First "big" tank

[Carla G]

OK. 5-6 Clown Loaches then. They look like fun and my wife will be happy that the tank isn't just full of "little" fish.

Great! Clown loaches can get even bigger than the ones you saw in the store. Check out the website www.loaches.com for the lowdown on Clown loaches plus some videos.

I hadn't thought too much of the ones I've seen recently, but the splendida varieties on the web site you pointed out are very pretty.

There are several very pretty ones. I am considering M. doublayi or M. praecox. Their full colours don't come in till they are an adult, so the little ones don't tend to get sold to the uninformed.

Honestly, half the fun for me is doing the planning.

I think so too.

Cheers

Carla

 

[weldon]

Actually, kuhlis can adapt. People can tell me they are nocturnal but they will readily show up if there is not too much boisterous activity in their environment.

I might try adding them later after the tank is well established. My son is only 13 and so his mind changes frequently. He likes the "rope" fish like knifes, bichirs, etc. cause they look cool, but I don't think dropping the kuhlis is a dealbreaker for him. I think he'll enjoy the clowns and other fish just as much.

The resulting fry often have horrible mix of colors.

I was looking forward to the different colorings in the tank (red wag and sunset) but I'll take this under advisement. We might get more fun and enjoyment out of the fry than the different strains so it may be a better choice for us to focus on raising one type.

That also frees up some room for a school of rainbowfish or rummynose or rasboras. Hmmm....

All I'm saying is just keep a watch on [the angels]. There are some cases where the angels would suddenly eat the tetras even when they were raised with the tetras since their younger days.

Will do.

Great! Clown loaches can get even bigger than the ones you saw in the store. Check out the website www.loaches.com for the lowdown on Clown loaches plus some videos.

Thanks for the link. I guess I have been intimidated by all the warnings that clown loaches take a lot of room, but they seem to be peaceful enough to coexist in a community tank. I like that they are such long-lived fish. It will be fun for my family to watch them grow up.

There are several very pretty ones. I am considering M. doublayi or M. praecox. Their full colours don't come in till they are an adult, so the little ones don't tend to get sold to the uninformed.

Those are very pretty. I also like M. splendida Inornata, M. spl.rubrostriata, M. spl. splendida, and M. trifasciata. My LFS only has one or two varieties, so I'll have to figure out what their scientific names are so I can identify them on the web site you linked earlier.

In other news, I've been talking to the seller (via email) trying to figure out why the center panel for the canopy doesn't fit in the tank. It's about 1/4" too long to fit in. I have to order the left and right pieces to the canopy so I wanted to get an exact measurement, only to find that the center piece doesn't seem to fit where it should. :wall:

Off to Home Depot to get some primer and paint for the stand as well as Krylon Fusion for the tank trim and the light fixture.

 

[weldon]

I went to home depot today and got the primer, but forgot to bring the space heater home from work so I could work in the garage today. It's pretty cold now and snowing, so I'll wait to prime the stand another day.

I was looking at the sand and found the following...

The all-purpose sand looks to be a little courser and have more variety in color than the play sand. It does contain crystalline silica which I have heard is hard on cories and loaches. Still $.06/lb sounds a lot better than $1/lb for aquarium gravel.

The LFS has some cool looking stuff that I think he called "tekblast" or something like that. He says the distributor went out of business last year and he hasn't been able to find any for almost 16 months. It looked nice though - good variety of color, grain size was bigger than sand but smaller than gravel, looked great with plants. I'm tempted to get caribsea peace river gravel, but it would cost $150 + $ for flourite to do a planted tank with it.

 

[irishspy]

I was looking at Quikrete "medium sand" the other day at Home Depot, but it was in a paper wrapper, so I have no idea what it looks like. Anyone familiar with it?

 

[OldMan1947]

Any of the female sunburt platies in your picture will have received the attentions of the variatus they are housed with. If you are intending to keep any fry, I would avoid a mixed platy, variatus, swordtail tank as a source. The result is almost always mixed fry. All 3 will freely interbreed. This has been a useful tool for breeders trying to develop new color combinations quickly but if you like a particular variation, you can't get the fish from a mixed tank and expect to keep that color. Red wag swords came from such a cross initially because redwag platties could easily be crossed to swords, then the result could be line bred to select for the color and the sword. The same thing happens in these mixed tanks but with nobody selecting for particular traits, the results are unpredictable.
Sorry but keeping fish like that is one of my pet peeves. I would like to buy a fish and know what to expect when they reproduce.

 

[tankboy_taylor]

Defininatly go with the Clown Loaches they are one my alltime favs tons of personality

 

[Derringer]

The all-purpose sand looks to be a little courser and have more variety in color than the play sand.

Those are the two I got from HD ... I mixed them 50:50, looks pretty nice.

 

[TheXman]

http://members.optushome.com.au/chelmon/

The M. praecox is only 2" long. Other melantotaenia species are 4". The red glossolepis incisus can get to 4 1/2" Rainbowfish should be kept in schools of 6 or more of a kind and like similar conditions to loaches. They are very peaceful fish.

Actually, the praecox rainbows can get up to 3 inches and the incisus males can grow to over 6 inches. I have some Deepwater Creek splendidas which have a lot more color than anything you'll see in the lfs. They look most like the last picture in this link: http://members.optushome.com.au/chelmon/splendida.htm
They reach up to 6 inches long as well, but won't eat neon or cardinal tetras, even at that length because rainbows have narrow throats that are too small for eating tetras. I have several rainbowfish of various sizes up to 4 inches in a tank with zebra danios, clown loaches, neon tetras, lyretail killifish, and siamese algae eaters. Currently, I have a batch of the Deepwater Creek spledida fry that are about a month old. In a couple of months, I'll be looking for new homes for them, so if you're interested, PM me.

 

[TheXman]

Here are some pics of what the parents of the current fry looked like at about three and a half months old. Males are the colorful ones, although as you can see, the females have red tails too. All the fish are much redder now, and the blues are brighter too. Rainbowfish continue to color up for the first 1.5- 2 years of their lives before they reach full coloration. I would show you what they look like now, but the tank they're in has poor lighting and is much bigger, so it's a lot more difficult to get a good picture.

 

[Reddog80p]

Nice bows'