Elephant nose biotope tank pics.

chaynes

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Jan 17, 2003
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Ok didn't take as long to setup this tank as I thought it would have. What I have is a 46g bowfront, internal power filter w/extra ceramic biomedia, submersable heater, strip light and night viewing light. Substrate is sandy, water is stained with peat, PH is 6.8 KH is 4^, plants might be from biotope close as I could come without special ordering, driftwood cave hides all equipment behind it, and rock cave is out in the more open area for the elephant nose. Elephant nose prefers to hand out in the darkest cave during the day which is corner driftwood cave. African butterfly prefers to hang out around the floating plants. Feeding a variety of live insects to the African buterfly, and the elephant nose is eating live worms,freeze dried worms and brine shrimp, and frozen worms. He is very active at night but stays in his cave all day. No one has jumped as of yet to my knowledge. Thinking of adding some hatchet fish to break the biotope and go for a jumping fish theme. Too bad Archer fish are brackish water fish, as I have a culture of fruit flys that would be neat to watch them eat in this type of setup...maybe I need to get another tank later and try that one. ;)
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Neat how the high humidity with the tight lid has given the tank a nice wet rain forest feel inside. You can see where only parts of the light are showing up on the water where I covered most of the light up to subdue the lighting.

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The African butterfly fish waiting for a cricket to float by in the slow current.

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The driftwood cave that hides all the equipment. AKA the Elephant nose cave, since it is the darkest place during the day.

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And last is a behind the scenes look at the equipment. A small internal power filter, heater and a bag of peat moss(yes that's the white string from the bag floating). Ohh and I can't forget the reflection of the power strip.... :rolleyes:

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Originally posted by NJ Devils Fan
What exactly is biotope?


"biotope" refers to creating an environment that is as close as possible to the animal's surroundings in a wild situation. For example, a biotope suitable to a rainbow trout would be a very cold tank (with chillers, even) and a very strong current, with a river-rock substrate and rapids-tolerant North American plants.

Biotopes are some of the more interesting tanks out there, imo. They are a little labor-intensive to get everything perfect, though.
 
Your right in that they are very hard to do right, I worked for several months on this tank and still it's not perfect by far. But now at least I have a pretty good starting point to slowly start improving on it once I have more information from research.
 
Added a small Synodontis catfish. He went straight for the elephant nose's cave. The elephant nose tried to "shew" him out but gave up after a little bit and they are good buddies now.:cool:
 
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