Remember back in the summer when I brought home the wild Jewel cichlids from Florida, and they immediately spawned? The fry were so tiny back then.

Now, only about 6-7 months later, the then fry, are now nearly as large as the adults. What may be even more amazing is that the two parents are living peacefully with their 2 remaining children in a 20H. I gave the other fry away when they were only an inch or two.

While not quite as large or colorful as their parents, they are starting to look fairly decent. The “jewels” are becoming more visible and intense on their face, and their body is staying a nice dark cobalt color.

I imagine that they won’t ever look as good as their dominant parents until they move on to a tank of their own. I’m trying to maintain the peace by regularly feeding them large meals of blackworms, spectrum, or the occasional feeder guppy. They’re voracious eaters, but don’t seem to fight each other for food.

When we went on our short weekend trip for four days, I didn’t line up a special feeding regimen, however, and they didn’t beat each other up, so I must assume that they’ve worked out a living arrangement amongst themselves. Hopefully that’ll last for a long time. I imagine that if they ever spawn again, trouble might result. Until then, they’re a fun, and personable group of fish that seem to recognize me, and watch me from the right corner of the tank, whenever I’m in the room.

I’ve been growing Ranalisma rostrata in my 40G tank as the foreground for some time. When I originally setup my 20H, I decided to also plant it in there. As the 20H progressed, I realized that I had too much light, too little CO2, and too little desire to maintain the tank as I really wanted. Therefore, I removed the 55W PC light from overtop, and replaced it with an ordinary 15W fluorescent light strip. Over the past few months, besides being considerably darker than it was before, I’d noticed a huge change in the form of the Ranalisma rostrata in that tank.

Witness how the grassy plant looks in my 40G. Compact growth, overlapping each other, where each blade is thin and relatively uniform.

In my 20H, the growth is quite different (below), with blades more resembling a sword plant, than grass. The blades are longer and the growth is much slower. I suspect that the plant is sending out broader leaves to try and soak up more light since less is available. The color is also slightly different, with the broader leaves being a bit more pale, with a yellowish tint, where the regular form is a bright green.

I’m sure that this same phenomenon is present in a wide variety of plants, which is why it’s difficult to say exactly how a plant will grow in another person’s tank. I’m often asked at GWAPA meetings whether a plant is high light or not. In general, I can usually only respond that I’ve only ever grown it in high light, but that they should try it out, and see if it survives in their tank. Now, I can’t even guarantee that it’ll look the same!

On Saturday, GWAPA kicked off 2008 with its first meeting of the year. Dave had been working for months on getting his basement ready for us to aquascape his newly installed 180G aquarium. Dave is doing a soil-based substrate, using mineralized topsoil with a few added nutrients, as his base. It’s capped with a layer of 3M Color Quartz pebbles.

Of course, the hardscape is made up of our porous mossy rock and manzanita, both from California. Being such a large tank, he’s trying to keep it manageable by using lower maintenance plants, such as crypts, anubias, and java fern. There are some other exotics, such as Pogostemon stellatus and Hygrophilia sp. ‘Low Grow’ as well.

Prior to scaping, Dave gave a nice presentation about the Golden Ratio, using yarn, strewn across the front of his tank to demonstrate the principle. As you can see, he’s applied the rule of thirds when setting up his hardscape, as well as, using asymmetry in terms of the size and numbers of rocks in each grouping to make the hardscape appealing to the eye.

We had a huge auction at our meeting this month, as well. I brought the most plants I think I’ve ever brought to a meeting. That’s what happens when there’s almost 2 months in between meetings! My tanks are looking a bit bare right now as a result.

Thanks to Jeff U for the meeting pictures!

Last weekend, my family spent the long weekend down in the Shenandoah Valley. Instead of skiing, we decided to hike up the mountain, and follow a trail along the mountain ridge. The view from up there was incredible, allowing us to take in the whole resort all at once.

In addition to a beautiful view, the mountain elements there were very interesting as well. We got to see the winter versions of many of the summertime plants and growths. The trees were covered with mosses and lichens, but instead of maintaining their usual color, they were pale, matching the surrounding snow and winter sky.

The trail was completely rock laden, necessitating that we watch our step through the snow to avoid slipping on any hidden rocks below.

Some greenery managed to show through the ubiquitous snow cover, such as the moss below. There was also some green mountain grass frozen in the snow.

As usual, there were many scenes that could easily be inspiration for an aquascape. The rock formations would make a lovely African cichlid rockscape. Can’t you just see the gaps being filled in with anubias, java fern, and bolbitus in the rocks below?

Speaking of ferns, I’ve always loved finding patches of forest that are covered with wild ferns. We saw a few places like that up on the mountain ridge, but unfortunately, they were all busy weathering the cold. I hope to get back to this trail sometime in warmer weather to see the ferns in their full glory.

There were also huge patches of mountain laurel in amongst some sparse pine trees. In combination with the rocks and snow, there were some really nice photo opportunities.

The mountain laurel still had the remains from some late flower buds or berries. The leaves were still green, and formed nice bushes along the path.

The rocks were usually set in relatively straight lines, as if something had slid over top of them in a uniform direction. I’m not sure if this is the case or not, but I suspect that this is exactly what happened with glaciers.

Finally, some pine cones were still on the trees, which I enjoyed taking pictures of.

I hope you enjoyed my pictures and tale of our mountain hike. It was quite cold (16F degrees), but we were heavily bundled up, and had a fantastic time.

We took advantage of the long MLK weekend to venture down to the Shenandoah Valley. On our trip down we stopped at Luray Caverns.

Luray Caverns is the largest caverns on the East Coast. It has been privately owned and operated by the same family since its discovery, and used to be a travelers’ destination and railway stop, frequented by visitors all over the globe. Unfortunately, due to private ownership, and a lack of proper preservation methods in place during the early days, the caverns are not completely intact.

They used to encourage visitors to break off stalactites to take home as souvenirs. As a result, many of the structures along the corridors are broken off. And then, of course, nature also broke off some huge pieces, such as the multi-ton piece shown above.

There are all sorts of structures that formed naturally in the cave. Many of the formations look as if they were handcrafted from plastic, but they reassured us that they with the work of mother nature.

Throughout the caverns, many reflecting pools reflect the ceiling, making for some very unique looking illusions, such as the one above. Again, it looks like something from another world.

One of the things I remembered from the caverns when I visited them as a child was the sunny-side-up eggs. This is another case where they broke off a structure, and the resulting inner core looked like a fried egg, so they added it to their tour.

There are some huge structures underground, such as this enormous tower above. I estimate that it’s probably 5 stories tall, and a very impressive feature of an even larger room.

Toward the end of the tour, they encourage visitors to toss coinage into their wishing pool. Yes, the pool is green from all of the copper coins. They say that they clean out the pool every year and donate it to charity. Despite painting a somewhat negative view of the Luray Caverns company, I really did enjoy our visit. The shear enormity of the caverns, as well as, the unique structures within make the trip worth it.