DeeSeven
11-04-2008, 9:39 PM
I had a few kinks in my life I had to take care of first. Hence the delay on the pictures and etc. But I decided instead of doing a 55 gallon tank I moved down to a 45 because angels need more height over width. And so thats what happened, I still have the 55 gallon just its empty. I"m not sure what I'm going to do with it yet but anyways. I've done some research on angelfish, I say some cause I know there is much more information out there then what I've read and seen. Although by all means if someone has some good books they recommend please pm me with the titles and authors. So in my research I've noticed that angels really don't have a heavily planted area per say. In fact it is more wood, rocks, dirt, leaves and some plants, so I tried to replicate their living conditions in the wild as much as possible. The substrate I used was 3 lbs of laterite, 1 bag of eco complete and mixed that together. Then I put that in the tank and mixed a bag of fine gravel and dirt (yes actual dirt eco friendly el natural etc. etc.) put that on top of the eco/laterite mix and then finally put 20 lbs of sand over that. I then took the most freaking amazing piece of wood I've found ever in my life from the Connecticut river (its been boiled, sun dried, rinsed, scrubbed for the last 2 months, I hope its all good lol), took another piece of branchy driftwood and finally put some not so nice rocks around that and sloped the sand. I still wasn't happy with the outcome so I added some almond leaves to the water (yes I know almond leaves are from Asia not South America but I have no idea what leaves I'd use that come from South America...anyone even know?). The almond leaves are slowly but surely sinking into the water. And my cories are currently loving live with the sand so the dirt I put under the sand is starting to come through to give it more of a "messy" look. In my research I've also noticed that fish in the amazon river really don't have bright light they have a more subdued light. So on to the fish, I've put 4 Marble angels (I think they are marble if anyone wants to prove me wrong please do I'm terrible at the different kinds of angels), I was going to put cardinals but that's so "typical" I wanted to go a little above and beyond that. So I picked up some silver hatchet fish, I don't know about anyone else but I LOVE these guys. I think they have to be by far one of the coolest fish I've seen and the only true fish to actually fly (according to my research). To finish off the tank I added some paleatus cats who are LOVING the sand substrate, they spend a good 3/4s of the day burying their face in the sand. I decided to go with this mix of fish because well angels can get mean when older and I can't afford to pay for replacing fish that they have either chased to death or eaten. So I picked up the hatchet fish which grow a pretty good size, they seem to be co existing perfectly fine. Now for some more details, I keep the ph at around 6.5-6.7 and the temp is between 75-77. I've read that keeping the temp high induces your angels to breed but gives them a shorter life span? I'm not looking to purposely breed angels I more or less just want to enjoy the tank for what it is worth. I plan on adding plants later on but I'm going to have to figure in my lighting and see where that leaves me. SO with all of that out of the way here are the pictures. I suck at taking pictures when working on a tank because I don't take a break I just go at it and it's finished. And the pictures suck because my tank has such little light its hard to take pictures of them specially when my room is dark in that area to begin with. I'll figure out how to get better pics soon promise.