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The Celestial Swamp - A voyage through a flooded forest fringe (Shallow Riparium)

Aphids!!


My emersed hygrophila angustifolia has aphids all over the new growth and it's making the plant all distorted looking… grrrrrrr


My hand have been in the tank alot recently and I've had a couple more jumpers for first-time in a long time… one Celestichthys margaritatus and one Brachydanio choprae…


I've decided to start my breeding program to get my numbers back up in this tank… even though I see fry from time to time they never survive… maybe it's the celestichthys erythromicron down in the sump having lunch or maybe it's the pump sucking them through the 10ppi poret foam , I don't know…


I haven't decided which way to breed yet… hang on or in tank mesh or separate tanks… it would be nice to utilize the space in the sump to save space and use the flow…


Anyone use these methods for my chosen species?
 
I have choprae in my tank and I think it is these which pick off my pencilfish fry. I only ever seem to have a couple make it at a time. My plan over the summer was to move some adults to my nano and breed them there to bulk up the numbers. I think a separate tank is by far the easiest way to go as it's easier to control and stimulate spawning.
 
I tried catching some of the celestichthys margaritatus with a net the other day... it's almost impossible because 2/3rds of the tank is impenetrable hiding spots... It took me an hour to ambush one female so I decided to try out a bottle trap...

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Every fish species except the cpds managed to get trapped in it, even the super cautious brachydanio choprae... I don't know how I'm going to start this breeding program if I can't get my hands on some fish... maybe I will try a bigger pop bottle

When I eventually trap more, they are going to live down in the sump in a plastic canvas pen I made up...

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And when the fry grow out to a certain size in the buckets, I will put them in the little ziss breeder box also sitting in the sump...

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I have four 2.5gallon buckets set up with cycled poret sponge filters, a wad of moss, a cup of Gravel, a cup of safe t sorb and a half cup of matrix as the substrate... I used tank water to fill them up and added some snails for good measure...

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I will drop 2M/3F in at sunset and change some of the water... they should spawn in the morning and I will move them to the next bucket etc, then it's back into the sump pen for some cigarettes and a nap...

Even if I do one round of this I should get at least 20-40 fry or more... maybe I'll do it a couple more times and sell to my lfs...
 
I changed out the food in the bottle and hoped for the best... 20min later I had 3 brachydanio choprae, one of the celestichthys erythromicron and the ALPHA male celestichthys margaritatus!!!!

He has such beautiful deep red colours so hopefully he just as fertile!

Perhaps because I haven't fed them today they are getting more adventurous... let's hope at least 2 more females and it's on baby!

Cue the raunchy music!
 
Can I ask what you baited the trap with? I'm really thinking I want to take out my choprae as since they have grown old and began to die off the remaining ones are becoming more aggressive. They were fine when I had 10 but since there are 5 I see so much chasing of my pencilfish and I don't want to add anymore choprae to dilute the problem.
 
No I wasn't successful at breeding... I tried leaving them in there with 2 females and 3 males for 2 or 3 days at a time... I got no fry

Then life got busy and I haven't tried again... I will try with your method... did you have filters going while they spawned?

I have had a bunch of brachydanio choprae spawn somewhere in the tank and I've collected the fry and have grown them out in breeder box and then moved them up to the main tank...
 
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As far as a tank update:

I'm still battling this ridiculous long diatoms algae in the submerged section... I'm starting to think it's because of high silicates or something in the store bought RO water I use for top offs... Our tap water here is just so full of crazy things!

I just ordered a Spectrapure Maxcap 5 stage RO/DI system so I can make my own water and never have to buy transport and lug around 5 gallon jugs ever again... hopefully this will change some things for the better... a years worth of RO water covers the cost of the system so the convenience is just icing on the cake...

I also ordered a Eheim compact 5000 for the return... this has way more flow than the pond pump I've been using... I'm going to add an isolation valve to the return line so I can take out the pump for more efficient pump and filter cleaning...

I had to remove all the h. Angustifolia as the aphids were taking over... after trying to eat everything else and a long fought murder campaign I only see them occasionally now... i even released ladybugs in my basement to eat them with completely unknown results as they just flew away... lots of random spiders have taken residence on my riparium so maybe are helping too...

The frogbit is growing nuts too and I have to constantly throw bunches out or it clogs the surface flow and I get scum... an overflow system like this is a delicate balance when you have floating plants especially with the the plastic canvas blocking the across the whole weir...

The underwater section is slowly being taken over by h. Polysperma because it's less susceptible to alagae... but that's okay as it's bright green growth makes me happy... the longer the riparium section grows the more it overshadows the underwater section so it's a constant chore to keep the balance... even with this shallow and wide tank shape this still becomes a problem... crypts are only growing in the darkest areas now...

I think I need more lights to shine directly to the back riparium plants... the ones in the middle are growing too big especially the maiden hair fern and the balance is off... I was hoping the spathiphillum in the back would be growing bigger and faster...
 
I forgot to mention I have to constantly remove boat loads of some kind of black bacteria or fungus thats growing on the dark sections of the manzanita wood... not sure if this is normal or not... this wood has been submerged in water for 2years now... I'm not sure how long it's supposed to last

This kind of long term tank is an experiment in running a small ecosystem, especially when I try keep variables as constant as possible...
 
It looks very cool! I'd love something like this one day.

Just a thought, don't know if it would be practical, but could you move the tank forward a bit from the walls so that there was more room for the emersed plants to spread evenly in both directions rather than just forward over the tank? That with some lightly directly above, which would also discourage lean toward the tank might let you keep the same plant mass but have less overshadowing?
 
tam said:
Just a thought, don't know if it would be practical, but could you move the tank forward a bit from the walls so that there was more room for the emersed plants to spread evenly in both directions rather than just forward over the tank?
Click to expand...

There's actually a fair bit of room behind the tank for growth... it comes down to light placement... what I need to do is add more lights directed on and angle to back and this should help the back plants growth...

The problem right now is the fact that the maiden hair fern is growing too large... it's at lease 10 times the size as it was last year and I just trimmed at least half of fronds last week... I wasn't expecting it to grow so large and it's essentially growing right in the middle of the tank on the driftwood, not from the overflow section... I can't even move it as it's attached
 
I'm really hoping that getting this RO/DI system up and running helps me control the water aspect of this system a little better... even if it doesn't improve anything, at least it will be far more convenient to make water rather than go buy it... i hook it up to the faucet and make water over night into a big reservoir and then add to the system as needed... this way I can also make sure I keep it topped up more regularly with out so much of a swing in water chemistry... sometimes I forgot to add top off water until 15 gallons evaporated especially in the dryer winter conditions... I swear I'm losing 3 gallons a day now
 
My maidenhair took over as well. It grew to a couple of feet high and even wider. I trimmed it massively and moved it to the edge of the tank where it had room to flop over the side. It's now waiting for a new larger setup.
 
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