 3 glass catfish, and almost no bristle-nosed catfish. Fortunately the other fish didn't seem to be affected by whatever disease had been introduced. I bought some more rasboras, quarantined them for two weeks, then introduced them; but I'm still saving up for some more glass catfish.

Amazon tank

This is a 60cm, 80l tank that attempts to emulate an Amazon headwater stream. Its substrate is black gravel (not very authentic, but the fish look good against it); and uses an undergravel filter.

Some people have difficulty keeping plants alive with an undergravel filter; this tank is planted with cryptocorynes, and I've never had a problem.

Fish are:

Breeding pair of Ancistrus (bristle nose catfish)
Ten rummy-nosed tetras
5 ember tetras that my wife bought for my birthday, that don't really belong in the Amazon
Too many snails --- Malaysian trumpet snails got into the tank somehow, and now I can't get rid of them!

Care

I change 20l of the water weekly. Coral sand is placed below the filter to maintain hardness and pH. With each water change, I stir the gravel with my hand and try to get out as much as possible of the mulm from below the filter as possible.

If the water parameters are a long way out, I use a hang-on-the-back filter for a few hours, add nitrivec and extra aqutan, and adjust pH (maybe changing extra water). This happens maybe once a month --- with such a small tank it's hard to keep things balanced properly.

Water parameters are:

pH 6.5

kH 2

Temp 26C

NO3 <40ppm

Last modified: Tue Aug 17 11:04:41 EST 2004