Plants???

[Subtle Aquatics]

Hey guys, I'm setting up a tank for the hongsloi, and I was curious if anyone knew of any plants that are local or in there specific bio tope, or region that I can get to put in the tank, aside from a riparium set up. I'm building a custom manzanita piece for the centerpiece, which isn't to hard. And I'm using an up aqua spawn cave inside this center piece. But would like to know of any greenery I can put in it.

Thank guys.

 

[Subtle Aquatics]

I've been able to find this much out, from the rio meta river in Columbia plant list.

Water plants: Cabomba species (Cabomba); Echinodorus tenellus and E. horizontalis (Amazon sword plants);Limnophila indica; Sagittaria platyphylla; Althernanthera reineckii; Nymphaea lotus; and floating plants:Eichhornia crassipes and Limnobium laevigatum.

 

[rr16]

I can't remember if there are any plants in the video, but I van Mikoji has some footage of A. hongsloi in the wild in one of his videos on youtube.

Here's the link

 

[rr16]

I love this video. There are even some small shrimp in it - something distinctly lacking in the hobby in this country when you're looking to find inverts for a SA biotope.
Oh and it turns out there are some plants in it! At least one species is given in the video.

 

[Subtle Aquatics]

Ok guys after some extensive research I found that in rio meta basin the plants consist of sagitarria platyphyllum. Echinodorus horizontal is and tenellus. Alternanthera reineckii. Water hyacinth. Amazon frogbit. And nymphaea lotus.

The fauna commonly found around the hongsloi are the mcmasteri, brown tailed pencil fish. Swegles tetras, masked or bandit cories, and ottocinclus.

 

[rr16]

By brown tailed pencil fish do you mean Nannostomus eques? If so these are great little fish. I have these with my A. barlowi and they stick to the top layer about 95% of the time. They only have small mouths but I have seen them take whole frozen bloodworm amongst much other frozen and flake food.

 

[Subtle Aquatics]

How big are yours?
Yes they are the eques. It took me quite a while to find some reputable information on this biotope but finally I found it haha.

 

[rr16]

Mine are only about 1 - 1.5 inches. They're tank bred, or so I was told in the store, so not sure if they'll attain a bigger size or not. They have grown a bit since I got them though. Mine started off trying to be a biotope but that didn't stay the case really!

 

[Subtle Aquatics]

My male disappeared. Now the hunt for another male begins. The guy at the Lfs said that all they had were females. But I caught a glimpse of one that had a black dot, but a shimmer of red in the dot. I'm hopeful it's a male as all there fish were still juvies at 1.3"