Finally got my 125 up and running

The river tank has finally cleared enough to get some okay pictures. I'm using soil under sand on the left 2/3 of the tank, mostly to grow vallisneria. I've also got some random ferns and mosses, as well as a stand of mermaid weed. The other half is gravel and sand and lots of rocks. There was also supposed to be wood going down there, but in a fit of utter brilliance, I completely failed to take into account that driftwood that's been out of water for two years is probably not going to sink. It is, in fact, going to float. It's going to float as you fill the tank. It's going to float and then knock the hose out of the tank to spray all over the floor. *facepalm* This is why we put in tile.

The plan is to have mostly native fish in the tank. Mostly. Right now there's a blackspotted sunfish, a small dollar sunfish, two little greens that are going out in the pond in the spring, a handful of mixed darters (greensided, rainbow and something that I cannot remember for the life of me), a couple of dace and some mystery shiners from the feeder tanks. Non-native, I have a small school of salt and pepper cories and one male <i>Geophagus steindachneri</i> who has decided that the blackspotted sunnie is his best friend. I've got another large dollar sunnie, some seminole killies, some spotfin shiners and some hillstream loaches in holding tanks that I'm debating adding to this tank. The dollar I'm debating on because I don't have a lot of hiding places because of the floating wood and he's a big guy, although he shares a 15 with the seminole killies right now and I have no problems. The killies might be happier in a lower flow tank. The spotfin shiners are pretty agressive, but they've been doing really well with the loaches. I'm considering adding the loaches because I have nowhere else to put them. This is why impulse buying a tank full of unknown loaches from a fish store going out of business can be a bad idea. So basically, it's a bunch of fish that are more aggressive and I'm not sure that I want them in the tank. Especially since getting them back out afterwards will not be fun.

I'm running a canister filter and a good-sized powerhead in the tank to get a good flow. The darters and the shiners don't have a problem with the high current parts of the tank, unsurprisingly. What's really funny is to watch the cories swim against the strongest parts. Most of them can do it, but a few will get about 3/4 of the way up the tank and then peel off to the side, over and over. The sunfish just swim over the strongest part. The plants are looking pretty rough right now because half of them are refugees from my tropical 125 which got broken by the tile installers. Hopefully once I get a decent light over the tank they'll look a lot better.



I bought the doors from Community Forklift (an architectural salvage yard) yesterday for 75 cents each. The plan is to restain them to match the tank trim and get some veneer to fill in the front and the sides.





Anyone want to have a go at my mystery shiners? I figure they're from Florida because they're out of the feeder tank but I haven't sat down to figure out what they are. I know this picture is pretty bad. They're a sort of bronze color.

You're off to a great start, it looks fantastic! Your darter in the photo is a banded darter (Etheostoma zonale). If I were forced to guess (and it really is only a guess), those are weed shiner (Notropis texanus). See if they meet that description.

Todd

Nice tank. Maybe one day I'll get a beast like that.

Just to comment on the seminole killies: I have noticed that since my introduction of another HOB filter on my 46 gallon, current has increased and has caused the killies to tend to hide a bit more within the plants. If you have enough sluggish areas in the tank, they will find them and fill that 'niche'. I re-arranged some driftwood to alter the flow, now the seminoles are out in the open a lot more.

Edited by UncleWillie, 25 October 2009 - 07:43 PM.

Todd, thanks for the correction, the ID starting point on my mystery shiners and the kind words. I think you might be right on the shiners.

UncleWillie, Craigslist, while often incredibly frustrating, can also be a great way to get large tanks for cheap. I got this one and the stand, delivered, for $250.

There are definitely some still spots around the wood, especially at the end of the tank opposite the canister and powerhead. Maybe I'll throw some floating plants on that end and see if the killies are happy there.

Nice tank. I look forward to seeing some updated pictures. I really like the way the 2nd picture looks, and it will be better after the plants grow in a bit more. Your tank as a whole is very similiar in looks (almost scary how similiar) to how my 180 looks, only I was having plant issues and refuse to post pictures until they grow in a little more (I will them to grow everyday).


Andy

Thanks Andy! What's been interesting to me with the plants is that the val dropped most of its leaves after being moved to this tank. It may have been a lighting issue because there's definitely a lot less but otherwise, it went from one unheated tank to another, from rich substrate to rich substrate. The only other thing I think that would have been a factor is the increased current but half of the plants were from a tank that had a big powerhead going too. However, they seem to be coming back now so I'm not too worried about it. Two pieces of the wood have sunk so I need to rearrange the wood again. I did end up adding all of the fish I had been thinking about adding and other than two of the killifish disappearing and one loach getting sucked into the powerhead and lodged so firmly that I needed pliers to pull it out, it's doing very well. We'll see what the next couple of week bring.

I've been feeding this tank pretty heavily on frozen goodies because I had some darters that were skinnier than I liked. They're finally putting on weight and the cories also seem to really appreciate the food: They were spawning last night.