85l Apistogramma tank

[Stefaan]

http://www.buyfruitflies.com/ try here

Thank you,
it's only a little bit too far from belgium, so I'll have to find some shop closer.
I also just read that these fish (Carnegiella) like to eat ants too.
Is this true? And won't it give any problems because ants have some toxics inside?

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

it's only a little bit too far from Belgium, so I'll have to find some shop closer.

Fruit flies (Drosophila) are very popular with Reptile/Amphibian keepers, so a culture should be available fairly easily in Europe. Mail order is fine for Fruit flies.

I'm not sure about Ants, my suspicion would be that they are fine, poison dart frogs etc get their toxins from their diet, so it may well be that Hatchets can assimilate/accumulate any toxins.

cheers Darrel

cheers Darrel

 

[Stefaan]

Little update

I've bought some fishes 4 weeks ago
This is what I bought:
3x apistogramma viejita red (probably the macmasteri as allways)
6x carnegiëlla strigata
8x paracheirodon axelrodi (my little sister really wanted these guys)

I was actually going to buy apistogramma agassizi, but the lfs had only a few of them left, and they didn't look amazing.
So I took the most beautiful apistogramma species they had
1 apisto female was not doing good 2 weeks ago, so I put her in another tank with only some shrimps in it.
It looked like she was doing mucht beter, and one week ago she died.
I have no idea why that could be.
The other fish are doing great, the hatchetfish love the ants I catch for them, the cardinal tetra's are having the time of their life, and the apistogrammas are growing amazingly and look really healthy.

Some pictures:
aquarium

a hatchetfish

the cardinals

And ofcourse some Apisto pictures
Male 3 weeks ago

Male now

female

 

[Stefaan]

Hi guys,
I have a pretty urgent question.
My apistogramma male doesn't look really good.
He has lost a bit of his colors, has his mouth open all the time, and is pretty slow.
I can't see anything else, so he certainly hasn't got anything external.
Hiding allmost all the time. When feeding, he eats a little bit when it passes his mouth, but I know he is not feeling good.
All my other fishes are doing great, no problems at all last weeks.
Have been feeding him live black and red mosquito larvae, dried food, frozen cyclops and daphnia.
What could be the cause? I am afraid that if I don't do anything I will lose him within the week.
Am doing 15% water changes every day now...

 

[Benjamin Goh]

Internal parasites perhaps? Maybe could try deworming it?

 

[Josh]

What a stunning tank

 

[Stefaan]

Thanks
Really nice to hear that!
Though I am not at all satisfied about the left side of the tank.

The male apisto is doing right thesame as yesturday btw.
I have cleaned the filter partially, and put some activated carbon in there,
cause it is possible that there are too many heavy metals or too much other pollution in the water (I give profito every week) And maybe I gave too much what 'poisoned' him. Another possibility is that there was too much pollution in the rainwater. Allways filtered it over activated carbon, but maybe that wasn't enough.
Could be worms too, but whould he go bad so fast from some worms?
I would expect that he first turns skinny if he had worms.

Well, I can only hope that he gets better soon, cause I really love that fish.

 

[Stefaan]

The fish died yesturday night.
Still no idea what the problem was. He had no external parasites, mouth was clean, and everything looked ok.
So I think he didn't even have internal parasites either.
Should I buy a new guy, or should I wait and try to find the cause of his death?
All the other fish are totally healthy.

 

[Stefaan]

Well, no other fish died at all, except 1 hatchetfish that jumped out of the tank while the feeding cap was open.
Stupid, but now I'll never forget to close it anymore

So now I bought a new male (I was really happy they still had the species)
3 extra hatchets and 7 extra tetra's.
So now I have a couple apistogramma's, 15 tetra's, 8 hatchets and 2 ancistrus dolichopterus.
They are doing great, especially the tetra's look better with a bigger group.

Oh, and I also modifyed my light.
I now have only leds (red+white) with a dimmer.
I can make a program for the dimmer to simulate sunrise and sunset.
The evolution looks like this:

In the picture you can see the colour evolution in the morning,
but ofcourse it starts from totally dark and lights up during an hour.
The numbers above the picture are the % of red/white
I've got this for a week now, and the plants are growing like crazy

 

[Linus_Cello]

Who makes the led lighting unit you use?

 

[Stefaan]

I made it myself for the biggest part.
I bought some waterproof led strips (2m red+ 3.5m white)
put them on u-profiles on an aluminium construction like this:

And placed some fans on the cap for cooling and getting the humid air out.

Some guy made me a dimmer for leds,
and that's how I control the red leds, the white leds and the fans

 

[Stefaan]

how the tank looks right now:

 

[prototop]

Very nice tank!

Any chance you could show or explain how your dimmer is hooked up to the LEDs? Gonna try making my own LEDs dimmable.

 

[Stefaan]

Well, this is the dimmer:
http://www.aquaforum.nl/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=print_topic;f=41;t=000577
if you scroll down a bit, you will see pictures of it. it is selfmade by someone on another forum.

The leds are actually normal waterproof led strips glued to some aluminium profiles.
You find them everywhere on the internet. smd 5050 leds, 60 led/m
So I just soldered some wires to the strips, and connected them to the dimmer.

It might be more difficult for you if you have some ready to use led lighting units.

 

[prototop]

Have two ready-to-use that i'm going to switch out with DIYs, same as my third lamp. So might as well figure out how to dim them while i'm at it.

Thanks for the info.