A River runs through it

Jealousy thou heartless beast.

Shawn I only have my office tank running at the moment.

Awaiting some goodies for my home tank.

I am also going on leave next week so not the best time for me

Will ask Didi to keep ordering stiphondons and maybe I will one day be lucky enough to get a nice group of different species.

For now I will just enjoy yours with you

 

Snapped a few pics.....they seem to have taken to the River Tank like ducks to water....feeding away on the rocks in a group,little territorial displays with fins flared and colour changes.... they got the cutest way of munching algae - real "rubberlips"...lol



The only pity is that the whole batch seems to be males... But hey - once the settle in and develop that Neon Blue an Black body with the yellow tails....dont think I will be complaining all that much about not having females.... Hmmnnnn - may be even get them their own paludarium with a nice waterfall so I can observe them climbing out on dry land.... he,he

 

Very Nice!!

Now you gonna have to grow algae like crazy.

 

Thanx Gerhard...

Growing algae you say? Sometimes wish it will stop growing .... lol - these guys are real "lawnmowers" .... Love watching them go at it...

 

I'm so jealous, I seriously need to get a bigger tank and make it Rheophile!

 

Yeah I'm jealous too. Now I also want an Algae Town odball mania tank like that. Having the plain fish isn't that exciting as weird, rare stuff. Does my G. taeniata count as an "odd" fish?

 

He,he @Razer2007....this is the kind of tank you put up cos you've done everything else.... when this started,it was basically for normal Hillstream loaches and a couple of other loach species....
Been SUPER lucky to find some of these species in the past 7 months....you have no idea how lucky.... and yeah - your g.taeniata is not quite "odd" (oddballs in the hobby refer to things like puffers,eels,frogfish etc...) - but you dont find them often at all....

The fish in my tank are almost all specifically adapted to living in extremely fast flow environments...makes them odd...but not oddballs....lol

 

looks like I'll have to study some terminology here. It's a quite interesting tank, but actually small (if I'm not mistaken, smaller than mine?). It's nice to have fish that you don't see a pet shops often, but I guess it's also hard to keep them?

EDIT: What I like about this tank is that the fish are in a nice environment. Those pretty but quite bare tanks, or even worse, bare bottom tanks, might look good and clean, but you can't imagine fish feeling at home in there. It's like a prison cell. I know fish are different than people but just saying . All the fish in there got something to do the whole time.

 

Same dimensions as yours - just 15cm shorter... lotsa waterchanges,big ones! - lucky we got nice soft water where i live.... light makes the algae,fishies chow it.... Massive 6000l per hour flow pump to simulate fast stream.... After that the hardest part was finding the fish for it that I wanted...

 

you said when you feed your loaches they click and sound like a small dolphin in your tank...???

 

@Lloydster.....lol - forgot about that little bit of wit - thanx for reminding me....

 

Yeah....Chow bucket loads of algae and swim their little booties off against the current.....lol

 

I am utterly entranced by the Sicyopterus Gobies - spend hours just watching their antics.... Here is a taste of what they will look like once settled in - still a bit shy....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr0k9QYdmkw

Took me a while to properly ID them,but Heiko Bleher confirmed my initial ID of S.lagocephalus - seems to be the Japanese Yellow tail morph as well - how these made it to SA...Eish,I dont know.... If ANYBODY comes across more of them in any LFS anywhere in SA,wont you please PM me as I would love to get hold of some females.....

 

Ask Pet Stop how they got them -do they import directly or was it a campcon hand-me-down?

 

What amazing looking fish, I can see why you want females hey. I love those fins, developed for life in the fast lane

 

Wow the fish in that vid is so nice! Damn there's a lot of SAE's!

What's that small one at 0:35 in the vid? And the blurry one at 1:58?

 

Was a direct import.... @f-fish - and a Capmcon fish does not come NEAR Pet Stop....one of the reasons I like supporting them....

@Razer2007 - the ones at 0:35 are little Stiphodon gobies - he's got a few species in there - scroll back to see my lone female in this thread that I got from Vis... the one at 1:58 is a male Peacock Gudgeon - Tateurndina ocellicauda (also a goby - see why I like them so much as a genus?)...

 

I enjoyed that video. I can see why you like them. Oh boy! Not enough time, not enough tanks

 

man that is the best news ever - now I just need to sort my travel documents out and make a day trip of it.

 

He,he Ferdie - Dont worry... I know some of the okes at the Hennops River border post - we'll smuggle you through....

Trimmed a mates overgrown planted tank yesterday and took some of the Hygrophylla cuttings for my tank - also planted the E,quadricostatus I got from @Mzungu [shot again dude!!!] right in the foreground - hope it goes BOS after settling in....
After Razer's comments/questions on the video link I posted - tried to get a good pic of the Stiphodon - bugger wont sit still...lol.



Full tank shot - know that the Hygro is going to go BOS,but it's such a nice stem plant that I don't really mind all the trimming...



Newly planted Echinodorus quadricostatus(Broad leaf Dwarf Chain Sword) in mid foreground.... Grow buggers,grow!!!



Best pic I could get of the Stiphodon Goby sitting on one of my Cryptocoryne wendtii "Tropica" - such nice colour - thanx again for this gift @Vis - means a LOT to me....

Getting back to the reason for the recent rescape (2 weeks ago-ish) - NUISANCE ALGAE aka Staghorn and Clado.... Scroll back to the pics of just after the rescape I did and notice all the pest algae still on the Cryptocoryne leaves..... Now look at last pic here.... ALL GONE.... those 3 SAE's are doing a brill job!!! Have never really been a fan of them....but these 3 are definitely creeping into my hart big time!!!!...lol