There comes a time when you have to chose which is more important to you, the fish or the aquascape. In the last scape I had in my 50g aquarium, I didn’t provide enough caves for my bristlenose plecos to occupy, so they took it upon themselves to dig underneath the rocks, building their own caves. After walking into my fish room enough times, only to witness muddy water, I decided that the fish have made their point, and a new aquascape was in order.

I pulled out the rocks, replacing them with hollow pieces of African bogwood. I also elevated enough pieces to provide small caves without digging. Replanting with just Blyxa aubertii, B. japonica, and Narrow-leaf Java Fern, I kept the scape pretty simplistic. I reused the sand path in the old scape, purposely allowing it to become contaminated with aquasoil, to achieve a more natural look. Overnight, so far no digging! Comments welcome!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted my Mini-S aquascape. I’m pretty happy with how it’s turning out, although I can’t decide whether to let the Blyxa japonica grow tall like it is, or to keep it shoved down behind the rock more. Suggestions on that? I also added some livestock in the form of Phoenix Rasboras, Orange-Eyed Blue Tiger Shrimp, and a few horned Nerite snails.

A couple weekends ago I found some time to rescape my 50G aquarium. I’m not entirely thrilled with it in its current state, but I’m hoping that the plants will grow in a bit, and minimize the size of those rocks a little bit. I was also hoping that my plecos wouldn’t dig, but that seems to have been wishful thinking.

At least it’s looking way better than it did prior to my rescape. In case you’re curious, I’m trying to do a themed series of aquascapes in my fishroom, using the pool filter sand, and fairly minimalistic look. Now I just need to keep this and my 33G going while I find time to rescape my 75G!

On Monday, I spent a very long overdue 7.5 hours working in my fish-room. The problem is that I have neglected my tanks for too long that duckweed and algae had taken them over. In addition to cleaning them up, I also decided to swap the stands the my 40G and 50G aquariums were sitting on to provide better light to my aquascaping tank (the 50G).

As you can see above, the two tanks sit side-by-side. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy job to swap their positions. I still had to drain the water, remove the plants, remove the rocks, remove the fish, remove the driftwood, and finally get help to physically move them. In other words, it was nearly the same amount of work as if I were moving to another house.

After getting the aquariums into their new resting places, I decided that it was time to re-aquascape the 50G. I didn’t want to change too much from how it was before, but I definitely needed to make some changes. So, I repositioned the wood countless times until I came up with what you see above.

Then, I replanted the Blyxa aubertii on the back left and added Hygrophila sp. ‘Guinea’ to the back right. Hopefully with some time, everything will fill in and look a lot better than it did previously. I’m still toying with the idea of adding the branches back into the scape to give the feel of a riverbank, but I’ll let the plants grow in a bit before doing that. Comments welcome!

I’ve long had the desire to simulate a steep sloped riverbank aquascape with tree branches hanging down into the water. After finally securing the branched manzanita that I wanted for the tree branches, I rescaped my 50G aquarium using those branches, as well as, manzanita stumps to create the sloped hardscape. Unfortunately, my idea has been very slow to materialize, with the manzanita stumps radically altering the water chemistry of my aquarium resulting in a few fish deaths and lots of algae.

I think I’ve stabilized the chemistry issue, but am still dealing with some of the resulting algae. Now, I need to let the plants themselves grow in. I’m not 100% convinced that the plants I have (Dwarf Sag, Blyxa aubertii, Rotala sp. ‘H-ra’, and Ludwigia senegalensis) are the plants I ultimately want in this aquascape, but if they can defeat the black-brush-algae, I can go from there. Honestly, I should probably adjust much of the hardscape itself while I’m at it. In any case, I just wanted to share what I was up to, and prove the point that an aquascaping idea doesn’t always work out exactly as you expect; sometimes for the better, sometimes not so much… Suggestions welcome!

Since there’s multiple feet of snow outside, I’ve been sitting inside trying to come up with creative things to occupy my time. Today, I pulled out our old video camera and headed into the fishroom. I lucked upon some interesting activity going on in my 50G with the colony of Apistogramma baenschi ‘Inka 50’ . First, I have a video of a female in full bright yellow coloration guarding a little patch of territory she’s carved out underneath some Blyxa japonica stems.

Next, I caught two males displaying to each other, with the largest, most dominate one eventually chasing the other away. This happens all of the time, and doesn’t usually end up with anyone getting injured. It’s interesting to me how in both of these videos, the Apistogramma only cares about other cichlids. They never chase away the other tetras. (This would change if they were actually protecting fry.)

Finally, after the male-to-male domination display earlier, his female approaches him doing a kind of odd-looking dance to indicate that she’s not a threat. Recognizing this, he lets her go into their patch of Blyxa that he’s protecting.

The behaviors of these cichlids provide unending fascination to me as I enjoy my aquariums during a  cold wintry day. Comments welcome!