<- fish nerd

[opabinia]

Germs got you down? Too ill to party with humans? Party with your fishtank!

This is an aquarium with a Southeast Asia theme. The volume is 29 gallons (about 110 liters), and the size is 30 1/4" x 12 1/2" x 18 3/4" (about 77cm by 32cm by 48cm). The plants are java moss (_Taxiphyllum barbieri_, a.k.a. _Vesicularia dubyana_), java fern (_Microsorum pteropus_), and water wisteria (_Hygrophila difformis_). The fishes are siamese algae eaters (_Crossocheilus siamensis_), Burmese border loaches (_Botia kubotai_), and dwarf puffers (_Carinotetraodon travancoricus_, a.k.a. _Tetraodon travancoricus_). The tank is teeming with mixed cherry shrimp (_Neocaridina heteropoda_), which vary in color from bright red to transparent with dark speckles. The cherry shrimp breed frequently and grow quickly in this tank. There are also four Amano shrimp (_Caridina multidentata_, a.k.a. _Caridina japonica_) in there. It's difficult to see most of the shrimp, but they are very numerous. There were once many hundreds of Malaysian Trumpet Snails (_Melanoides tuberculata_) in this tank, but the loaches have eaten most of them.

Some hobbyists warn that dwarf puffers may injure, kill and eat shrimp. I introduced the puffers a few months ago, when the tank was already well-planted, and the shrimp population was high. The shrimp are still doing very well. It's possible that the shrimp are breeding faster than the puffers can eat them, or that the puffers get enough food that it is unnecessary for them to hunt shrimp.

In this clip, I'm feeding the tank some frozen mosquito larvae, which are well-received by all the inhabitants.

Try this at home! Filtration is accomplished with an AquaClear 70 (formerly known as AquaClear 300) equipped with a Filter-Max III pre-filter. I don't use specialized filter media -- I just fill the filter body with sponges. The heater is a 150W or 200W Ebo-Jager unit with a plastic guard. (I think the company is called "Jager" now. What happened to "Ebo-?") Temperature is kept at about 75°F (24°C). The pH is approximately 7.0. The substrate is regular aquarium gravel. I do not add liquid or solid fertilizers for the plants. There is no Carbon Dioxide supplementation. I add a very small amount of liquid Iodine supplement (about one-tenth of a dose, by marine reef standards) at each water change, because some people say the shrimp need Iodine for moulting. There's less than a teaspoon of aquarium salt dissolved in the entire tank. The lighting comes from two full-spectrum fluorescent tubes.