4 gallon aquascape with Dario

What do you do when you have too many male Dario "black tigers". You build more small aquascapes and give it away to people who are willing to offer it live foods.

This is a 10 inch / 25 cm cube, 4+ gallon / 16 liters. The smallest footprint I'm comfortable with to house a single Dario.

Hardscape: Piece of spiderwood, ADA La Plata sand and ADA Yamaya stones.

Plants: java fern "mini", crypt wendtii "tropica", bucephalandra....brownie ghost and theia green I think. Couple of different floaters. Added some mulm and dry leaves from other tanks.

Technology; only an aquaclear hob filter; no lights, no heater (obviously).

Animals: 1 blue ramshorn snail and 1 male Dario, which is visible in the bottom center facing the camera. Below the image I added another cropped image to point out the Dario. Still to be added: a handful of neocaridina "snowballs".

 

Love it! I'm going to end up getting one of these small tanks and copy your style I think haha.

 

That sassy little face is adorable!

 

What do you do when you have too many male Dario "black tigers". You build more small aquascapes and give it away to people who are willing to offer it live foods.

This is a 10 inch / 25 cm cube, 4+ gallon / 16 liters. The smallest footprint I'm comfortable with to house a single Dario.

Hardscape: Piece of spiderwood, ADA La Plata sand and ADA Yamaya stones.

Plants: java fern "mini", crypt wendtii "tropica", bucephalandra....brownie ghost and theia green I think. Couple of different floaters. Added some mulm and dry leaves from other tanks.

Technology; only an aquaclear hob filter; no lights, no heater (obviously).

Animals: 1 blue ramshorn snail and 1 male Dario, which is visible in the bottom center facing the camera. Below the image I added another cropped image to point out the Dario. Still to be added: a handful of neocaridina "snowballs".

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tank looks great! is the tank lit by natural sunlight?

 

I just saw the Black Tigers at my lfs last weekend. Looking for a female for my lone male in the 9g. Will the tigers and regular mate? Or is like everything else with different species. I love my Badis'. Your tanks are always great.

 

I just saw the Black Tigers at my lfs last weekend. Looking for a female for my lone male in the 9g. Will the tigers and regular mate? Or is like everything else with different species. I love my Badis'. Your tanks are always great.

They only mate during the summer in my non-heated tanks. Sexing is more difficult than with scarlets. They also get a bit bigger than scarlets. Initially, I didn't know I had a female until I saw fry popping up. One of the best days of my life .

I believe (from other reports) and can confirm from my own experience, temperature seems to affect the sex ratio, and I end up with many more males than females. They've never bred outside the summer season in my tanks yet.

It is a small tank, and there is no room for social behavior, which even these "solitary" Dario's tend to display in my larger tanks to their own extent, so that bugs me, but all the naturalness in temp, light, "decor", and release of live foods, is perfect for them.

tank looks great! is the tank lit by natural sunlight?

Yes, correct. Given the current season, an aquarium light is really not needed for this tank with these plants. When winter comes, one could add a simple, cheap LED light, just to enjoy the tank. I don't mind if these plants stopped growing. Although, these buces flower under water (without any effect by the way), which is really nice.

 

OK, this spot was a little too sunny for a tank this small. So I moved it to the basement, to accompany its twin... Both tanks house 1 male Dario. The cube is 10 inch / 25 cm. I prefer this setup over 2 males in a tank equivalent to the 2 cube's combined.




There is room for a third tank in between .



There he is.



Natural foods seem limited in these small cubes, so I feed them vinegar eels besides artemia nauplii. Vinegar eels are not the most nutritious, but just so easy to manage in 2 bottles of vinegar and a slice of apple.