MoshJosh's aquariums/racks:

I wanted to share my aquariums and have a place to chronicle their progress.

Currently I have 5 aquariums, but one is a shrimp tank that is not part of my rack system, so I will not be including it in this thread. I have 2 racks, 1 that holds 10 gallon tanks and 1 that holds 20 gallon longs. Between them I could keep 6 tanks but currently I have 2 10 gallons and 2 20 gallon longs.

All are filtered with air/sponge filters using USB air pumps. Other nitty gritty details can be found in my build threads:

10 gallon rack! | Freshwater Aquarium Builds Forum | 492584

20 gallon long rack. . . changing my whole setup | Freshwater Aquarium Builds Forum | 488211

Current stoking:

1st 10 gallon 9 medaka ricefish (7 orange and 2 "sparkling orange")

2nd 10 gallon is exactly the same as the first, though they are of "lesser" color.

1st 20 gallon (probably a bit overstocked ATM) 2 apistogramma Viejtas, 6 "assorted fancy guppies", and 8 panda cory's.

2nd 20 gallon has 8 "sparkling" blue medaka ricefish, 2 African mudfish, 4 Enigmatochromis Lucanusi (West African cichlid).

I have a number of live plants, mostly stem plants. 20 gallons have root tabs, 10s do not. Fertilizing once weekly with Thrive C.













In the very back under the heater you can just see the head of one of the mudfish:



The plan for the coming weeks is:

Add one more 10 gallon and one more 20 gallon long. Move some fish around (some to outdoor ponds) and add some fish.

 

Lot of different rice fish! You going to try and nreed them?

 

I’d like to. They are also one of the few fish I can/should be able to keep outside year round (will use stock tank heaters to prevent the water from freezing).

 

I was sort of bummed that my 10 gallon rack didn’t turn out how I wanted, namely I wanted to use bolts, and was envisioning something smaller and cheaper. . . So round two.

 

I don’t know much about Enigmatochromis Lucanusi, however, if I had to guess I’d say they are about to breed. They have dug quite the pit under a flower pot and are making some pretty interesting displays.

 

My gups had some babies. When I got home this AM I saw 6 little babies swimming around. . . When I came back in the afternoon I could only find 2. . . Thinking the rest had been eaten I decided to move them to my shrimp tank. . . Then I found the other 4 haha. Well now at least hopefully two will survive regardless, but we’ll see how the other ones do in the community tank anyway.

 

My gups had some babies. When I got home this AM I saw 6 little babies swimming around. . . When I came back in the afternoon I could only find 2. . . Thinking the rest had been eaten I decided to move them to my shrimp tank. . . Then I found the other 4 haha. Well now at least hopefully two will survive regardless, but we’ll see how the other ones do in the community tank anyway.

View attachment 783239

We going through this with platy fry as well. Pretty sure the adults have been snacking pretty well, lately...

 

If I had the space, I would probably try to catch them all out, but I don’t really have the room. . . Also I’m not sure which female they came from, there is one female in particular whos fry I am interested in growing out, so when I know for sure she’s pregnant I’ll probably separate her.

 

If I had the space, I would probably try to catch them all out, but I don’t really have the room. . . Also I’m not sure which female they came from, there is one female in particular whos fry I am interested in growing out, so when I know for sure she’s pregnant I’ll probably separate her.

I wish more of our fry got ate. I really don't want to have to set up another tank for the platies. But i figure there will be some serious inbreeding, seeing as all our current adults came from about 2 or 3 different mothers and 1 or 2 dads. Gonna look like the dudes from Wrong Turn before long...

 

If I’m not mistaken many (maybe most) captive bred fish are quite inbred already before they get to the hobbyists. I would imagine more so with things like guppy’s and other fish that are line bred for color/traits

 

Apparently everyone likes algae wafers

 

Going to start settin up the breeding rack today . . . Pictures to come. . .

 

I wanted to do a “fake sand“ bottom on these tanks. I used what I thought was stone paint, turns out it was just textured but regardless I do think it looks very sound like. In retrospect I should have bought two cans of the textured paint as I ran out and it resulted in a sort of blotchy finish but it’s not too bad. I covered the “sand” paint with black plastidip just to stop some light coming through the bottom.



But I think the end result looks fine.




I was going to do separate lights for each of the sections, but I ended up using one LED strip to light all the tanks, I think it looks fine and realistically I’m not worried about growing plants in the set up. I cannibalized an old LED hood light and mounted it along the side.



Here is the final product.

 

 

Tried to snap a few pics before running out the door to work.

First my rice fish (I included where I got them just in case people are curious, these seem to be sort of hard to come by in the US):

"orange sparkle/speckle" (from LFS) and some "orange" from (goldaradoaquatics.com):



These are "snow white", have a bit of blue on them. . . probably my prettiest rice fish (aquariumfishsale.com):



These are "blue sparkle/speckled" not very blue. . . and only a few sparkles (but the lighting is terrible for pictures)(LFS):



These are "YOUKIHI MEDAKA ORANGE RICEFISH" (aquatic arts)



Breeder box for guppies. . . accidentally got some cherry shrimp in there as well:

 

I wanted to share my aquariums and have a place to chronicle their progress.

Currently I have 5 aquariums, but one is a shrimp tank that is not part of my rack system, so I will not be including it in this thread. I have 2 racks, 1 that holds 10 gallon tanks and 1 that holds 20 gallon longs. Between them I could keep 6 tanks but currently I have 2 10 gallons and 2 20 gallon longs.

All are filtered with air/sponge filters using USB air pumps. Other nitty gritty details can be found in my build threads:

10 gallon rack! | Freshwater Aquarium Builds Forum | 492584

20 gallon long rack. . . changing my whole setup | Freshwater Aquarium Builds Forum | 488211

Current stoking:

1st 10 gallon 9 medaka ricefish (7 orange and 2 "sparkling orange")

2nd 10 gallon is exactly the same as the first, though they are of "lesser" color.

1st 20 gallon (probably a bit overstocked ATM) 2 apistogramma Viejtas, 6 "assorted fancy guppies", and 8 panda cory's.

2nd 20 gallon has 8 "sparkling" blue medaka ricefish, 2 African mudfish, 4 Enigmatochromis Lucanusi (West African cichlid).

I have a number of live plants, mostly stem plants. 20 gallons have root tabs, 10s do not. Fertilizing once weekly with Thrive C.

View attachment 779531View attachment 779541
View attachment 779532View attachment 779533View attachment 779537View attachment 779534View attachment 779535View attachment 779538View attachment 779539

In the very back under the heater you can just see the head of one of the mudfish:
View attachment 779536

The plan for the coming weeks is:

Add one more 10 gallon and one more 20 gallon long. Move some fish around (some to outdoor ponds) and add some fish.

Livin the life of an aquarist! All I could say is happy fish keeping!!!

 

Moved some of the fish around. I combined some of my best “orange” and “orange sparkling” from inside and outside into one tank. Put all my cherry shrimp in the other tank. And decided to make one of the 10 gallon racks bare bottom with potted plants.

 

Got some new fish today. . . of course they didn't want their picture taken:




also got the "last" of the tanks. . . not set up but filters and such should be coming soon:

 

this is so amazing. what are the plans for the top tanks? they are pretty high up there.

 

this is so amazing. what are the plans for the top tanks? they are pretty high up there.

I will likely just use those tanks for fry. I am currently trying to hatch some rice fish, I have guppy fry (and I'm sure more to come), and I hope my new fish (golden skiffia splitfin goodeids) will also breed.

I also I have like 40+ cherry shrimp I don't know what to do with haha. . . they might go in there

 

You should make one of those tanks a Pea Puffer tank (a nice group of them). That would be a cool oddball tank

 

You should make one of those tanks a Pea Puffer tank (a nice group of them). That would be a cool oddball tank

Can I breed them? And can they be unheated? If so I’m down haha

I do love pea puffers. . . I mean who doesn’t!

 

Yup they can be bred and I heard it's very rewarding!! It depends on if on your room temp and if it fluctuates a lot. 72F-85F is their recommended

 

Yup they can be bred and I heard it's very rewarding!! It depends on if on your room temp and if it fluctuates a lot. 72F-85F is their recommended

In summer those temp would work. . . in winter though. . . my house may be a bit chilly for them haha I'll think about it. . .

I have plenty of snails and shrimp to feed them haha

 

The pea puffers would LOVE the snails.

Or you could do a hillstream loach river tank (maybe with driftwood a ton of bigger rocks covering the substrate, and some type of swords)
They will breed easily in there. Hillstream loaches are another super cool oddball!!

 

Set up the top 2 tanks:

 

Gotta say, looks like a bit of a Zen corner to me!

 

Redid my 20 gallon longs. Rehomed/sold my cory cats and African cichlids to the local fish store. With the credit they gave me I got another pair of apistos. Wanting to breed both my apisto pairs, Viejta and nijsenni.

pic of the middle tank:

 

Set up the new “ponds”, hoping to use these as rice fish grow outs:

 

Feel like it’s been a while since I did an actual update on the tanks, so I figured I would do that today.

first, this is the rice fish breeding rack, And it’s working out OK so far. I think there is room to improve the hatch/survival rate, but I’m not entirely sure how to do that yet. . .




The top tank is a 29 gallon with a poly carbonate divider, on the left are my “orange” rice fish, and on the right are my koi/red cap rice fish:

orange:




koi/red cap:





Middle tank is a 20 long that houses my “Snow White” rice fish:




the bottom tank is also 20 long and it houses my yohiki rice fish:






Here is the guppy tank I set up for my wife about a week ago, underneath I have my brine shrimp hatchery and random foods and chemicals:








I have completely changed the stocking of what used to be my community tank rack. The top and bottom tanks are used to grow out rice fish, and the middle tank houses six African mud fish (they did not want to be photographed). The middle tank is also now my only heated tank, the rest are left at room temperature:












and here are a few pictures of my rice fish in the totes outside:

 

Just a little update:

so I wanted more fish. . . probably didn’t need more but. . . you know

I decided to get some rainbows, and to try to breed them in the same tanks as my rice fish. . .

my thinking was they occur together in the wild (well the Celebes do) and they both use spawning mops. . . I’m sure they will eat each other’s eggs, but my rice fish do that by themselves anyway.

so far so good I guess. . . I’ve got a TON of threadfin eggs, and maybe some Celebes eggs (but hard to tell between them and the rice fish eggs)

anyway my recent acquisitions have been Celebes, threadfins, dwarf neon, and spotted blue eye rainbows.

I lost the “runt” Celebes (got 5 left) and 2 of the dwarf neons came in pretty thin (fingers crossed the bounce back)









New temporary fry set up and some pictures of the fry/juveniles in the pond








Also the first batches of fry are getting bigger (sorry for blurry pictures)




This is “my wife’s tank”. . . that I take care of haha. She just couldn’t let me use the guppies as feeds so they have there own tank. Once the are large enough to sex and select for color I will have to re home a bunch though. . . Also ended up with some shrimp stowaways.





And lastly the “show tank”

here is Lasagna the Betta fish. He’s a half moon “double tail” though I count 3. . . ?




Glowlite Danios. . . That refuse to leave the back half of the tank.






and the ever elusive mud fish that refuse to let me get good pictures. Fun fact, apparently, like other noodle shaped fish, these dudes are good at escaping. One died after escaping the tank, despite my well fitting lid. . .