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Joe's tank

Saw Joe's tank yesterday and his pics really don't do it justice, there is Java fern growing from the bottom of the tank up some wood then growing emmersed and the leaves above water must easily be 10" or more plus the different shapes of different Anubias leaves above the water compared to under the water. My morpho tetras seem to do their courtship in the open, the male opening all all his fins and 'dancing' in front of the female and where ever she turns her head he places himself straight in front. Can't catch in on the camera as it won't focus on the fish unless I stand too far back, must get a macro lens. Seem quite secretive fish then 10 minutes later they are all out, males flaring up to each other then displaying to the females. Love 'em!
 
just to add to my observations, they are quite sensitive to some things, when i imported these fish originally they were divided up equally with 5 fish keepers, two have since lost all their fish one by increasing the temp overnight from 23 to 29 to begin tackling a white spot outbreak on some rams all the morphos were dead and floating in the morning and the other loss was a dose of whitespot related case too, the tank was treated with salt, all the morphos died within hours.
 
first attempt at pictures, here is a video of the morphos feeding, not great quality, but it shows how they feed and the size of food they take
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no problem Darrel, stick it up anywhere that you think someone would be interested in reading it, I have other thoughts and observations on the morphos, but they are only that at the moment, and i might be a bit off the mark with what i think i see, things like the young males moving away from the group and positioning themselves elsewhere in the tank once their fins star to grow and color up and also changes in the adult breeding males fin shape when spawning, it may just be disfigurement from the healing process after getting split with the displaying and posturing up to each other, but i have noticed the exact same growth( / regrowth) on a couple of the males.
on another note, i only looked at my own video in full tonight , now i can see exactly why people gave them the common name of 'darter tetra' !!! what other fish feeds like that!!!
 
here are the photos i promised to post a while back, my photography skill are total crap.. i think even with a good camera i would produce rubbish!
here are a few, there are lots more posted on my photobucket account, (none award winning though!)

adult male beside adult female checkerboard for size comparison, you can see how big they get!!
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young male, starting to show the extended fins and lots of red in the dorsal alongside an unsexed youngster.
the males fins become red and the dorsal looks larger and sail like as they grow but does not overlap or have the spotting and lines on it until adult size
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now i need to find one or two of adult and young females!
 
here is a 3 second video of some adult females, i just could not manage a photo of them yet.
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This tank ruwelz.

I am a bit confused though, in some earlier posts you say you dont feed the tank, but then you show photos of you clearly feeding it....

Also, I was wondering how you were able to tweak the spraybar flow just right - close the output valve on your canister?

Such a nice set-up and fish breeding with ease. Gotta love it.
 
sorry for not answering you guys earlier, i haven't logged on for a few weeks, too many things to do not enough time!
yes the plant food i used last year for a while was lidl liquid plant food, the brand was Grandiole and it was a liter bottle costing about 2-3 euro. i fed it more or less daily , i built up from a couple of mil to 8 ml a day for the 80 gallons of water that was in the tank, when it ran out lidl had stopped stocking it so the tank was not fed any more, i just bought a bottle of it the other day as it is back in stock again for the summer, but i have not got round to using it yet for anything other than the pot plants about the house. I am not recommending you use this in place of what you normally use,do it at your own risk!!!! if you read the contents of the bottle you will see that some of the ingredients would be considered a no no for adding to a tank, such as the form some of the Nitrogen comes in, i have used it and had no problems, but i have a fairly rigorous water changing routine and i would have what i consider a half decent eye for trouble with plants in general, not that that has always worked in the past!
the only other addition that i used in the tank was easy-carbo for the black beard algae i had, i got lazy and learned to live with it in the end, though it has been starting to really bug me recently so i may have another go at eliminating it.
the spray bar was a bit of move and check, move and check, the two externals are on full output, the tetratec filter spray bar is in three 7-8-or 9" pieces, i cannot remember if it came like that or i added the third one from another filter i had, so each one can be set to spray in a slightly different direction to give the effect i wanted the other spraybar on the jbl is a one piece one and i have that aimed directly onto into the inside upper corner plus i think it is set diagionally again that was just trial and error to get the effect i wanted, one of the things i also had to take into account other than the best effect and benefit to the plants was minimum noise to avoid me suffering the wrath of my better half!
Ithink the only other changes i have made to the tank in the recent past i iadded a pot of the radicans sword, there were three plants in the pot, 2 good and one small, my hope is they will rise above the water and grow hugh once they take off to date they have been pretty slow, but i reckon they are putting their energy into root formation now and i expect to see some good leaf growth soon esp with the sun starting to shine more and give the tank a bit of extra light, fishwise i added a group of 5 splash tetras 1mf 4 m as it turned out, they have been spawning like clockwork every 3.5 to 4 days, fun to watch their behavior Ihave not saved any eggs to hatch seperatly but am hoping for a few survivors in the plant mass. other than that the tank has sort of been a bit neglected with other things needing my attention recently
hope that answers your questions, if not shout and i will get back to you, i must log on more often 🙄
 
a quick update, one of the branches i mentioned in an earlier post finally gave up the other day, bending until it cracked and broke resulting in the java fern clump tilting and sinking into the tank so i bit the bullet and pulled it out, here is a picture of the plant. It started life in the tank as a small piece of rhizome less than 2" without any fronds just placed on a branch at water level less than a year ago.
the plant
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I have broken it into a number of pieces, will replant one or two and pass on the rest to other fish keepers in the area
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it is either a different species or else a different form of pteropus, I don't know which, this is different from the plants generally offered for sale, I had never seen it offered before. It can produce leaves over 12" long, some of them trilobite from about a third of the way up the frond and the fronds are slightly puckered, it is a beautiful plant and worthy of a place in any aquarium, as long as the tank is not too small! It is also the most vigorous Microsorum I have ever grown
Does anyone know any more about this Microsorum? is it offered for sale under any trade name, or has it been classified as a separate species or cultivar ? any info would be good, I think the general label of java fern is a bit over used and tends to cover a group of plants with very different characteristics ... any thoughts?
I sort of suspect that it is a sport as i found it mixed in a batch of pots of java fern and picked it as it looked slightly different
 
Hi all,
The big form of Microsorum pteropus with the leaves often having 3 branches is known the "vigorous form". I'm not sure if it really is the same species as the gracile form.

You can find a similar one for sale sometimes as M. pteropus "Tropica", although the "Tropica" I bought was a different plant again.

cheers Darrel
 
Tks Darrel,
"vigorous form"
Click to expand...
make sense it is a good descriptive term for the plants growth habit, now if they could add in something about the frond shape they would have it sorted! I would tend to go towards thinking it is a different species to the gracile form as it grows and looks so differently under the same conditions. the plant in the picture was picked from a tray of plants supplied by 'Dennerl' I grew the 'Tropica' java fern before but that did not develop into anything like the specimen in the picture, maybe theirs too can be very variable I don't know.
Looking at how widespread the plant is found in its native habitat there are bound to be many different forms evolved and growing, I think it would be an excellent subject for a thesis for some enthusiastic horticulture student ......... I wonder is there any student reading this that is stuck for a topic 🙂
 
just a short update on the tank, there have not been many big changes other than adding a couple of cuttings and offsets of some plant species not generally planted by aquarium keepers, I added these just to see how they would behave, the idea came after the previous addition of a couple of earth stars ( Cryptanthus bivittatus ) which took well to the tank, so i added the following
1. Aeschynanthus cult 'mona lisa'
this has thrown out roots that seem to have attached to the branch and is starting to put out some side shoots.
2. Rhipsalis cassutha
this sat for a while doing nothing but now is growing throwing out roots and plenty of new growth too, this one looks interesting.
3. Tillandsia usneoides (spanish moss)
this is growing well and is tempting me to try a couple more Tillandsia species
4. Vriesea hybrid
possibly guttata or guttata x unknown :? just not sure on this one at the moment, it is not in long so i will just wait and see how it does, maybe time will help with the i.d.
here is a pic of some of the ones i have added
061-1.jpg
 
hi, sorry for the late reply, yep the tank is now dead, i sold it over a year ago and split and gave away all the plants to friends, I have not been keeping that many fish in the past year, too many other things were taking up my time, but i miss that tank and it is the one that everyone else living in the house liked and were drawn to too, so maybe in the spring i will set up another one, maybe doing it a bit better, learning from my mistakes with the structures i built and some of the plant selections from the old one
so for now it is a bit of day dreaming about what i want it to look like and what fish will live in it
 
bogman said:
hi, sorry for the late reply, yep the tank is now dead, i sold it over a year ago and split and gave away all the plants to friends, I have not been keeping that many fish in the past year, too many other things were taking up my time, but i miss that tank and it is the one that everyone else living in the house liked and were drawn to too, so maybe in the spring i will set up another one, maybe doing it a bit better, learning from my mistakes with the structures i built and some of the plant selections from the old one
so for now it is a bit of day dreaming about what i want it to look like and what fish will live in it
Click to expand...
Good luck mate. The way I see it is a house is soul-less without a planted tank or something alike.
 
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