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The Nymph's Spring (EA900)
- Thread starter shangman
- Start date
Wolf6
Member
Lovely natural feel, one could sit in front of this for ages and still see something new 🙂
😂 I'd better make a waitlist, @Courtneybst asked as soon as I got it for a baby plantlet too. V understandable, it is so unusual and beautiful, when I first bought @Christel 's book I thought it was the most beautiful plant in the whole book and that it would be a holy grail plant to get in a few years because of Brexit, was shocked to find it only a few months later!! That extra long leaf grew tall like that over the blackout, and I'm letting it continue because apparently the leaves that reach the surface produce baby plants from that leaf. It pearls everyday which is great, but I'm not sure if my light is strong enough to get them to produce yet (it's on max 75% atm for 5 hours a day + ramp up and down), and I read in the book that they need very high light to reproduce. I will make it happen though, even if I need to get the rest of the tank doing well enough to raise the light first.
Now we're cut off from the world I think it's our duty as passionate hobbyists to grow and pass on the nice plants we can get our hands on. I got this plant from World of Water, this was the only one of this kind they had, but they also had another lovely rare bronze micrantha lotus and some beautiful red Barclaya longifolia which I would've got too if I had the space. All the otos I bought from there died v quickly which is really rubbish, but you can't argue with these great rare plants. Fingers crossed I don't kill it 😂
Thank you!! That'd exactly what I'm going for 🙂 Hopefully in a few months it'll be even more natural once the plants in the soil properly grow in (they were not happy with my lower co2 levels at all).
What I am really happy with is that the animals interact with the scape a lot and it feels v natural and so I do see new things all the time - the otos are eating the dried leaves in the front or sitting on the echinodorus (apparently they live with echinodorus in the wild) or upside down on the underside of the wood with the amanos, the apistos are breeding amongst the leaf pile and "forage" for shrimps amongst the moss (he rarely gets one now I think the shrimps have wised up) and ms apisto brings her babies around the moss to eat microfauna, the tetras swim through the branches and the big hole which is weirdly very satisfying especially when they go single file, the pygmies are all over the place just being adorable interacting with everything (particularly love feeding them where they swim in from around the tank and make a big enthusiastic group like tiny cute pigeons), and the kuhlis live amongst the lava rocks and often they swim all the way up the wood through the moss like tropical snakes, and the big kuhlis come along and sift big loads of sand. Getting the regime right for all the plants is taking a while but at least the fish are happy the whole time 🙂
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Just saw this,If you ever find any Green Darters, let me know, I'd love some of them!!
Ohhhhmyyygodddddddd want! Can I possibly justify these guys in this tank? 😱
Was planning on them for this future tank that I was going to set up this autumn thinking they wouldn't be around for a while, but it got bumped cos we might buy a house suddenly so things are v up in the air and am not meant to spend anything lol. I wonder how rarely they come up!! If it's super rare I do want them now, but I hope to have this tank within 3 years say.
Looking online (at descriptions of needs of similar darters) I'd need 10/12 which is £144 + postage. I am currently skint lol, but not planning on getting anything else fish immediately and could get them as an... Early Christmas present? 😂 Clutching at lovely fish straws.
My tank currently has:
2 apistos
9 cardinals
25 pygmy corydoras
6 otos
15 kuhli loaches
Plus a few shrimps of various types but not many of any
Not sure if that's too many bottom dwellers as well (my favourite fish all are 😭), are they too similar to the pygmies? I want them but don't want the tank to feel too busy. It's currently very nice on the sand and before these appeared here I wasn't planning on any more bottom dwellers. But they look like they could be the BEST ones!! They hop!
Probs will be gone by the time I decide, what do you guys think?
Also, related to this subject I think, I watched this documentary on wild caught fish in YouTube which was really interesting the other day. it made me appreciate trying to keep more wild caught fish, I used to feel dubious about how sustainability/ethical it was but it really answered a lot of questions well!
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A UKAPS run on green darters 😂
They’re definitely around at the moment, I’ve got five reserved for me which should hopefully be with me by the end of the month. Unfortunately they were the last five as I actually wanted more and also would’ve gave you guys the heads up too.
Could definitely fit them in, the bio load on these will be minimal I recon. They also seem to be more of a mid to bottom swimmer and seem to hang on plants and structure quite a bit.
Cheers
Excellent, that's all the encouragement I needed. Messaged to try to reserve 12, fingers crossed that happens!!!
Sometimes you just have to take advantage of things when they come... Feeling very lucky, having got my spotted lotus last month (which I thought might be a holy grail plant post-Brexit), and now these are on the cards. It's Christmas in September 🥳
Thank you again for the tip @Gill
Karmicnull
Member
Thanks for sharing - really interesting. I'd similarly been uncomfortable about the sustainability of wild caught fish, and this was enlightening. Also loved the lyrics to the song in the annual cardinal tetra and discus festival! Fascinated by the supply chain too. Oh - and I now have an addition to my wishlist - those leaf fish were fabulous!
Yes it's so interesting isn't it? Really it deserves it's own thread on here rather than tucked away in this journal. So often natural resources are exploited horribly and I always assumed that wild caught fish are too, so it's great to know that this hobby is much more sustainable/less harmful than I thought. I kinda think there's a gap in the market for an aquarium business that capitalises on that sustainability message of supporting local people, supporting the environment and ecosystem they come from with wild fish and inspiring us by having a slice of nature in our own homes. My generation is so big on houseplants now, I can totally imagine aquariums becoming part of that lifestyle.
Same about the supply chains, since I have my own business where supply chains are currently a mess (thanks covid & Brexit!) and have been doing a business course over covid, it's really interesting to hear about what works and what the challenges are for this industry, I hope that they get better in the future in the way they need. That message is really important, I will avoid large-scale tank-bred fish from now on if I can and focus more on wild caught keeping.
The cardinal/discus festival was AWESOME, it's nice to know they are properly celebrated and appreciated where they're from! Those leaf fish are stunning, I started thinking while watching it if they could import just some dried leaves from the area too that matched for ultimate
ScareCrow
Member
Thanks for sharing this, I've watched part 1 and 2 and it covers a lot. I would say it is quite biased but having kept fish for about 20 years and as an environmental scientist by training, I'd love it to work.
Aside from the socioeconomic and environmental reasons I think ethically there are species that are common in the aquarium trade that shouldn't be imported.
Aquarium co-op have just released this video focusing on otocinclus and how different importers process them.
Anyway thanks again for posting, as you say it would make an interesting thread as a standalone topic.
I'd love it to work too, bring on making all our supply chains better and more transparent!! Interestingly I called up my LFS and asked them about wild cardinals, and he said as we're in London which has such hard water, he orders his cardinals from Asia where they are bred in hard water so they're more likely to do well in London tanks, which is very interesting and makes total sense. I'm going to get mine from the Fish Barn instead, my LFS said they could order them in for me but he'd need to order 300-400 and I only wanted 10.
That video is great, thank you for the link. TBH after my latest group of otos all died rather gruesome deaths I have completely gone off them, it's clear they went through bad times to get to me. This was with cooked greens and loads of leaves and wood 🙁 I also tried to get some from my LFS before I bought that group, who said that they didn't have any atm as their latest shipments had all died very quickly in quarantine. They are lovely fish but it doesn't seem like the process to get them to us is very good atm.
Time for a bigger tank! 😂
You're a terrible influence!!! 😆 Imagine what an amazing school that would be...
Did you manage to get any darters? They told me they all sold out on the day 😓 The Quest continues!
Yesterday I had a fabulous fish friends day (with fabulous food too!) - I went to @Courtneybst 's house and saw all his beautiful tanks, and also met George Farmer who was there to film Courtney and his tanks <see the great youtube video here>. I actually live super close to Courtney (10 mins away), and we've made really good friends since I gave him my first baby apistos all the way ago in March! It was such a fun day, so nice to see people irl and hang out again, thanks for making me loads of new friends UKAPS!
In the afternoon I was finally bullied into joining aquatic social media (Courtney has been trying to convince me for ages as he's made lots of friends doing it), so say hello to @rosehipscapes on Instagram 🙂 You can finally see my face omg! I was also sorta in George's livestream yesterday which was really fun. Guess it's time to get out the camera again and take more fancy pics, will start posting tonight.
Doing all this really made me want to get this tank in order. I think I need to lower the light a bit, as all my favourite plants are quite low light, and it would really help with the algae. The big problem in this tank is the background, the back corners get quite light, but the back middle gets not much at all because the wood blocks it. I recently saw a great tank which had loads of mixed lotus in it including my gerflekt, so I'm going to add some lotus in the background (behind the hole) to grow up. Does anyone have any good suggestions for colourful or good growing not-high-light plants which can grow quite high? Are there any orange stems that won't mind too much? I would like some orange in the tank if possible. I've had enough of seeing soil, it's time to make it all really lush like it should be. I have quite a few nice plants with larger leaves, so small-leafed plants are what I'd like to add to get the scale balanced right!
In the afternoon I was finally bullied into joining aquatic social media (Courtney has been trying to convince me for ages as he's made lots of friends doing it), so say hello to @rosehipscapes on Instagram 🙂 You can finally see my face omg! I was also sorta in George's livestream yesterday which was really fun. Guess it's time to get out the camera again and take more fancy pics, will start posting tonight.
Doing all this really made me want to get this tank in order. I think I need to lower the light a bit, as all my favourite plants are quite low light, and it would really help with the algae. The big problem in this tank is the background, the back corners get quite light, but the back middle gets not much at all because the wood blocks it. I recently saw a great tank which had loads of mixed lotus in it including my gerflekt, so I'm going to add some lotus in the background (behind the hole) to grow up. Does anyone have any good suggestions for colourful or good growing not-high-light plants which can grow quite high? Are there any orange stems that won't mind too much? I would like some orange in the tank if possible. I've had enough of seeing soil, it's time to make it all really lush like it should be. I have quite a few nice plants with larger leaves, so small-leafed plants are what I'd like to add to get the scale balanced right!
To whet your appetite . . .
No, they never even replied to my e-mail. Better luck next time I guess.
Fame and fortune awaits! That @George Farmer gets everywhere! 😀
As for the plant suggestions - not strictly 'orange' but this is one of the most beautiful crypts I've grown - Cryptocoryne Spiralis 'Tiger' - and being a crypt, seems to do well in relatively low light - not my image, it's from @Roland, (as was my plant):
