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change of plans


Andy_1984

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Ive got a heater had it running for a while when i first got tank, Steve if you remember it had a couple of tropicals from previous owner. There was a noticeable increase in electricity bills, perhaps it wasnt very efficient but either way i dont think i really want to have a heated tank.

Yeah, I guess they can be a bit heavy on power, though it depends on what temperature your room and tank are kept at. Worst case it's less than leaving a light bulb on, though.
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Steve Walker, on 24 Feb 2015 - 09:36, said:

I've not had any spawnings yet, the smaller fish were recently added. I've had periods of lots of displaying behaviour from the males, but nothing has come of it.

 

At the moment the tank is being refreshed after a period of neglect - the small CO2 cylinder ran out and the lighting unit failed.

 

Looking at the plants you've got, I wouldn't worry about CO2 myself, Crypts, Anubias, Taxiphyllum etc. usually do fine without it. What colour temperature are the LED fittings? It was suggested that higher plants wouldn't do so well under LED, but I've had no issues with 6500K units. Amanos are swines for having wanderlust, they can also run out of a net like a sodding cockroach, but when you look at how they can climb waterfalls in the wild you realise why. If you have (or can get) a small breeding aquarium, set it to 24C, small air-driven filter, chuck in a couple of female praecox, give them two days then add a male or two with a wool mop or clump of Java moss, pull them once the females are visibly depleted, fry are tiny and need very fine foods initially (lazy but effective way from May onwards is to have a bucket of pond water tucked away outside and add a sprinkle of gram flour, bits of banana skin or blanched lettuce leaf, feed the fry a scoop from the top each day once the culture is producing).

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The 60 litre planted tank is a bit of a temporary setup - I've got a 260 litre tank to which everything will be relocated at some point. The plant species in there are mostly tolerant of low light and no CO2 because everything else snuffed it when I neglected it - those crypts are actually survivors of a previous attempt to kill the buggers! The Lilaeopsis is likely to benefit from the new regime.

 

I suspect that our very hard tapwater is an issue in breeding them, though to be honest at the moment I don't have room for any more of them anyway.

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Is it the triple unit you've got or just a single? The daylight should be 6500K but I'm also seeing mention of 9000K for one.

Melanotaenia usually cope OK with harder water, most habitat data would suggest so also. Something for when you have more space maybe. There's a couple of Rainbow spp. would be OK in a garden pond over Summer, they're found in areas that have cool Winters.

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Each of them has two rows of nine 0.2W LEDs.

 

2D7235E9-6046-47A5-91BC-68A21F85D0E1_zps

 

C967F6C5-2E9F-4A5F-98E5-D182F77E6DC8_zps

 

A8CD467F-876D-4857-9749-858ADC993362_zps

 

This is the tank which will be repurposed as a planted setup once we have redecorated the house;

 

725E0095-BEF2-4B7F-8004-C2DF9C6FC895_zps

 

It's a Juwel Vision 260. The existing T5 light bar has failed, and I'm planning to replace it with a lot of LEDs. I'll be building it up with a lot of bogwood covered in epiphytes because the depth is an issue getting enough light to the bottom of the tank, but I'm hopeful that I can get enough illumination to grow a carpet of Lilaeopsis. The CO2 system runs off a fire extinguisher, and should be able to deliver enough for the tank. It would be nice to breed a big shoal of praecox, but I'm also looking at some larger rainbowfish species, more glass cats , perhaps some gouramis or other SE Asian species.

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Currently looking at fitting out a live lab with 1metre sealed 6500K LED units, waterproof and several will run off a single ballast, I'll let you know how they perform. None of the aquarium "manufacturers" really manufacture them (other than the higher-end bespoke units), they just take off-the-shelf stuff and brand it. Juwel are swines, their lamps are non-standard length which always ties you to them, but other than that the tanks are good.

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I'd be interested to hear how you get on with that. Those units I'm using are quite cheap, and I could get a lot of the short ones in transversely. Would have to look at whether I could get a single large luminaire more cheaply for the same output.

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