My tanks

[NoodleCats]

OK Noodle, I have a tiny criticism or 2. I hope you'll take it in a nice way that's how I mean it. C. becketti & C. petchii are separarte species unless they're now crossed...& they might be...How else do "they" create all those new varieties? Thousands of crypts, what do I know?

I'd also prefer your new fancy crypt was not so similarly colored to the nearby rock. I want my crypts to shine more than blend in . Of course it's a personal choice but think about moving it or the rock next time you need to rearrange. I like its red petioles in contrast to the leaves & it looks to have a nice pink color coming on too. Wait & see is my lazy motto, but you're a more "redo-ish" kind of scaper. Just suggestions, it's all good!

Hahaha criticism accepted gratefully!

They are considered the same atm from what I've read, but I do also keep the traditional one too. I went and took a photo of it for you today


As you can see from that photo, I've also moved the pink one away from the rock elsewhere. It started fading for colour there too, so I moved it to a more directly lit spot to see if the pink returns in the new leaves, not just mottled coloring.
As can see. Still some pink, but its not happy right now haha


I do have to say, I do hate the constant reclassing of fish and plants all the time. Makes it confusing. Like pick a name and stick with it.

Wendtii has other names too, like Affinis and axelrodi. They're classed now as wendtii.

 

[NoodleCats]

Dunno if I ever shared my snail vase. Has some red ramshorns I'm trying to breed into a larger colony. But it's about 1-2 gallons. Basically it's whatever scrap trimmings thrown into here to see what takes to the really low light lol


And the 3 snails so far





10 gallon. Added some branches, had to remove the other plants because they didn't like the super low light. Oh well, the fish love this anyways


Boraras urophthalmoides male showing off some intense colouration




And the shrimp are liking the tank too, go figure. Thriving better in the 10g than the smaller tanks before.

 

[NoodleCats]

This post is just gonna be an assortment of fish photos

Ancistrus bodenhameri, absolutely adore these plecos, they're subtle but really neat. Not very shy either which is nice for wild caughts.
The male


The female


Lemon tetra


A very chunky corydoras schultzei lady


Purple harlequin rasboras, also very chunky


Pangio doriae loach yawning. So cute.
Picked up 2 more doriae I found at the store. Now have 4 of that species, imo my favourite of the pangio genus too.
Total 20 pangios now though altogether.


Corydoras C102, very handsome fish. His long nose makes me happy every time I see him. His name is Pingu, for anyone who knows of the little claymation penguin kids show of the early 90s.


I may or may not have also picked up some brochis splendens and plan to add more as the store gets them.

 

[fishorama]

Wow, I love the new pics! Those look to be brochis to me too; shorter fat bodies, big eye, long forehead/nose.

I love your cool ancistus too. It's interesting the "female" has the pronounced gill cover odontates(?...you know the spiky things. I'm having a brain fart), But the male definitely has a more bristley face.

Thanks for the crypt pics & for moving the 1, it looks great, much better. I'm going to disagree about the species thing a bit (again). The only way to truly differetiate the crypt species to to flower them (usually emmersed). Some of my plant clubbers are that hardcore, I'm not. I just love crypts! Depending on tank conditions they can look very different but so can different species look similar. To my very untrained eye yours looks similar to what I was given as either c. nurii Pahang or P. mutated. Or even low light affis "metal red". Whatever, it's a pretty plant. When I had my clubbers over (pre-covid) I just gestured at a tank & said mostly wendtii types. The old guy said that group is (?) from him, he can tell by looking...& he probably could...

Yeah, I hear you on the parsing of fish & plant names. I learned botia sidthimunki (dwarf chain loaches) 40 years ago. Then yasuhikatia (whew, spelling, lol) then ambastia for genus names. At least their species name has always been sidthimunki for 1 of my most favorite fish of all time.

As for your snail vase, I've always liked ramshorns, brown, red, blue or speckled. We called them "loach candy" & as you can guess, they were our "pest" snail treats for a long time. Bigger cichlids liked them too. Now I haven't been able to keep them, too soft of water is my guess.

 

[NoodleCats]

Wow, I love the new pics! Those look to be brochis to me too; shorter fat bodies, big eye, long forehead/nose.

I love your cool ancistus too. It's interesting the "female" has the pronounced gill cover odontates(?...you know the spiky things. I'm having a brain fart), But the male definitely has a more bristley face.

Thanks for the crypt pics & for moving the 1, it looks great, much better. I'm going to disagree about the species thing a bit (again). The only way to truly differetiate the crypt species to to flower them (usually emmersed). Some of my plant clubbers are that hardcore, I'm not. I just love crypts! Depending on tank conditions they can look very different but so can different species look similar. To my very untrained eye yours looks similar to what I was given as either c. nurii Pahang or P. mutated. Or even low light affis "metal red". Whatever, it's a pretty plant. When I had my clubbers over (pre-covid) I just gestured at a tank & said mostly wendtii types. The old guy said that group is (?) from him, he can tell by looking...& he probably could...

Yeah, I hear you on the parsing of fish & plant names. I learned botia sidthimunki (dwarf chain loaches) 40 years ago. Then yasuhikatia (whew, spelling, lol) then ambastia for genus names. At least their species name has always been sidthimunki for 1 of my most favorite fish of all time.

As for your snail vase, I've always liked ramshorns, brown, red, blue or speckled. We called them "loach candy" & as you can guess, they were our "pest" snail treats for a long time. Bigger cichlids liked them too. Now I haven't been able to keep them, too soft of water is my guess.

Yeah I've heard the same about crypts being best identified via flowered emersed plants. I've got a wendtii I'm trying to convert atm, but I'm not brave enough to try it with that one single oddball crypt with my black thumb lol

And yeah no worries on the disagreeing. I'm with you that it should be separate if they've been that way before. But it's just as theyre labeled now, stupidly.

Dwarf chains are super cute. One of the botias I've been interested in keeping, but no setup for them and they're a little harder to fund. Maybe one day though. That or hovering zebra loaches, theyre tiny but super cute.

I like Malaysian trumpet snails best, they don't eat my plants, they're nocturnal so even if there's high numbers I don't see huge hoards of them, and they got cute little faces. Plus they have really good function for sand in planted tanks. Keep the sand aerated and prevents anaerobic pockets. Bonus of lack of unsightly eggs too, since they're live bearing snails.
Ramshorns I like in smaller amounts, only because they start munching my plants the moment there's too many to sustain themselves haha I keep assassins in most tanks to actually keep them in check. Bladders, meh, theyre cute but they breed the most prolifically so can be an eyesore, but they don't touch the plants. Just rabbits. At least the red ramshorns, id like to keep them in a more controlled tank and if there's too many theyre pretty enough to find homes for

 

[jake72]

Do you know the difference between becketti petchii pink and crypt flamingo ?

 

[NoodleCats]

Do you know the difference between becketti petchii pink and crypt flamingo ?

Flamingo will always be more pink haha plus leaf texture and shape is different.

The markings on the leaves are also slightly different. Flamingo tends to have a dark line in the center, where petchii pink doesnt

 

[fishorama]

I have had a hard time telling different but similarly colored crypts apart in different growing conditions. The only way to compare in tanks is to grow each in the same growing conditions including but limited to light, ferts, etc. Like Noodle & I said, the only way to tell is to grow them emersed until they flower...& then find the right flower guide to identify it. There are a zillion crypts!

 

[NoodleCats]

Had to trim the pogostemon stellatus octopus yet again. Here's a pre-trim and post trim lol


Propagated more anubias in this one. Still feels like it's lacking something but I dunno what lol

 

[NoodleCats]

I have had a hard time telling different but similarly colored crypts apart in different growing conditions. The only way to compare in tanks is to grow each in the same growing conditions including but limited to light, ferts, etc. Like Noodle & I said, the only way to tell is to grow them emersed until they flower...& then find the right flower guide to identify it. There are a zillion crypts!

Flamingo is one of those few exceptions.

In the best conditions, that plant is flaming pink haha

Low tech is where it's a little trickier, but seeing others plants with it in low tech, it's still pretty distinctive over petchii pink. Which, never gets as intense pink as flamingo even in the best conditions. Low tech can get confused, but ive found that it lacks the central dark stripe that Low tech flamingo tends to have.