Bought some new plants today.

Just bought some new plants for the right part of the aquarium. Ceratopteris thalictroides and
Pogostemon Helferi. The first should grow and fill the right back of the tank. The second is a somewhat hyped foreground plant from Thailand.

I'll just have to wait and see how these do in my aquarium, too early to tell now.

Oh, and I got these plants here:

my aquarium

my aquarium
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Tank is a juwel rekord 60 which is 11 years old now. Over the years it's accumulated a few scratches. I did a total rebuilt about a month ago. Still a bit sorry I didn't go for a sand bottom instead of gravel.

I'm not entirely happy with it yet, the Hygrophila polysperma in the front right requires almost constant pruning and I want something long but not massive for the back right. Was thinking valisneria but somehow I've never had much success with these.

I came home today and found the shrimp swarming all throughout the tank. Normally they don't swim that much and spend a lot of time foraging. So I popped in some food, sera sinking wafers.

Pretty good stuff really. When you have a lot of shrimp like I do just break one of these in four and an hour later it's all gone.


One of the fun things to watch is what happens when the shrimp smell the food, they will litteraly walk over each other to get to it. It's also not unusual to see two or three shrimp do a tug-of-war over a small scrap.

Nano and pico aquarium fascination

Since the recent overhaul of my Juwel 60-ish liter aquarium I've once again become fascinated by the idea of a second aquarium. Unfortunately I do not have the room for a second full size tank and even finding a spot for a small extra tank will be a challenge.

Recently the nano and even pico aquarium has gained a lot of popularity. There's an ample supply of 10 and 20 liter setups two of which have caught my attention.

Aquael Shrimp Set 20

Superfish Aqua-Qubie 25

Both are roughly similar in dimensions, both feature a tiny filter and heater. The Aquael has an 11 watt PL light which is typical for tanks in this class, the superfish is one of the first that features a LED light of about 3 watts power consumption.

Of course there's also plenty of more conventional rectangular aquariums in the 25 liter class.

Then there's another class, the pico aquarium. Slobodan Lazarevic is a master of the subject as you can see here:

A dream in just 2 liters!

There's various other things of course like a pickle jar.

Practical fishkeeping (lovely magazine) has some good information on planting a small tank.

Boraras  and Trigonostigma in the small shrimp tank

Recently I did a big tank overhaul. Once that had finished and settled I started looking for some new tank mates for my 54 liter tank. It's planted and features an anubias covered piece of wood as it's centerpiece. The tank was inhabited at that time by 3 Boraras brigittae, a lonely golden tetra and a large number of shrimp. It's filtered by the standard juwel filter setup.

I started looking for some more brigittae to bring the school back to a decent size again. Bit of research showed me there's a few species that are largely similar.

Boraras brigittae

Boraras brigittae - Mosquito Rasbora by j_wijnands, on Flickr


Boraras merah



These are Indonesian and largely similar.

A bit further up in south east Asia we find Boraras Maculatus. Some source list this as Mainland only especially the Malay peninsula but other sources claim it's also found in Sumatra.


Boraras maculatus by Chantal Wagner, on Flickr
http://www.fishbase.org/summary/Boraras-maculatus.html

Further to the west still in Thailand and Vietnam there's Boraras urophthalmoides


Boraras urophthalmoides by swordw, on Flickr

Now the latter I've never seen in shops here in the Netherlands but the first three are available but not all that common. These fish are also mislabled extremely often!

All of these species have a few things in common first and most apparant is of course their size. These fish are tiny! A hefty adult female could measure a whopping 22mm, literature lists 25mm as maximum. They're also found in somewhat similar conditions, heavy planted streams in the forest. Lighting is dim and there's loads of leaf litter and other debris on the bottom.

Once my tank stabilised I bought a school of 10 merah because I just could not get any Brigittae within a 50km radius of where I live. Followed the standard introduction technique and to my intense relieve the merah immediately hooked up with the remaining brigittae.
Over the first week I've lost 2 of the 10 to unknown causes. With a good shrimp population dead fish just disappear.
They seemed to do well, the school falling apart in 3 groups when hunting for food but immediately hooking up again if they thought there was any danger. Seeing these little guys drift just below the surface waiting for any insects is great fun, they really seem to think they're jaws!
One of the male merah has developed a strange fixation with the left wall of the tank, it's constantly fighting it's own reflection. Two others have joined up with a brigittae and can often be seen hunting in the dense population on the edges of the tank.

Things really perked up after I introduced a dose of peat to my filter. As the water coloured the fish perked up. They're now displaying full colours all the time, not just at meal times and some are now making overtures to the females of the group.

A happy brigittae especially can be really quite colourful as you can see



Additionally I got 6 rasbora Hengeli or Trigonostigma hengeli as they're known since 1999. Most people will know this as a small fish but compared to the boraras species it's positively huge!

My store had a mix of adult females and somewhat younger males. The smallest of which is here next to a merah






The adult females are almost twice as big.

Hengeli comes also from Indonesia but a bit more towards the eastern islands. Even though they don't seem to mind the difference. It's a more active and noticeable species than their tiny tankmates but they do get along well. Old eeyore the tetra hooked up with them, is happy once again and even had a brief romantic interlude with one of the younger male hengeli

The Hengeli also seem to appreciate the addition of peat, they're now flying full colours almost all the time.

Feeding these is easy, they take the staple of Tetramin flakes easily but I do have to grind half the flakes rather fine between my fingers otherwise it's just too big for the boraras. I've also fed TetraFreshDelica Brine Shrimps. Which they take too when it's moved around by the filter but otherwise don't really care for too much. Pretty soon the weather will heat up here and I will see how they react to fresh mosquito larvae.

All of these are absolutely safe for adult shrimp, apart from an occasional attempt to steal food from a shrimp they leave each other alone. In my opinion the boraras could make a nice addition to a well planted aquascape. Do keep them in groups of at least 8 otherwise they will act skittish.