Loaches Online Forum

Time I posted some updated pictures of the growing sids. The plants have filled in nicely. Sids are doing great! The full tank shot looks devoid of fish, don't be fooled.....There's a total of 42 in there .

beautiful tank, and the sids look great. How many gallons?

I image tagged them for you Debbi, so they show up in the post.

Great tank and fish.

Martin.

Thank you Martin! ZMO63 - it's a 55G.

Well, I'm jealous of that tank... Great stuff!

from a very jealous fishkeeper, Superb looking tank and fish.
you have the eye for setting tanks up.

jealous mick

beautifull tank and beautifull fish lovely

Wow the tank looks great and the sids are beautifull, i wish i could have a planted tank like that!

Your tank is beautiful. I would love to have a tank that looked like that. Can you tell me if you need injected CO2, or if a liquid form would be enough for such a tank?
What fertilizers do you use? I don't have a planted tank (yet ), but I'm very interested in starting one.

Your sids are so nice. I'm sure that feeding time is great fun to watch.

Thank you all for your kind comments. It has been much fun to try to plan this tank with the hopes that someday I'll be fortunate enough to have some breeding sids. They are wonderful little characters! There's just so very little information anywhere about them. I am prepared to keep a journal about them and they are already teaching me things along the way!

To all those who wish to have lovely planted tanks, I cannot tell you enough that it can be done like mine....very, very simply! I also have a discus show tank so over the last few years I have experimented with a lot of different plants to see their tolerance for warm water temps, low light, and minimum care. And this tank is a result of learnings along the way. This is such a low tech tank! I have small smooth natural gravel in there, nothing else in the substrate. Normal lights in the hoods, just added GE Aquarays 9325 bulbs, a weekly dose of Flourish (when I remember!) and occasional root tabs for some of the crypts. No CO2, no Excel. Crypts come in so many varieties, tall, short, ruffled, gray-green, bright green, red, bronze and they thrive in these conditions so they are the biggest part of my aquascape. I have a large leafed anubia in there that blooms occasionally, and the willow leaf hygro and broad leaf hygro also do fantastically. Those reach the top of the tank so about every 8-10 weeks I cut them in half. And I have some dwarf vals (if I remember correctly that's what they are) in there now for a couple of months and they are multiplying as well. The smaller ones are occasionally uprooted by the sids. My PH is 7.6, conditioned municipal tap water, temp varies from 82-86. I put the lights on at 5:00 AM to feed the sids before I go to work and they don't go off until around 10:00 PM. If you're interested in obtaining some of those varieties of crypts let me know and I'll tell you where I get them. Hope that helps!

Debbi,

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

I'm so inspired. I can hardly wait to get started.

Thanks so much for posting!!!!


A few months ago, I saw that someone was selling pygmy vals on eBay. I think I'll go look there and see if he's still selling.

Loachmom, you're right, they are pygmy vals and they are still available on aquabid.com from the same supplier.

Debbi,

Is the willow leaf hygro the pale green plant in the back (the tall stuff)? I like that. Do you know a good place to get it?

Thanks

Loachmom, yes the tall stuff in the back corners is the willow leaf hygro. I don't know where you can get that, you'll have to search around or post a "looking for" thread on a forum or two. I could probably send you a few clippings, I'll be trimming in about another two weeks. You just push the trimmings into the gravel and they start to root immediately. I have some clippings promised to another person but I think there's enough I can get you both started. To get it thick like that, each time you trim, you put thenew trimmings right next the the old ones. And pretty soon you'll have too much!

Thanks Debbi

I've sent you a PM.