Last night I went over to my friend Aaron’s house to help him get a good photograph of his aquascape for the Aquatic Gardener Association’s aquascaping contest due in a few days. I promised him that I wouldn’t post any pictures of his actual aquascape until after the contest is over, but these are some individual plant shots I took.

The first shows HC, Hemianthus callitrichoides, pearling with a nice fat oxygen bubble on its’ leaf tip. If you look closely you can see some of the downoi reflected in the bubble. Below is a picture of a very healthy looking Rotala macrandra var. ‘Green,’ also pearling away. I’m going to have to go back and take more pictures because Aaron’s got some really awesome plants growing in his tanks. Good luck in the contest Aaron!

Well, here’s my final picture for GWAPA’s aquascaping contest. It’s pretty much the same as last time, except the anubias are slightly better positioned in front of the rock. I don’t know what other tanks I’m up against yet, so I’m not going to place any bets yet on its chances of winning.

After I tear down this aquascape, I think I might use this aquarium to start trying some of ADA’s other substrates. I have two small bags of their Malayan and Africana aquasoils. I can’t imagine that they’re too much different, but you never know. Comments welcome!

I have been keeping Apistogramma sp. ‘Rotpunkt’ for some time now. I originally received them from Rob in GWAPA, trading him my Apistogramma panduros for six juveniles. While not as flashy as the panduros, they’re still very attractive fish. Their specific taxonomy has yet to really be nailed down. Kullander has named one species formerly know as ‘Rotpunkt’ as Apistogramma alacrina, but it’s likely that this does not describe the most common color morph in the hobby. There are also other color morphs named A. sp. ‘Puerto Nariño’ and A. sp. ‘Schwarsaum’ that are likely just variations on A. sp. ‘Rotpunkt.’

The Rotpunkt are very timid fish in my experience. I’ve been trying to get semi-decent pictures of these fish for months, but every time I attempted to setup my photo gear, they spent the next hour toward the back of the tank out of view. I finally managed to take these shots last week after setting everything up, and occasionally revisiting the tank throughout the day to snap some pictures.

I have a couple of dominant males in the tank (shown above), and thus they have paired up with a few of the different females. I don’t know how many spawns I’ve had, but suffice to say that they don’t seem to be that picky about their breeding conditions. One of the juveniles (shown below) is just starting to color up. I suspect that he’ll probably keep this coloration for some time unless I move him from the tank to claim his own territory.

The females are attractive fish, having more black bars on their side than many of the apistogramma I have kept. When spawning, they become an absolutely stunning yellow. Just like the A. cacatuoides, they really seem to like the crevices provided by the porous mossy rock.

On Saturday, I attended the September GWAPA meeting at Jeff’s house in Ellicot City, MD. In addition to having some awesome sweet/sour meatballs and two gorgeous aquascapes, Jeff also demonstrated how to make the DIY autodoser that he’s been using on his tanks for some time. Made of easily attainable materials, this provides a great solution for the lazy, forgetful, and those looking for consistency in their dosing. I’ve been using an Eheim Liquidoser for awhile, but I think I might try to put together one of these since it holds far more solution than an Eheim does. You can read a short article on how to build one of these on the GWAPA website.

In addition to the meeting itself, Aaron and I stayed afterward to help Jeff get a good picture of his 55G tank. We’re all aspiring to improve our photography skills, so it was great to try a bunch of different techniques to ultimately come up with a nice looking shot. We used two external flashes aimed at some shadowed portions of the tank to try and even out the exposure across the whole picture. While it took us countless tries, we definitely ended up with a better picture than what we would have had without the extra experimentation.

Ever since I setup this tank, I’ve been fighting terrible algae throughout. The wood constantly recovered itself with new hair and black brush algae. I would scrub it off with a toothbrush every couple of days, and back it would come.

I’ve had thread algae, staghorn, BGA, you name it in here. I’ve always been adding CO2, but it must not have been enough to thwart off the black brush algae. I finally resorted to chemicals, by overdosing Seachem Excel by several times the normal recommended amount. Combining that an extensive cleaning of both the glass and ornaments, and adding a hang-on Mag filter for more circulation I think the tide is finally turning. I’ve also added in more plants to out-compete the algae for nutrients. Hopefully I’ll soon be able to work on the aquascape without worrying about algae ruining everything.