Hyperheide's tanks and fishies

Dear fish-friends,

so here I would like to introduce my tanks and projects and share some pictures and videos of my fishies and all the other little critters.

I am actually a fan of low-tech tanks. My main tank that I'll show you first is the most high-tech one here. I started it 2 years ago and it was my first community tank (before that I only had a 54 liter/14 gal tank for a few months). I actually did not expect much from it and am super happy now to see how well it turned out.


I call it Myanmar tank, since all the fish are from there. But it's still far from being a biotope tank. (Although I find the biotope approach very appealing.)

Some technical specs:
- volume: 180 liter / 47 gal
- size: 100x40x45 cm / 39x16x18 inch
- dimmable LED light (when I got this I discovered that I can still be enthusiastic about high-tech stuff... but the reason I got it is that my CPDs where freaking out when the light suddenly turned off in the evening.)
- external filter: JBL greenline
- no CO2, no heater
- substrate: fine gravel
- for the summer: DIY lid with cooling fans to keep the water cool

Stock:
- 20-30 Celestial Pearl Danios (Danio margaritatus),
- 20 Rosy loaches (Yunnanilus sp. rosy),
- Golden/Tangerine Tiger shrimps,
- various snails.

Maintenance:
- water change of 40% every other week with 1/3 RO or rain water and 2/3 hard tap water
- fertilization: I add liquid fertilizer when changing the water, and used fertilizer balls occasionally
- I feed the fish almost every day and sometimes even twice. I consider this also to be a part of the maintenance, since it indirectly adds nutrients to the plants. Caring for the fish is in fact the most time consuming part. During the summer, I tried to catch live food for them and I also made it a habit to buy live tubifex for them every two or three weeks.
- almost no cleaning: I don't use a siphon or anything like that. The shrimps are keeping the top of the gravel clean. I scrap the front glass when doing water changes (so every other week)
- I don't test the water anymore.

I am not sure why the plants are doing so well and why the tank is looking so good now. When I started the tank I was to stingy to invest money into the hardscape and recycled some pieces of wood from the aquarium of a friend of mine. This is what the hard scape looked like.


So I guess it's really the densely grown stem plants that make all the difference. Maybe this encourages some of you who are struggling at the beginning... having pictures of beautiful tanks in mind, but not much to work with.

Next, I'll post more about the fishies.

 

I.... love it! The before photo looked kinda funny with the short plants but they have grown in so nice and dense. Its giving me Dutch aquascaping vibes, and I’m loving it. Good job!

 

Beautiful tanks!!!

 

That is a fantastic looking tank. I am all for the biotope idea, even if you can't strictly enforce it (fish is easiest, plants not always, decor depends on how dedicated you are, and water properties not much you can do

This is the second great looking tank saying low-tech in the last few days. It turns out that liquid fertilizers are used in both these tanks. So, I guess even in low-tech, fertilizers are required for this kind of outcome. I don't use them and there are only a few plant species that do well in the long term (at first many seem to do fine). Has anyone achieved this look without fertilizers?

 

Thanks, guys.

About the liquid fertilizer: I am not sure, if it makes such a big difference. But I used it from day 1 and now am afraid to change this routine . When I read the Walstad-book I found it quite convincing, that feeding the tank ensures a constant source of nutrients and that this is usually enough. If I'll ever change my routine, I'll let you know what happens without liquid fertilizer.

I also should add that I tried a lot of plantss that didn't make it! And some of them just needed a very long time, e.g. the Nymphoides Taiwan in the front left corner.

 

About the liquid fertilizer: I am not sure, if it makes such a big difference. But I used it from day 1 and now am afraid to change this routine . When I read the Walstad-book I found it quite convincing, that feeding the tank ensures a constant source of nutrients and that this is usually enough. If I'll ever change my routine, I'll let you know what happens without liquid fertilizer.

Looking at your plant collection I guess the Vallisneria might not be amused if you take the tank off the ferts, most others shouldn't really mind. But that's just an educated guess from my experience.

I also should add that I tried a lot of plantss that didn't make it! And some of them just needed a very long time, e.g. the Nymphoides Taiwan in the front left corner.

The only plant in my tank that gets ferts is a Nymphoides peltata. Put a water lily fertilizer cone underneath it when I planted it, and it reached the surface within 2 days. It was almost 15cm high when I got it, though... Right now I'm watching the three N. sp. "taiwan" of a friend grow without ferts but with CO2, and I guess they'll be reaching up in about another week. Nymphoides seem to get a lot of stuff from the water, but for the actual growth they seem to need nutrients via the roots.

 

Now, some pictures of the fishies

Looking at the female CPDs one might say that I overfeed them.


But in my experience they do better when being slightly overweight. The females, of course, appear rounder when they are ready to spawn. Here are some males:



An here's one of my favourite group pictures, that I posted before:


Fortunately, the danios are not shy anymore. (They were in the beginning.) At least, when it is me sitting in front of the tank they usually come to the glass expecting to get food. However, I still have sick ones from time to time. Especially among the young males that start to compete with the others. When they become sick, they get white patches and die eventually . I bred them a couple of times, sold some and kept some. At some point I also got eggs from another person in a german forum to have more genetic variety.

To give the males a lot of potential spots for their little territories (and maybe keep them from fighting to much), I covered almost the whole tank bottom with Süßwassertang. CPDs usually like mossy spots for this purpose. The Süßwassertang also works well and is a good hiding place for baby shrimps.

I do have algae btw



I actually like the ones in the second picture. They are welcome to stay.

I forgot to share this one.


They are actually bouncing into each other! Without the photo I would have thought that they only come close. .. my little sensitive princesses ... turning all gangstaa

Right now I'm watching the three N. sp. "taiwan" of a friend grow without ferts but with CO2, and I guess they'll be reaching up in about another week. Nymphoides seem to get a lot of stuff from the water, but for the actual growth they seem to need nutrients via the roots.

Does yours get a lot of light? I think the corner where I put mine is actually a little bit too dark. So may that's another reason why it took so long for it to grow.

 

It got a lot of light at first, as I removed all plants around it first.

Here's a picture from 48h after I planted it. Can't find one from the day itself. It was about the hight of the lowest leaves originally.




It has since thinned out somewhat, some leaves never made it to the top, for months now usually there are 6-8 floating leaves at once. Whenever one gets ripped off or starts to die back (a leave usually stays for about a month) a new one grows and reaches the top within a few days.

 

Dear fish-friends,

so here I would like to introduce my tanks and projects and share some pictures and videos of my fishies and all the other little critters.

I am actually a fan of low-tech tanks. My main tank that I'll show you first is the most high-tech one here. I started it 2 years ago and it was my first community tank (before that I only had a 54 liter/14 gal tank for a few months). I actually did not expect much from it and am super happy now to see how well it turned out.
View attachment 737250
I call it Myanmar tank, since all the fish are from there. But it's still far from being a biotope tank. (Although I find the biotope approach very appealing.)

Some technical specs:
- volume: 180 liter / 47 gal
- size: 100x40x45 cm / 39x16x18 inch
- dimmable LED light (when I got this I discovered that I can still be enthusiastic about high-tech stuff... but the reason I got it is that my CPDs where freaking out when the light suddenly turned off in the evening.)
- external filter: JBL greenline
- no CO2, no heater
- substrate: fine gravel
- for the summer: DIY lid with cooling fans to keep the water cool

Stock:
- 20-30 Celestial Pearl Danios (Danio margaritatus),
- 20 Rosy loaches (Yunnanilus sp. rosy),
- Golden/Tangerine Tiger shrimps,
- various snails.

Maintenance:
- water change of 40% every other week with 1/3 RO or rain water and 2/3 hard tap water
- fertilization: I add liquid fertilizer when changing the water, and used fertilizer balls occasionally
- I feed the fish almost every day and sometimes even twice. I consider this also to be a part of the maintenance, since it indirectly adds nutrients to the plants. Caring for the fish is in fact the most time consuming part. During the summer, I tried to catch live food for them and I also made it a habit to buy live tubifex for them every two or three weeks.
- almost no cleaning: I don't use a siphon or anything like that. The shrimps are keeping the top of the gravel clean. I scrap the front glass when doing water changes (so every other week)
- I don't test the water anymore.

I am not sure why the plants are doing so well and why the tank is looking so good now. When I started the tank I was to stingy to invest money into the hardscape and recycled some pieces of wood from the aquarium of a friend of mine. This is what the hard scape looked like.
View attachment 737264
So I guess it's really the densely grown stem plants that make all the difference. Maybe this encourages some of you who are struggling at the beginning... having pictures of beautiful tanks in mind, but not much to work with.

Next, I'll post more about the fishies.

That tank looks like everything I could ever hope to do - a good goal to strive for

 

That tank looks like everything I could ever hope to do - a good goal to strive for

It is definitely an achievable goal. Thanks for following me. Whatever that means. Seems like this forum is loaded with all kinds of reward-mechanisms.

 

It got a lot of light at first, as I removed all plants around it first.

Here's a picture from 48h after I planted it. Can't find one from the day itself. It was about the hight of the lowest leaves originally.

View attachment 737411

It has since thinned out somewhat, some leaves never made it to the top, for months now usually there are 6-8 floating leaves at once. Whenever one gets ripped off or starts to die back (a leave usually stays for about a month) a new one grows and reaches the top within a few days.

Is this the Nymphoides peltata or the taiwan? It looks quite different from mine. Sounds incredible, how fast it grew in your first 48 hours.
My N. taiwan also spends most time growing only one new leaves for each one that dies. It took a while until it really had more leaves than before.

 

It's the N. peltata.

 

More about the fishies.

This morning I didn't have time to say anything about the Rosy loaches. They are sooo adorable!
I originally thought that introducing them to the tank would help to make the CPDs less shy. This didn't quite work out. The loaches can also be extremely shy. After buying them I put them in a quarantine tank. They started out being extremely active and then after few days I couldn't find any of them anymore.

Furtunately, that changed a bit. During most time of the day the loaches hide between the plants, but when it's feeding time they all gather to look for the worms and frozen moskito larvae that I usually put into the gravel such that the CPDs won't eat it all.

So, here are some typical hiding situations:



And here is the active and outgoing (but kind of artificial) feeding situation that makes it far easier for me to get good pictures:



Then, there is a third category: the chasing-each-other-around/celebrating-a-big--situation. They do this sometimes in the evening. Especially after the water changes or when they got a good amount of live food. It's impossible to photograph, since they cross the whole tank within fractions of a second.

Anyway... somehow I managed to raise little baby loaches. I basically siphoned through the Süßwassertang and the plants after the loaches were done mating. In this way I could raise the fry seperately.
This was the peak of my aquarium-career . Look at their little barbles! Cuteness and perfection! ❤️❤️❤️



I will try to breed them again at some time. Hopefully, I'll find a more effective way to seperate the eggs.

This is it for now. See you.

 

Wooden pond on my roof terrace

So, this is the next project that I would like to introduce here. It's not a typical aquarium, but fits better into the "outdoor projects"-category. I've built it in May 2019. This year the plants have grown exceptionally well. And I spent a lot of time sitting there, filming the fishies with my waterproof action cam . Here's what came out of this.

Have fun watching!

 

So, here's a collection of photos showing how the plants in my wooden pond developped over the year.









The one that has grown the tallest with the violet flowers is called purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). I read that in the US this is an invasive species, so don't plant this, if you are living in there.

Some basic things about this wooden pond.
It has a thin layer of gravel, however almost all plants are in small flower pots. On the left end I piled up larger rocks to get a marginal zone for plants that need a lower waterlevel.


In spring, when the sun was shining on this area my fish used to gather there to warm up.


There is no filter or anything like that. I bought a solar-powered air-pump, but almost never used it.

About the fish: Those are Japanese Ricefish (Orizias latipes) or Medaka, really uncomplicated little nano fish that can stand any temperature. I'm super happy with this choice.

 

An update about the Myanmar tank. It was time to remove some plants. However, I may have overdone it a little by removing the plants in the back on the left. Afterwards I watched two male loaches fighting, which I have never seen before. Maybe I messed up their territories . I think, they settled their dispute now. Still, it reminded me that I should not interfere too much in the tank. After all, it's the home of my fishies.

 

Dear fish friends,

so my tanks magically multiplied...



A new project is ahead! I am going to explore the darker side of the hobby... meaning it's going to be a black water tank. However, I will stay true to one of my principles and put only small fish in there. Did I say this before? For me the very small fish are just the most adorable. I'm not sure, why that is, but it must be true since old wise man like Edmund Burke agree:
"In the animal creation, out of our own species, it is the small we are inclined to be fond of; little birds, and some of the smaller kinds of beasts. [...] beautiful objects are comparatively small" (see here)

 

So the new blackwater tank is cycling and already looks fascinating...

To pass the time, I focused on something else and made a video about my golden tiger shrimps. I learned a great deal about my editing software, so it was already worth it. Here is the video.