125 gallon South American fish community

[Snagrio]

Yeah I agree .. I have zero success with real plants but thankfully the fake ones these days look real and move in the water


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The fabric/silk ones do look very nice, though they sadly don't last as long as plastic ones. They inevitably start to fray out over time.

[Snagrio]

I can actually take pics of the fish now and not just have a bunch of featureless blurs show up on camera.


This is what the view is like whenever I get so much as 2 feet away from the aquarium. The angels are complete gluttons and do the "dance" every time. They're bad influences too because most of the other midwater fish have picked up on their behavior and do the same thing now.




The marbled whiptail has to be my favorite of my "unplanned oddballs." So striking. Notice how big the "baby" bristlenoses are too. They've also developed bright yellow speckling, wonder if that's from their father's albinism.



Some of the delphax cories. It's feeding time so they're actually out, they usually tend to hide otherwise. Not as bad as the mouse catfish though, I almost never see it and it hides in the fake rock hide in the back all the time.


While two are small (one was bought recently and another replaced one that passed away), the rest of my mystery snails are massive at this point.


My hand for comparison.


Pics aside everything's been going relatively well. There's been no behavioral issues from the angels (the apistos keep them in line), though at one point some of the wild-type ones had this weird gray crust on their bodies. Never did figure out exactly what it was but several successive water changes and a dual assault of Ich X and erythromycin fixed the issue. Unfortunately during the ordeal I lost my orphan common hatchet. Don't even know what happened, literally saw it fine one second then in death throws the next. Stress from the water changes maybe? No known casualties beyond that though thankfully. Only other thing is the black veil angel's constantly tattered fins but there's not really anything I can do about that (I hate unnaturally long-finned fish for that reason but it was the only type of pure black angel they had in the LFS).

I also added some fertilizer substrate (the brown balls throughout the bottom in the images). It's technically supposed to be buried, and I did get as much of it under the sand as I could, but clearly that's something meant to be done before everything is added to a tank. Oh well, the plants seem a bit perkier now at least.

[Snagrio]

Some bad news. The old decrepit giant danio finally passed on, leaving the Eastern rainbow as the last "off-theme" resident. One of the apistos also died, though in both cases I could tell they were on their way out.

In better news, I have new pics.











And a special bonus, a rare appearance of the mouse catfish. I almost never see it. They're supposed to be in groups which would probably help its shyness but given its orphan status I didn't really have a choice. And even if the LFS had more in I don't feel like going through the hassle of setting the QT tank up again.

[Bogertophis]

Fish are really beautiful & fascinating to watch-

[Albert Clark]

Sparkling water and amazing setup! Kudos to you for all the hard work, it’s very apparent. I always thought you need a filtration system that doubles the aquarium capacity. What do you think? Like if you have a 55 gallon tank your filter should be a 110 gallon capacity system?

[Snagrio]

Sparkling water and amazing setup! Kudos to you for all the hard work, it’s very apparent. I always thought you need a filtration system that doubles the aquarium capacity. What do you think? Like if you have a 55 gallon tank your filter should be a 110 gallon capacity system?

It doesn't hurt, especially if you've got a big bioload. Mine has two huge canister filters and a sponge filter for good measure. That and multiple filters means that if for whatever reason one fails, you still have others going so all the bacterial colonies aren't lost. Like having extra "organs" so to speak.

[Trinityblood]

My gosh your tank looks so good and the water is crystal clear. I'm sorry for your losses. That's always hard. Thanks for sharing.

[Snagrio]

Over the course of the past month I've lost a couple of my mystery snails, and as of a couple days ago my prized marbled whiptail yet again...

Evidently I've learned that they tend to be sensitive, but both times they were eating and acting perfectly fine and then just keeled overnight despite no water parameter issues, feeding well and no tankmate disputes. It just wasn't meant to be I guess...

[Bogertophis]

Over the course of the past month I've lost a couple of my mystery snails, and as of a couple days ago my prized marbled whiptail yet again...

Evidently I've learned that they tend to be sensitive, but both times they were eating and acting perfectly fine and then just keeled overnight despite no water parameter issues, feeding well and no tankmate disputes. It just wasn't meant to be I guess...

Aw, that's not fair. So sorry for your losses, it looks like you're doing all the right things, but sometimes nature just likes to stick her foot out & trip us.

[Trinityblood]

I'm sorry for your losses . Fish keeping can be tough sometimes.