Do you harvest handfuls of the stuff every few months? I do :-).
And I'm glad to hear it doesn't need a lot of light. Maybe I'll try some in a 20 with just a single 15 watt fluorescent.
I've got a 20 long that's very old (cost me $2 at a garage sale) and none of the commercial hoods/tops fit it. I'm going to build a top (woodworking reference) using four waterproof incandescent sockets and put the screw-in fluroescents in it. 60 watts for 20 gallons = lots of red plants :-).
We've still got at least 3 here in Spokane. One specializes in saltwater fish, so I don't go there. Another has a good selection of plants, but is highly opinionated, so I go there only when necessary.
The third usually has a good selection of freshwater fish, and sometimes live blackworms, but no live plants. They got in a new shipment for the big shopping weekend and I went down to see them. I bought some panda cories, but the interesting thing was a tank with 3 bichers in it.
I'd read about them but never seen them before. Supposedly they've been around since the Jurassic. Pectoral fins that look like fingers, protruding nostrils, lungs, and some really strange spiky fins on an eel-shaped body. Altogether a very ugly fish, but I wish I had room for one :-).
Don't forget the Pl*co...
Inbreeding elicits strange effects after a few generations... [POT] Just ask the current administration.
I have a few planted aquaria. Reef tanks are my passion, but moving in a few years kind of ruled those out...
This is the 75g in the Media Room. (That's the room with the 5 32" televisions sitting in the floor as back-up to the aging projection set - just can't bear to throw things away or sell them...)
The 29g in my office contains German blue ram cichlids, a few cory catfish, and a fast growing pl*co. And a few neurotic long finned zebra danios that SWMBO just HAD to have...
And to remain true to the original thread, it is lit by 4' T-8 5500k fluorescent tubes. They run for 12 hours a day for two years, and are then transferred to the shop, where they continue to function. I date the bulbs when installed, and some of the shop bulbs have dates of Jan
2002. I haven't had to toss one yet - but it's getting close...FWIW,
Greg G.
The platys will take hard, even brachish water. Get yourself a freshwater puffer fish and your pond snail problem will be taken care of instanter.
Many species of loaches eat snails as well. My grey worm loach keeps the numbers down considerably. I actually _put_ snails into my tanks, but not the common, plant eating, pond snail variety.
FWIW,
Greg G.
Be aware though that Plecos get large. I had one in a 20 gallon tank. When he reached a foot long, I bought a 110 gallon tank and transferred him to that. They can get up to 18 inches. If you have the room, they are the best algae eaters. Since he was small (2.5 inches), he kept the 20 gallon tank spotless. Now that he is in the 110 gallon, he does the same there in addition to being fed daily. He is 2.5 years old now. They tell me that he can live 20 years.
Yes, I am unfortunately aware of this. This particular species, _supposedly_ gets no larger than 12". They were about 1.5" when I got them - one in each tank - and they are now about 4" long. Wait... 5"... No, maybe 6"...
Still, it takes them a while to get that big, but their personality is interesting and worth the effort. What to do when they're 12" long? Eat 'em.
And now you've gone and done it - yours are doomed...
Greg G.
We had one that ran out of algae, so he started eating regular food, upside down!
He would do the backstroke and eat, while my wife stroked his belly!
The barb ate him, too. 8^(
Barry
What's that plant in the foreground? Hair Grass or some kind of Micro Sword?
My daughter's 10 gallon tank has a Bushy Nose Pleco that will supposedly stay pretty small - relatively speaking:
Ah-Ha! You haven't seen the ones All-Glass sells. They're 10 watt,
6500K, and two U-shaped tubes like some of the compact fluorescents. I've got two of them on my 10 gallon jungle. They put out a lot less heat than the incandescents they replaced.The All-Glass incandescent hood had no vents for some strange reason, even though their 5.5 gallon hood did. So I drilled a few holes in the top for ventilation.
BTW, the All-Glass bulbs go for around $7.95. The same bulb is available in the fish department of Walmart for, IIRC, $4.95.
Thanks. It was a hard road to this point. I bought a plant at PetSmart years ago that had a peculiar type of thread algae on it. It took over the tank and everything in it. It took over our pond. It had the most horrific odor - I mean it staaaannnkkk. No amount of 'proper fertilization' or algae eaters would clear it. Finally got sick of it and bleached the whole mess - plants and all. Set it back up with the bleached plants and gravel, and it's been smooth sailing ever since. The normal algae are kept in check by tight control of nutrients. I mix my own NKP and trace fertilizers.
And of course, built the stands and hoods. [OnTopic]
Greg G.
It's a common micro sword - Echinodorus tennellus, The true hair grasses demand too much light for my meager budget.
The plant content includes:
Narrow Leaf Chain Sword (Echinodorus tennellus) Water Wisteria (Hygrophila difformis) Floating Hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum). Anubias afzelli Anubias coffea Red Melon Sword (Echinodorus barthii) Amazon Sword (Echinodorus bleheri) Cryptocoryne lutea and other Cryptocoryne sp. There is a bit of loosestrife and bacopa as well.
Greg G.
It's been the political, phishing, troll newsgroup, so what the hey...
The kuhlii loaches stay much smaller, and are pretty interesting. They mass up in groups, being social, and do a number on small snails. (If you like squirmy fish that look like eels...)
I've found it hard to find interesting fish these days. All the independents have gone out of business, and the Chain's carry nothing but the same-old-crap. When I was a kid, there was a really cool store in Lindburg that carried an unbelievable variety of stock.
But the city got 100 times bigger, and the selection got 100 times smaller. Go figure - it's the same with restaurants and just about everything else. The BORGs are consuming everything non-mainstream.
Greg G.
I was a kid in Winnipeg when I got into the hobby (I'm 46 now) and there was a guy who sold out of his basement... all the rare fish you read about in the mags. Annual killies, bettas that weren't splendens, I could go on and on.
The main shop brought in live brine shrimp from San Fransisco Bay every Tuesday. Live tubifex worms, daphnia... They had a breeding pair of oscars that were 12" in a 250 gallon tank at the back of the shop and every oscar you bought from them were from that pair.
I'd love to get some of the Aphyosemion species I used to raise...
I remember breaking down a 5 gal tank that I had a pair in after they died. Set it up about 18 months later and in two days had a tank full of fry... The eggs were surviving the dry season in the sand.
I kept breeding pairs of Egyptian Mouthbreeders, Kribensis, miniature seahorses, etc. as a kid (I've got two years on you) and though that all this globalization would enhance the hobby. Not from what I see. I recently tried to find a pair of mouthbreeders, but had no luck. Haplochromis multicolor - oh, wait, they've renamed 'em again. Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor. Could be due to this accident...
Had a guy here that bred Cichlasoma meeki as well as Oscars. Splashing and wrestling, jaw to jaw, and occationally one would flop out onto the floor. They would really go at it - and then they would care for the fry like gentle little liberals.
Yeah, they're really cool like that. Like artema - or sea monkeys - they burst forth from a mistakenly barren void.
Greg G.
I have a 32 gallon trash can at this very moment that is half full of it and other plants. I was selling the pulls on eBay for a while, just to get rid of it, but since I'm not selling Tektronix scopes at this time, it was too much trouble. Want some?
You might want to think about the screw-ins. You are free to do as you please, of course, but they are not rated for enclosed operation. The cheap-ass resistor ballasts get mighty warm in an enclosed space, and their light output it not optimal for this application. That twisted, contorted bulb is not very aquarium friendly. Remember that light striking the water's surface must do so within a certain range, or it bounces off. Also, I've found it difficult to find bulbs with the right color temperature - they range from 2700k to 3200k. Most are warm white, some are cool white, but none are tri-spectrum and I've never seen a 5000k screw-in. They heat the aquarium substantially without forced or convection ventilation..
I don't remember off-hand what the length of a 20L is, but common F20T12s should fit, as I recall. (24") BigAls has a selection of T-8 bulbs in unusual lengths. They are German made and sold by ZooMed. The only place I could get 5500k 30" T-8 bulbs to fit my 29g. I started with 4 bulbs and it was WAAAYYY too bright, I subsequently re-engineered for two tubes and everything is now happy. Even the chain swords became dwarfed and flattened - hated the excessive light. The fish weren't too fond of it either. Exceeding 10,000 lumens over a 29g made them rather jumpy...
I do build my own hoods, however, and bend my own reflectors. They are computer designed by me for aquarium use - 'cause the stuff that is sold for the aquarium market is such crap.
If you are interested, here are a couple of links to my reflector designs for T-8s and T-12s - complete with photon videos.
Ooohh - I love reef tanks. My pocketbook hates them, however...
Alas, we have NO worthy independent dealers left in Atlanta, GA. Just PetSmart, and PetSupermarket. The help wouldn't know a brine shrimp from a rock of crack cocaine. One shop in downtown Buckhead has a few interesting things, but the prices will scare you out of your skin.
The smaller cities in Florida still had good dealers, but I don't live there anymore. Reef stuff, in particular, was considerably cheaper.
I've not seen them before, but there are all kinds of neato, creepy-crawly things in the oceans, lakes, rivers of the world. But if we continue to steward our world as we have in the past, the only remaining examples of much of this stuff will be in captivity. :-\
Heck, I'm worried that we're going to run out of affordable wood before I'm done...
FWIW,
Greg G.
Damn, You guys giving away plants are always in the US. Phyto certificates and all that.
I just bought a 72W fixture (2x36) for my 10 gallon, as the 2x13 wasn't doing it. I really wanted something around 50W, but there weren't any good options. Besides, I already had the 36W bulbs from a previous upgrade. I was only planning on running the second bulb for a few hours. But your experience has me thinking this will be too much for the Otos, even on a part time basis.
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