Lorenzo's Fish Tank

9/27 - Second wave of residents arrived this past week, and didn’t lose anyone during shipping or acclimation! Will post pics first then talk about them..

Current state of Monstro, ignore all the bubbles flying around the tank.. actually they seemed to help clear up the last bit of cloudiness from the tank

One of five red cherry shrimp (rcs) residing in my tank. munching on some brown algae on a tree branch

One of the smaller RCS, hiding out on the cabomba in the back

This was an interesting situation.. so I have been placing algae wafers in the tank since the otos arrived (1 on left), since I still don’t really seem to be having any algae growth yet.. well I’ve never actually sat down and watched them eat them.. they were just always gone when I came back. Today I put one in and sat down to actually WATCH what was going on.  As soon as I put the wafer in the tank, Snitch (the golden apple snail) came flying to the front of the tank and scared off the little oto that was eating on it! (You can see the poor little guy to the left.. waiting for his turn, lol!) Snitch took the whole thing and wrapped it up in his little foot and proceeded to eat from it without letting anyone else eat it.  I thought originally that he was a bully.. but finally just decided he’s a fat hungry snail that will do what it takes to stay full, lol (heaven forbid he should ever feel not bloated!)

Here’s the little oto (probably the smallest of the 6 I got) trying to get the wafer from a different side.. Snitch’s thoughts: nom nom nom

So surprise, the baby plant I lost a couple weeks ago showed up again! I was moving a couple of the didiplis diandra around and this little guy came flying out in the current.. it’s covered in a little hair algae, probably from being in the dark for so long, but hopefully being back in the front of the tank will help it out :) + (oto still waiting for the dinner he found first..)

This is one last shot of Snitch before I scooted him to the back of the tank with a chip of the wafer to keep him busy while the otos finished off what was left (which was still plenty)

Ahh.. there we go, everyone gets a portion for dinner

Happy otos

Thought I’d add Shenzi to this post as she’s been a very busy little snail this past week.  Remember that pic I took of Banzai and Shenzi together? Well Shenzi has been laying eggs all week! (o.O) You can see a few little white dots on the driftwood to the right.. those are the eggs. Funny thing is that the very first ones she laid are now resting on Snitch’s shell! Poor guy.. he’s become a walking nursery for them. She has also, so far, laid eggs on the anubias nana, and this piece of driftwood.  Supposedly this type of snail needs water near levels of an actual saltwater environment in order for the eggs to hatch.. so I was relieved at first to know that I wouldn’t have a snail infestation, but now that I think of it, I don’t think I’d mind having little Shenzi’s and Banzai’s running around the tank (would probably sell them off anyways..) so either way I’m fine with it.. although Snitch probably wasn’t too thrilled :P

All the pics for now.  Everything is going great so far.  As you may or (more likely) may not have noticed.. I mentioned earlier I had SIX otos.. this is because the lady I bought them from was kind enough to give me extras!! Unfortuantely I’m not sure if my tank can support 6 hungry little otos.. so I may try to find another home for some of them (dad’s tank, pet store.. who knows).  Speaking of supporting otos, I’m not sure most aquarists would consider this a legitimate worry, but I’m actually worried that there isn’t any algae growing in my tank.. like ANY, no little green spots or anything.  I’m thinking I might nto have enough light in the tank (1.5wpg currently) sooo I’m gonna run over to Petland later this week and replace the actinic bulb with another Corallife to increase light output..

Next residents will HOPEFULLY be the habrosus cories. Although it seems that there has been restrictions put on moving these guys for the past few months, so no one seems to have them AT ALL.  I’ve heard rumors that the restrictions may be lifted soon.  So my dilemma is whether to wait for the restrictions to be lifted, or go ahead and buy and dwarf cory called the Pygmaeus cory:

Looks similar to the Habrosus, which is fine with me, except these cories tend to school in the middle levels of the tank, while the Habrosus stay more towards the bottom.. and the middle/upper levels of my tank will already be full (w/ cardinals and swordtails).  So I could either wait for Habrosus, go ahead and get the Pygmaeus, or scrap the dwarf cory idea in general..  I could have had 6-8 dwarf cories in the tank, where regular sized ones I could probably only have 3-4 (and larger schools = happier cories). Sooo I will be pondering over this for a couple weeks and see if anything changes in the market..

All for now!