I have to say though, the newer equipment makes it not only more beautiful but so much easier to create!(in my days tanks had chrome frames, although they did come in unusual sizes – not easily found today).

I made mine out of glass and wooden frames (like a Japanese Pagoda, even had a little water fall feature), one part sitting on top of the other, then hung plastic square tubs for the land plants – and that was hard to create… now I see all these ready made aspects which are slimmer and easier to work with. The structure was part of the design as really there was no other option (silicone had NOT been created yet)… Now so sleek. Wow!

I guess (if this thread is still alive) I would like to know what is the difference between a Riparium and a Paludarium (or for that matter a terrarium/vivarium with a water feature)??? (obviously having kept all three… is there specifics to each that differentiate them? Or overlapping.

Also, I don’t have a picture of the school of danios, but I did get some decent shots of a few individuals:

http://www.guitarfish.org/2009/10/27/zebra-danio-oldie-but-goodie

Those Choprae Danios look nice too!

The rainbow darter is super cute. I have heard before that they are personable and inquisitive little fish. I had wondered what kinds of fish you had in here, I thought I was reading the next post when I saw that shot of the darter.

Have you heard of BT Darters? That is one commercial source for darters and other little native fish for aquariums. They are here in WI. Here is their link…

<a href="http://www.btdarters.com/pages/whatisadarter.html"

Hey you ought to get a shot of your group of danios too. I saw such a cool fish fish at the LFS the other day, choprae danios. They were something like $7.50 each for a little 1″ fish, but they were neat.

PVAS is planning an outing in April-ish to the streams around Centreville. There’s a thread on the board about it.

There’s a spot up north of Leesburg that I went with a NANFA guy this last summer that’s supposed to have rainbows. However, we only caught one female and a very small amount of other darters. He commented that the water was a lot siltier than he remembered, probably due to local construction, and our theory was that the darters had moved to better waters. Worth checking again though.