Fish Lovers and Aquaria

[muskimo]

G'day guys/ gals, being an aquarium and fish lover, thought that some others of the same mind set could have a little nook on this ever growing community we have here.

the thread is designed to have general discussion about everything to do with aquariums, tropical and marine alike, including pumps filters and accessories, breeding, managing illness etc, and lets not forget the beautiful fishies.

to start off, im still relatively new to owning an aquarium and over the past 6months its become quite infectious, and went from 1-40Lt tank to a 200Lt (and turned the 40Lt into a feeder fish tank, and now ive got my 450Lt ready for marine (still not set up yet)

anyway, im loving having fish and its taken me a few months to get the general hang of things and now starting to reap the benefits of it, and also the hardship of loosing a loved albino tiger oscar due to "ICH"

here is the list of fish i have at the moment;

2x 20cm Tiger Oscar (cichlids)
1x 10cm Tiger Oscar
1x 5cm Convict (cichilid)
2x 7cm Silver Dollar
1x 10cm Plecostomus (cleaner fish)

these are all in my 200Lt tank and is probably just a little crowded for the time being it will have to do, as im still debating if i keep my 450Lt tank and use it as a Tropical and sell the 200Lt or sell it, as ive just looked at everything i need to get it running as a marine aquarium, and will cost me a small fortune along with the other two tanks.

please post up your fish you have and even some tips on having live plants in the tanks as my oscars love to up root them regularly

and some pics

 

[muskimo]

hey guys, installment 2. Last week i went and got a new fish for my aquarium a Convict cichlid, turned out to be a female (thats great cos they are the pretty ones, but also because it was the one that seemed to be the alpha in the tank at the store), but whats better is she has been digging all the sand from the corner of the tank over the past few days and has now laid many eggs.

its quite exciting even more so than my 40Lt tank that is just pumping out guppies like its a production line. as these could potentially turn into 10 more convicts (thats based on a 10% survival rate) there is now approx 50+ eggs (photo was taken early this arvo) now the task is to some how fence off the area that has the eggs from the very large and ever so hungry oscars.

 

[madmanmark82]

I used to be into it but not anymore, as bikes have taken over.
Convicts bread like rabbits which is good because you can use the fry as feeders haha. I have seen a pair of them in an american cichlid tank fending off full sized oscars before to protect there fry. They will nearly attack anything
This is one of my old convicts, i had a lot of other fish but i cant be botherd looking for photos.

 

[muskimo]

she is quite stunning.

this little convict i have is only about 6-7cm and shes pushing back the 10cm and 20cm oscars.

do you still have fish or have your done away with it all together?

 

[sammydog]

I'll grab some photos of my tank. I've not been into it for too long (about 4-5 months now), although I did have a basic tropical tank a long time ago.

Anyway, while I dig up some other shots, here is a pic of some of my mushroom coral.

And the Mandarin (looks stunning when the lights come on)

Actually a bit about my tank....

90 litres.
A Heap of Live Rock.

Fish
4 Black Clown Fish
1 Mandarin Fish
1 Bi-Colour Blenny
4 Janitor Crabs

Coral
About 20 pieces of Red Mushroom (is breeding like crazy)
1 Frogspawn
1 Zoanthids

The best thing about the tank though is the random stuff, bristle worms, feather dusters, shrimp, small clam like things. Just live stuff everywhwere.

-----edit-----

Just got a full tank shot, not great because the house lights were on, but you get the idea.

 

[muskimo]

i really like the black clowns. a welcomed change from the "NEMO" clowns.
how easy is your marine tank to maintain?

my 450Lt tank is sitting here atm doing nothing with everything to run as marine, including many many coral etc, but its going to cost me a small fortune to run, and have considered selling it, not sure, the other idea is to pull the back section out of it and gain 50+Lt and run it as tropical, with a few very angry cichlid's namely dovii, red devil, black belt. even been thinking about schooling some red belly piranha (as thats the only way to get them to go crazy. otherwise they are just as timid as the silver dollars)

 

[sammydog]

The thing with a Marine tank is that you have to allow it time to actually set up before you add coral and/or fish. You need to leave the live rock until the Ammonia cycle ends (without kicking off again). Even then you are only supposed to add a few things at a time.

We got our tank pre-set up from someone leaving town who couldn't take it with them, even then we had major issues due to the relocation of the tank and it didn't turn out to be a huge money saver. The move stirred the bottom up, as did moving the live rock, so the bacteria levels went all wrong and the ammonia cycle kicked off because of it. The end result was our anemone died (it looked bleached and sick anyway), we got a hair algae outbreak that we are just getting under control and I was doing 25% water changes every second day.

If you intend on having coral, depending where you are, you will probably need a chiller in summer.

Once it is all running though, the tank sort of runs it self, the fish shop said that a marine tank is harder than a tropical to set up and get running, but once it is it is probably less work. I do a water change each week and clean the walls when I have a few spare minutes. The Blenny feeds off the algae, the crabs eat the effluent, the Mandarin supposedly eats the stuff that comes out at night.

I want more coral though and I think our tank has enough fish, any more will be overcrowding for sure. Soft corals are supposed to be easy to look after and we haven't had too much of an issue except for one day when the chiller didn't work and some of the frogspawn retreated.

 

[muskimo]

at the moment i think ill be pulling the back section out of my tank and turning it into a tropical and just store all the equipment untill i need to use it. (there is so much gear for one tank compared to my tropical)

ive been searching for the largest canister filter i can find so i only need to buy one now and not get another later on when i get a bigger tank. (i know i will get a bigger one in the past 6 months ive gone from 40Lt to 200Lt and now to a 450Lt) so i found a canister filter for a 1000Lt at a good price and now weighing up getting it or not.

 

[Morgan123]

And the Mandarin (looks stunning when the lights come on)

That is one sick mofo.

 

[nick_dales]

I have a goldfish

 

[Doggy]

I used to have a nice Aust native setup with Barra's, Murray Cod and Barcoo Grunters living in the tank with red claw crayfish and my little tank of death for gold fish. I had red devils, oscars and the like but found the aussie native fish alot more aggressive and fun to feed and such.
My Murray Cod was about 25cm long when it committed suicide and headbutted my filter and knocked itself and, my Barra's disappeared when they got to about 12 - 15cm and my first Barcoo Grunter was the reason the Barras disappeared. He was from my hand to my elbow so about 30cm, would swim around watching you and float to the top of the tank to be fed and be scratched (no joke, this thing would roll to its side...) and would live on gold fish, my barra's, my red claws when the werent paying attention. It was awesome. Sadly, my tank got an ammonia spike when I was away camping on weekend and the poor bugger died.
The Red Claws were great at keeping the tank clean and mopping up the bodies of the 'chosen ones' and got to about 15-20cms long maybe so I kept hold of them and added some clown loaches and tiger barbs and little things like that but had to get rid of it all rather quickly one afternoon when I came home and my tank stand was leaning over ever so nicely over my rather expensive lounge ready to collapse.
Never did get around to building back up a little fishy empire again

 

[muskimo]

big ones. like the koy's??? they are pretty

the problem with feeder gold fish is that the have bugger all nutrient, and lots of fat. and can leave fatty deposits around fish organs and eventually kill them. when i found that out i stoped feeding them and went back to barbs. oscars tend to be not that aggressive untill feeding time, they are just the larger of the cichlids which is why they are so popular, and quite smart.

the wolf cichlid (dovii) are up there with the most aggressive, and will attack anything including your hand.

^ do you have any pictures of your native aquarium would love to see them

 

[ademb]

Ive just started closing down a 3ft (150L) cichlid tank. I had about 13-14 fish around the 3.5" mark but after 18months ive kinda gotten over it. At the moment ive got a calvus left in there that I'm trying to sell rather then just give the little guy away to mates because he is actually worth something.

Not real sure what I'm going to do with the tank now though to be honest! Either sell it or maybe get some green tree frogs or something

 

[Doggy]

big ones. like the koy's??? they are pretty

the problem with feeder gold fish is that the have bugger all nutrient, and lots of fat. and can leave fatty deposits around fish organs and eventually kill them. when i found that out i stoped feeding them and went back to barbs. oscars tend to be not that aggressive untill feeding time, they are just the larger of the cichlids which is why they are so popular, and quite smart.

the wolf cichlid (dovii) are up there with the most aggressive, and will attack anything including your hand.

^ do you have any pictures of your native aquarium would love to see them

No pics of my setup when I had it sadly. I had gotten the 2 barra and barcoo grunter together as tiny little things to put in my 3 foot tank, luckily the grunter ate the other two before needing to upgrade tanks but when he died I was actually looking for a 6 footer because he was getting to big to turn around in the 3 ft tank. The murray cod I got at about 20cms for fairly cheap after the grunter died but like I said it committed hara kari when I was using my vacumn cleaner and scared the crap out of it

I would love to get a 6 foot tank going again with another native set up and include some long neck turtles and the like but I dont think the floor upstairs in my house would be all that accepting of the weight...dunno

 

[muskimo]

yes, ive considered that also. especially when i move back to the folks house for work. the house is on 1800mm stilts and cork/chip board base flooring. so im not sure how well it would stand up to the extreme size of a 1000Lt tank.

 

[mountain_bike man]

Great thread so far.
At the moment im running a two foot marine tank, a two foot cichlid tank and a 4 foot community tank.
In the past i had a 4 foot cichlid tank but with moving house it sadly never went back up.
Few of the fish from past/present.

<10 years old!

Sorry for the amount of images.

 

[muskimo]

wow the red belly fella is amazing such strong colors, what fish is it? also the convict has such pronounced black stripes. what food were you feeding them to get such a great result?

 

[Arete]

pretty sure the answers are a) Thorichthys meeki (firemouth) South American cichlid and b) give the convicts away and buy a Frontosa.

Unfortunately the last heat wave knocked my cichlid tank for 6 and left me with only convicts, which have bred like crazy (theres probably 20-30 in my 4ft tank). Given I'm moving OS in a few months there's no point restocking the good stuff so if anyone wants any of them in June/July shoot me a PM and I'll ship em to you.

 

[Tallman]

I used to be well into aquariums and such, but my intrest has dropped a bit since now I am at uni and unable to keep a tank in my room. However, I've got a few pics of when I used to have a big setup at home.

First photo - just a mixed tank of tropicals (Neon Tetras, Tiger Barbs, Bristlenose Catfish). This tank I'd just got looking good with some plants etc. but then the tank cracked and I had to move them all to another, smaller tank...

Second photo - this 2ft tank was a few years ago. Had some good things though. Mosquito fish from the local creek, a giant snail, red tailed black shark (best looking fish I've seen), and the usual Barbs + Tetras.

Third photo - the red tailed black shark. Pretty poor quality photo though sadly.

Fourth photo - red tailed black shark either trying to scare or mate with my Bristlenose Catfish...?!

Fifth photo - my two beautiful Blue Acaras. These two were great, except the big male (orange lined fins) kept digging up the plant and so when I went to re-plant it he would bite my quite a lot.

Sixth photo - my 4ft mixed Cichlid tank. There was a lot of fish in this tank, so I had to have about 4000L/hour of water going through numerous filters! Good tank though, something was always happening, I could watch them for hours. Even had a pair breed in that tank, so when the female had the eggs in her mouth I took her out and put her into a 1ft tank by herself - soon had about 20 young 'uns that were bastards to feeed but slowly got there and were introduced back into the 4ft tank when they were big enough. Sadly, the female died soon after she released the eggs though.

Seventh photo - just settting up the 4ft tank for the first two. The tank on the far right had 2 or 3 very young and tiny Cichlids in it (can't remember their species anymore..damnit). These grew up to be big and strong and introduced into the 4ft tank too.

I haven't got any very recent photos (the ones I've hopefully uploaded are at least 2 years old...). All that's changed though really is a few fish have died and I've got a 2000L/hour cannister filter for the 4ft tank.

What I want to do when I have a lot of spare time is set up a 6ft Australian native tank modelled on a river bed with a bit of driftwood/tree limbs sitting in there. Or a 6ft marine tank...

 

[muskimo]

very nice tanks there, i like the shark.

if you do decided to go with a new tank, i would recommend going with marine, as you already have a few tropical's running. try something a little different.