Last fall, I bought a dozen Vietnamese White Clouds in an auction at a Capital Cichlid Association’s meeting. I have never kept these fish before, but was always tempted by them in the fish stores. The one thing I never realized was how magnificent their fins can be until I put the group in my 20L and the males started displaying. In the stores, the fish just seem to hover in place, but in my tank, the males are constantly chasing each other around.

Supposedly these fish are very easy to breed, but I have not yet seen any eggs or fry in my aquarium. It’s possible that some loaches are taking care of any eggs that might be in the tank. These White Clouds seem to be fantastic fish for the planted aquarium. In addition, they can tolerate slightly cooler temperatures, so you don’t necessarily have to keep a heater in your aquarium. There is also a long-finned version of this fish which is even more impressive.

Back in July, I converted my quarantine tank into something of an aquascaped quarantine tank. Then, after rescaping my 75G, I had lots of extra Bolbitis, which I incorporated into this scape. This tank is really just a holding ground for plants and fish, with no CO2, minimal dosing, and a crappy light. Nevertheless, there’s no reason why it can’t look somewhat presentable.

20L - 9/12/2009, click for larger

Above is what it’s looking like currently (despite the poor picture). The Sagittaria subulata is slowly creeping to the right to fill in that side, and the crypts on the left side are gradually filling that in. The Bolbitis easily filled up the space in the back right, and behind the rock on the left. Overall, it’s coming along. There’s definitely an appeal to this low-tech tank because they grow so slowly that you only need to trim a couple times a year. Comments welcome!

Last weekend, while I was trying to get pictures of the Apistogramma baenschi “Inka” in my 20L, I also snapped a few shots of the Nerite snails and Amano shrimp while waiting for the Apistos to come out of hiding. I wanted to share a few of those shots.

Olive Nerite Snails are by far one of the best algae eaters you can add to your aquarium, but many of them are quite pretty as well. I love the spiraling parallel lines patterned over many of their shells. I thought this guy (above) looks pretty good against the orange tones of the rock.

One of their key attributes is their willingness to slither along the glass, cleaning it of green spot, or other tough algae. You can see that this particular snail’s shell is slowly eroding away due to the lower pH and hardness of my water. This is fairly common in planted aquariums, especially when CO2 is injected as the carbonic acid is hard on their shells. I’ve known some hobbyists who used reef epoxy to fill in these holes, prolonging the life of their invert inhabitants.

Amano shrimp are the other must have invert in nearly every aquarium. They can clear a field of hair algae in a matter of days, if added in proper proportion to the size of the tank. (That, by the way, is probably roughly 1 shrimp/2 gallons.) Too many, with too little algae, and they will start eating your moss fronds, or other delicate leaved plants. To minimize that, I feed mine algae wafers. The largest Amano in the tank usually swims right to the wafer, and holds it captive until he’s eaten his fill. Then the rest of the invertibrates in the tank swarm the leftovers. A day of the life of an invert.

I got some new rocks from a friend in GWAPA, and wanted to try them out in a tank. Unfortunately, the only free aquarium at the moment was my 20L, which was used primarily as a quarantine tank and place to hold some extra low-light plants. My friend is lucky enough to have these rocks buried in his yard. They seem to be a composite of quartz and slate, with some having very attractive orange bands through them. Overall, they have a fair amount of character up close.

20L - Click picture for larger view

The aquascape isn’t tremendous, but  I think it could have some potential if I paid much attention to it. This tank has previously been a major farm of cladophora algae, but after moving about 20 Amano Shrimp from my 40G into here, they’ve really done a tremendous job of getting it under control. If they can keep it that way, I may very well enjoy maintaining a small scape in this aquarium. I just have to make sure I can easily fish out any quarantine fish! Comments welcome.

The GWAPA meeting that I hosted has come and gone, and the weather outside has turned downright chilly, so it was time for me to tear down the pond for the year. I brought the Crinum americana indoors, as well, as a number of the other plants that had spent the last few months basking in the open sun. I also managed to net out about 4 dozen cherry shrimp from the bottom of the pond.

In addition to some outside maintenance, I’ve also been working to break down a few of my smaller tanks in hope that I can replace them with a larger “farm tank” to grow out a number of exotic plants that I’ve been acquiring recently. To that end, with the Jewel cichlids off to a new home, my 20H is completely empty. I piled all of the wood/rocks from that tank into my 20L quarantine tank.

This suits me just fine because I had recently put 20 juevenille bristlenosed plecos from the Catfish Convention Auction into this tank. These plecos are adoring the algae-ridden wood that was in the 20H.

In addition to the plecos, that 20L now contains 3 I. werneri that I’ve been unable to fish out to move to my 75G, and a large number of trumpet snails that retreat to the substrate during the day, and emerge each evening.

I’ve also torn down both of my 2.5G tanks that I had used for my first wormstrate/soil experiment. All that’s left is the 20L and two 10Gs, which I’ll need to consolidate at some point. I’m thinking of getting a 50 breeder, or similarly sized tank for my farm tank. Of course, we’ll see what deal comes along.