Nasty archers, and sad neritinae

Well, thanks to all who've been visiting and watching, I'm glad the videos have been appreciated.

Here's another one, fresh of editing. This time it appears to be more about archers' aggressiveness than shooting ability. The reason is due to the choice of prey (crickets) and the tank setup. Crickets don't move much compared to flies, and as a result they slowly move out of their little box, when entering the tank. Therefore, the archers spend quite some time waiting below the single entry spot, and therefore they fight, with the main character clearly bullying the others. With flies it's more of a hunting experience around the tank, which avoids competition within the same spot. Also, many flies are usually available at the same time, unlike crickets, and therefore the archers spread around the tank.

I also managed to shoot some decent pics of the main male Rainbow:

What appears to have problems, instead, is the snails: after coming back from some travels, resulting in about 2-3 weeks without water changes, I saw some algae on the glass, but I assumed it was the result of the recent addition of fertilizers. Only a few days ago I realized that the snails were not eating at all, and actually they were nowhere to be seen. The only one visible one remained in the same spot, on the sand, for some three days, before I decided to check it out, and realized it was dead. I had then to physically search for the others, which were hidden in the most secluded corners of the mangrove roots, not moving. I took them all out, put them on the sand at the tank front and watched them quicly move away, and hide again. Only one spent some time on the glass, eating a bit before disappearing. What's happening? To my knowledge, no chemicals have entered the tank, except the fertilizers I've put in myself. There may be an issue with NO3 and NO2, though: the Tetra stripes say everything is fine, the liquid tests show too low values of nitrates (lower than tap water), and apparently 0.05 mg/l of NO2.

Mangrove status

About ten days ago I moved the "best" mangrove in a more shadowed area, hoping that, if the black spots on the leafs are caused by excess of light, this will reduce the impact. At the same time, I set into the ground the only root, which shows today a marked increase in diameter. I added a fragment of fertilizer tablet in the vicinity. The gem with the next two leaves is on its way, so let's hope for the best.

The second best, still without leaves after the last couple fell, is however still alive, as I can see from the roots, which have clearly taken grip in the ground, and from the tip, which, covered with the last dead cuticule, shows inside a tiny gem.

The "bad" mangrove, showing no sign of life whatsoever, and planted in the substrate as a last chance a number of weeks ago: today I dared to move the sand a bit to check the roots, and they are alive!

What is a good mangrove?

Two of the mangrove seedlings I collected in Brazil, in two different locations, are doing acceptably well. The first one exhibits a lovely crown of 6 leaves, grown very close to each other vertically, which I believe has to do with the light (too much? The plant is indeed very close to my 2x38 W 6500 K. Or too less?). The roots, however, appear underdeveloped in comparison, with one extremely long branch only, whereas all the others are likely dead. Just today I saw a new one appearing, though!.

Nice crown of leaves. Very close to each other, though, and I don't know if this implies light problems. The bad news are, the oldest starts showing black spots (clearly visible on the lowest, to the left).

 

Strange root development? One more branche spotted today!

The second one shows a great crown of roots (but only a couple are really alive), which I recently decided to have touch ground, in the hope this would help developing the leaves: these had started growing quite well initially (as I recall, a first pair, that fell soon, then a second pair, which went down even sooner, and a third, which lasted nothing), but at the moment are as below. Note that the new gem is once again darkening.

One can count at least three accrretion rings, corresponding to as many couples of leaves. Notice the distance between them, showing that the leaves came down faster and faster. The new gem is already blackening.

Video session!

An archer show in my tank, but also a show of the great opportunism of the rainbows, who are able to run to the fallen fly much faster than the archers.

 

Less action here, but I love the performance of one of the rainbow females, at 01:37, darting from the depths and able to dead-stop before hitting the surface; the following slow-motion repetition shows some details of her ability of using the fins. Enjoy! 

Photo session

It's been quite some time, so today, taking "advantage" of the pictures I had to take to document the swollen gills of one of the rainbows, and of some flies I haver just bought for the archers, I've decided it was time to take some shots. Sure enough, a movie is the only way to do them the right credit (and I will hopefully do that in the next few days, so stay tuned!), but that's what I got today.

Aiming.... But the rainbows are ready to get the prey!

Swollen gill

One of the rainbow females has had this for quite some time. I thought it was due to the little spike of nitrites I discovered weeks ago, and hoped it would heel after NO₂ would disappear, but I'm afraid it's actually worsening. Otherwise she's doing fine, and today even manage to jump first after the archers shot a fly, and got it!She kept it in her mouth for minutes, chewing it but being unable to swallow it (fortunately!), until one of the males took over when she spitted it for a second.

They're back!

Ther archers are finally back, out of their hideouts. The trick was, apparently, to give them some fun, i.e. some CRICKETS! I got some huge ones a few days ago, they're long gone, but since then the archers never went to hide again, and stay alert all the time for some more to come. Great.

The "good" mangrove has now 6 (!) leaves, and still only small roots, whereas the "bad" ones have no leaves at all (or better, they lost all of them), and a great root development. Unbelievable.

The Vallis are not doing very well, they keep on the yellowish side, even the new leaves now, but they do keep generating new runners, which is, I believe, a good sign. I only set a few tablets of Tetra Plant Crypto fertilizer at the end of July, when I settled the plants into my bare sand substrate, and then randomly provided small amounts of liquid fertilizer. I'll try to go for more. Pity the Fe test I bought just doesn't read anything else than 0 mg/l...

Eheim, what's wrong with you???

Yesterday I decided it was time to check & clean the filter, especially in view of next 3-week trip...

As usual, detaching the tap from the head was an impossible mission: it just stays stuck in there, no matter how much one pushes that damn red button. I eventually opened the filter head without removing the tap, causing the expected flood in the cabinet. Later on I noticed that forcing the flow lever towards the OFF position may do the trick. To the next time....

Apart from the usual brownish mud, the filter was actually quite clean.

Again, problems afterwards: no matter how full the tank was, priming was simply impossible. I scratched my fingers to bleeding point in the attempt to restart, to no avail. The impression was that simply no water at all was sucked in. Spent the evening with that, and eventually gave up, leaving also the inline heater off, inevitably.

Today morning, thanks to the usual good advice of the folks in the TFF, I "solved" the problem the old way, sucking in the water from the pipe's end.

Now, Eheim, for the cost you charge your filters, a bit better engineering would be appreciated!

Nitrites still at 0 mg/l

New water test this afternoon, bad guys still at 0 mg/l. Normal amount of food provided. I'll check the water tomorrow morning again. The main problem is, I'm leaving on saturday for an entire week, and if the bacteria are gone, I'm in trouble. Best solution I could think of, no food for the entire next week. Which is surely OK for the archers, but the small ones?

Big mistake

Two days ago, while fiddling with the filter in order to change the water flow, in an attempt to understand what better fits the archers, I forgot the filter off. It stayed like that the whole night, and I found out in the morning, yesterday. The risk is, of course, that the aerobic bacteria in there all died. A quick water test in the afternoon showed ammonia still lower than detectable (<0.01 mg/l), but nitrites between 0.1 and 0.2 mg/l. Bad. Quick water change, more than 50%. No food.

Water test today, NO2 at 0 mg/l both in the morning and in the afternoon. Tiny amount of food provided.

OOOPS!

Wait a minute... I measured the water parameters, and it just CANNOT be that NO3 are down to less than 10 mg/l: the tap water contains almost 40! Then I recalled that the reagents of the test for NO2 and NO3 do have an expiration date: and that passed LONG AGO! Fortunately I have another package I bought time ago. Results: around 75 mg/l! Good enough that the bacteria are doing their dirty job, and NO2 are still at 0 mg/l.

The archers don't come out!

So, yep, after more than two weeks from the arrival of the rainbows and the Vallis, the archers are stubbornly hidden in the darkest corners of the mangroves: they keep staying there all day, even at feeding time, the only apparent exception being when the lights go off, when two (!) of them shyily come out to slowly munch the food the rainbows can't get, 'cause it floats or it's too big. The thing is, the two species do share pretty much the same hideouts, e.g. at night, and I never saw any evidence of direct distress caused by the rainbows to the archers: they simply peacefully pass in front of each other, like all well-educated fish should do. Still, this behaviour clearly started about 48 h after the Boesemani went in; the only other changes occurred during that time was that the water was slowly turned into fresh, in order to give an easier startup to the Vallis. I have also reduced the exposure to light, covering parts of the tank with black sheets of plastic, but to no avail. Another situation when the archers finally appear more confident, and indeed jump out of their hideout and go swimming below the filter output, is when I start changing the water, and the water level goes down: they always reacted in this way, and apparently still do, and I have no clue why.

The rainbows instead are just happy: the males are starting to get more colour, two of them in particular feature a stable orange rear half. Today morning I was at home, and before the lights turned on one of them was actually the long-term expected blue & red! I therefore took a few quick shots, shown below.

The striking colours shown before the lights went on today morning. Not bad for such a young specimen.

The same male with a female.

The two most forward males.

 

Updated layout

Here's a picture of the new aquascape, of which I'm not yet very satisfied. It just... doesn't look natural. I have added more hanging leaves, and more I have yet to add. The Vallis is experiencing the expected removal trauma, let's see if I can make it just LIVE.Three mangrove roots left.

The rainbows are doing quite fine, especially one of the females appears very confident. The archers, on the contrary, are shier than ever: they're spending the entire day hidden, and freak out as soon as I get close, histerically jumping or trying to go through the glass. They haven't really eaten in the past couple of days. I noticed that switching off the light will make them come out and eat a bit, though. I do have to decrease the amount of light, at least in certain parts of the tank; but now with all those plants around it's a bit complicate. Or else, I haved no idea what to do: I expected that the new neighbours would make the archers come out a bit more, but so far the opposite is happening.

First pics

Plants are set in, and I have the impression that some alage are starting to grow on them. I managed to anchor most of the stems using pieces of lead weights, but I had not enough, so a couple of them keep jumping up to the surface.

The rainbows are doing fine, although still quite scared: the first day it was impossible to even spot the males, whereas at least two of the three females were brave enough to have quick looks out of the protection of the roots. They eventually got most of the food: natural selection at work.... Today, day 3, they all jumped out as soon as food became available... They also appear to get along quite well with the archers....

Lost track of another glassfish. Yesterday it was impossible to see them around, today at least they were carefully swimming in the planted corner...

A couple of pics, nothing special, just eager to put the first shots in:

Beginning of a long companionship?

Big changes!

Today I have received the Vallisneria americana/asiatica. Three bunches, for a total of 10 plants, in good apparent conditions. The plan was to make a little forest in one of the corners, and finally release the remaining glassfishes, prisoners since about 7 months, and hoping that this will save them from the archers attentions.

One problem, still unresolved, is a good way of planting the Vallis: the crown should remain out of the substrate, and no sand allowed among the leaves. That is already quite hard to achieve, but after you trim a bit the roots to prepare the plant, there is no way the stem will remain in place into the substrate. So, at the moment I'm using some lead weights, but I don't have enough, and I'm not even sure the lead won't interfere with the water...

Glassfishes released, one of them panicked or so, hectically swimming vertically, like in convulsions, and inevitably attracted the attention of the closest archer: lifetime out of the nursery, about 30 sec. Not good. After that, the remaining ones (4) behaved, and to my amazement nothing happened: the archers somehow do look at them, but let them go. Better feed them regularly, though...

The other big news is, expecting the glassfishes not to last long (I still don't know how they will possibly catch food in such a large tank), I got 6 lovely Melanotenia boesemani. Beautiful. And I hope, once settled, they will take the archers out from their mangrove hideout. At the moment, it still looks like an empty tank: everybody hidden among the roots. But that's the idea of mangroves, I guess...

Back from holidays! What's left?

I'm back from a 3-week holiday on the canadian Rockies. Gorgeous.

I had a (paid) guy come twice to feed live mosquito larvae to the Parambassis Ranga, but it was probably not enough: two casualties. The truth is, these guys barely eat, and surely they don't grow. As Neale Monks mentioned, it may be they're not Ranga, but rather a smaller species, or I do have a problem with them: 5 left of the original 10, bought in January. Next week I'll order the Vallisneria, and make a little forested corner, release the Parambassis from the nursery and see what happens: more than of being eaten by the archers, what I fear is that they will never find the food, once free  in the tank.

The archers are doing just fine: they've been fed with an auto-feeder, a small pinch of mixed dried food (Tetra Cichlid Sticks, Hikari Cichlid Gold, and a mix of tiny dried shrimp and crustaceans) per day. Two days ago I bought a box of flies: man, that was fun! They were happy like kids at Disneyworld! And hierarchy kicked in again, in that situation, in spite of the large number of flies available to everybody. It was interesting to see, however, that the two low-profiles fishes did make their "voice" (!) heard, a couple of times: flies are simply too yummy to give up!

On the mangrove side, two old ones I had are slowly increasing their roots. Unfortunately the one with the best root system (about 6-7 cm) is loosing all the leaves (had 4), which are blackening one by one. Only one is left.

The new ones aren't doing really well above water (totally dried up and black), and below only a tiny appearance of root is visible, which still gives some hope.

The best pair of leaves doesn't match with the best rooting system: for some reasons I have seedles with nice roots and bad leafs, and others showing the opposite.

This one has lost three leaves in the past couple of weeks. They started blackening, and then died. The last one left today had the first balck spot, too, shown below. What is it? I showered all of them yesterday with demineralized water, to remove any (invisible, anyway) salt that may have been extruded in the past couple of weeks.

The root systems of some of the mangrove propagulae: one is showing a beautiful, amazing growth of prop roots, whereas the other is rather faster in developing taproots. Why this difference??

The one with the best root system lost most of the leaves, and the one left today started showing signs of the same problem: turning black, and falling.

Poor Ranga!

While away, another Glassfish departed, again for no apparent reason. If I can see a problem among them, it's just that they didn't grow a bit since I got them, back in January. Therefore, they are still in the hatchery, to avoid the archers' attentions. I wonder if this could somehow prevent their growth. But until I get some new plants, I cannot risk to release them into the Big World. Also, they still accept only very lively food (mosquito larvae; live bloodworms are ignored), which limits a lot the possibility of feeding them. For the holidays (almost 3 weeks away) I'll have someone to come and feed them a bit.

Rio!

The lymphocystis, or whatever that was, disappeared in two days, and the fish appears to be fine. It could still have been white spot, and in that case probably the parasite has simply left the first host, and moved on to the second stage of its life, spreading into the tank and looking for new hosts (AARGH!). Therefore I had raised the salinity and the temperature (from 25 C to 28 C). About ten days have passed, so T goes now back to 25 C.

No plants left under water, and only two struggling above the water. I decided to give it a second try, this time with Vallisneria americana. Problem will be, the water is already brackish, although very low-end: with the Hornwort I had gradually increased the salinity from 0 to 1.002 in months, whereas now I don't want to pull it down again; let's see how this supposedly very hardy plant will do.

I'm presently in Rio again, lucky harvest this time: half an hour on the beach in Copacabana during rough sea, and I collected more mangrove seedlings than I can really handle!

In the weekend I'll go to a new estuary I found some 50 km south of town, with a nice manguezal. Locals say it might not be a good idea trying to enter those waters, but let's see. I got the diving case for the little camera, so hopefully I can get some nice shots (since I don't need more seeds!!).

Lymphocystis

The diagnosis is not confirmed yet, but the probability of it being whitespot is quite low, given the salinity of the water (it's now finally SG 1.002 @ 25 C). I have just discovered it, and tomorrow morning I'll look at it again, hopefully being able to exclude the whitespot scenario. Apparently, not much can be done against lymphocystis, apart from letting it develop, and hopefully die out, but it is a virus, and in the small confined environment of the nursery where the glassfishes are kept, it may spread... :-(

Meanwhile, I got probably the best picture of these little guys:

Status

I never really got rid of the diatoms, and for some reason (I removed for some days the aerial vegetation cover, therefore giving more light?) they're somehow blooming again.

The other species of algae totally overcame the moss, which I removed, and are doing the same with the hornwort:

I'm adding some fertilizer, which clearly helps the plant, but the algae don't stop growing on it, and all affected needles soon rot, polluting the water.

The whole result is a quite unsightly mulm resting on the substrate, in spite of the weekly siphoning. I'm soon going to lower the water outlet from the filter from its elevated position down to the water surface level, hopefully increasing the flow and helping move the material into the filter.

One of the glassfish is gone, and the other ones do not grow by a bit. Possibly, they are smaller than before... They still eat only mosquito larvae, which attract them with their continuous movements. 

Not very happy, at the moment.

New guests

Got a couple of mangrove seeds collected in southern Brazil (Florianópolis). They are in the tank since a couple of weeks, and apparently going pretty well. Soon I'll have the problem to raise them up, following the advice of A. Calfo, in order to expose to the air the roots. I'll do it with only one of them, so I can experiment what the best practice is.

Hopefully more roots to come soon...

Mangroves around the world

A collection of pictures I took in different times and places, for those interested in these peculiar, fascinating environments:

Mangroves around the world

More (Thailand and Australia) to be added later.

Other guests

The Neritinae have layed eggs: a number of white, sesam-seed-like spots scattered in sheltered places on the decors. The water is not salty enough to make them survive, but perhaps I'll be able to witness the hatching.

The archers are doing fine, one has clearly become the Alpha guy, harrassing the others, but strictly at eating time. For the rest of the time they do hang around all together quite nicely. When the food is crickets, however, it's just impossible for the others to even get close enough to the only opening in the lid to try their luck in shooting: Alpha sits there and scares them off. And I'm too slow to get more than one cricket at a time in the tank, so last time Alpha got 4 out of 4 of them. I'll have to try some other insects, such as flies, that I can introduce in a significant number, so that the hunt will be distributed among all three archers.

The glass fishes are quietly living in the little home. I can't say they have grown a bit since I got them, but seeing them every day, it's probably hard to appreciate that.

The Java moss has almost succumbed to some hair/thread algae. The Hornwort, too, keeps getting covered with them. The amazing thing is that the plants is the only spot of the entire tank where I get algae: everything else is clear! With the exception of the diatoms, that keep affecting the substrate only, now: the Nerites are doing a great job, and their breeding is evidence of the amount of food they have around.

OK, time for the weekly water change...

Hydra!

I have just spotted some 10 or so of them on the back glass and on the decor. Size: a few mm max. They are also surrounded by a number of tiniest creatures, bouncing freely around. Copepods?

As much as I can, I'd really love to keep them. : they may well be the only ever invertebrate I can put in such a tank... 

Tiny hunters

It's great watching these tiny creatures hunting through their small home. I finally got some really fresh mosquito larvae, meaning they move a lot, and the glassfish are enjoying them so much, although some are almost too big for their mouths. I'm afraid I'll have to keep them away from the archers for quite some time...

The diatoms have now been reduced down to an acceptable level, essentially dirtying a bit just the substrate. The nerites have surely helped, but surely other factors have intervened. I believe the problem was not silicates in the tap water, otherwise I'd have never solved it (which I didn't, not entirely, not yet); rather, in the sand, or likely the tank was not fully cycled. 

Shoot & Jump

Among my mangroves



Yawn!!



Diatoms everywhere...

The diatoms are blooming at high rate now. In 48 hours after every water change, they're again covering a large part of the bottom, and some spots on the glass.

It's strange how almost everybody on the net says diatoms need low light, and recommend to increase the lighting period to control them; but my experience here is that they grow almost only under direct light: all spots under the roots are clear. So, I keep my lighting period at 8 h/day.

The main problem for me is that they're heavily affecting the plants: both Ceratophyllum and Java moss are badly covered with this brown mold, and clearly appear to suffer from that. Particularly the moss, all its new "stems" grow vertically towards the light, but without "leaves", since they get covered by the diatoms.

I can't find in town a test for silicates, which are usually considered one of the sources of diatom blooms, so I'll have to order online. For the time being, I got 8 Neritina Natalensis, and they got at work immediately. 50% water change yesterday, and plant pruning; let's see what happens.

I'm considering adding some fertilizer to try and help the plants...

Here they are!

Parambassis ranga!

Yesterday the Indian Glassfish arrived. Geez, they're ssssmall!! About two cm total length. I believe they'd comfortably fit in the archers' mouth, so I bought a hatchery to keep them separated, as long as I can. I also bought an Amano shrimp, with not much hope to see it surviving: just wanted to be sure that this option is a no go, with the archers around. Unfortunately, after setting them in yesterday evening, being at work today I couldn't witness how exactly the archers welcomed the new guy. Sure enough, I cannot find him this evening in the tank... :-(

Took some decent pictures, but they need postprocessing before being posted. Tomorrow, I guess.

A suicidal cricket

I'm experimenting the best ways to enter the crickets in the tank.

Today the first attempt of recording a movie simply didn't succeed due to the speed of fishes in knocking down the insect. The second trial actually featured a suicidal cricket, which was reasonably tired of my way of treating its kind, and decided to accelerate its own demise:

Feeding experience

Sorted by achieved success so far:

1. Shrimp By far the best choice. The archers just get totally crazy with shrimp. The attempt of sticking tiny pieces to the glass to have the fishes spit was a great success, at least with two of them. The Shy as usual has no idea of how to catch his own food, so he stays lower and grabs the leftovers. If any...

2. Bloodworms Same kind of reaction to this delicacy: frenzily going at it.

3. Multifit natural food for water turtles is a mix of tiny dried shrimp and crustaceans. So far the only readily accepted dry food. They go for it, but not with particular enthusiasm... I counted on this for my one-week Xmas vacation, but I'll surely have to find something more suitable. It makes them shit white! :-)

4. Tetra Cichlid Sticks Hardly seen as food. These sticks are just too big. It helps breaking them in small pieces, but still they won't be eaten for hours. When the fishes realize that nothing else is coming, and the sticks are eventually soft enough, then they are tasted and eventually enjoyed.

5. Hikari Cichlid Gold strongly recommended by others having the same fishes. Totally ignored so far. But again, I should give them probably a second chance, and keep them in the water for a few hours.

In another category stand crickets. I tried to buy them as small as possible, they're max 1 cm, and yet big enough for my juvenile T. Microlepis. A big success in terms of spitting behaviour, when I manage to introduce one in the tank and have it grab and stay among the aerial leaves: then the hunt is open, and it's better than going to cinema! As soon as I can I'll post some videos. I still have to figure out an easy way to introduce the critters and have them reach the leaves, since that the tank is covered.
The backside is, these creatures smell quite a bit, they do need some care (I managed to loose already 3-4 out of 20 in two days, not sure what's missing...), and frankly handling them is not far from having a little cockroach between your fingers, so all in all not the most pleasant feeling I ever had. Geez, I'm getting old....

My first algae

Just back from Xmas holidays, not sure the feeder worked fully all time. It was filled with dry little shrimp. The fishes appeared very happy to be treated with a cube of bloodworms.

Found also my first algae. They should be diatoms, in a few spots on the glass and the sand. I cleaned the glass and vacuumed the sand. As soon as I can, I'll get the planned Neritinae.

Chemistry appears in order, pH around 7.8. Changed 60 l of water, and added the usual 3.5 g/l of marine salts. With next addition I should reach SG 1.001, which is halfway to final density. After water change, NO3 at 50 mg/l.

The aerial plants are suffering from lack of ventilation, so far the two smallest Tillandsiae didn't make it. Also, the largest orchid lost all its flower stems, which were growing steadily before moving it into the tank. I've also removed the mangrove seedlings, not in good conditions from the time of collection in Brazil: they got covered with mold, and then started rotting. Hopefully I'll get better specimens next time, perhaps in a few weeks.

Mold on the mangroves propagulae and (wooden!) supporting sticks.