Great post Darrel. This should perhaps be some sort of FAQ article. It dispels many myths about soft water systems and blackwater biotopes.

It's easy enough to maintain a small amount of GH/KH by maintanining by decorating the tank with certain rocks or gravels, like aragonite, or a bit or rock containing magnesite. A pinch of epsom salts would do the trick too and is dirt cheap. That's what we do out here on the Canadian west coast whe...

They're all Scobiancistrus, so there's a chance they can all interbreed I would think.

I personally run controllers on all my tanks that require higher heat because of potential accidents like this. Too cool is manageable, but boiling the fish worth $$ is a big tragedy. The only tanks I don't have controllers on are my growout tanks that I watch every single day, several times a day.

Wow! Very nice. Keep us posted with updates.

Not crazy or greedy but the diets are fairly different between Ancistrus and the Hypans. People do it with the common BNP's, but with L183, not sure if you will have problems.

Nice P. scrophus. How big is it?

You can get around that posting problem by replying to yourself and having the limit of pics per post. ;)

Nice evolution. I've come to the same conclusion with HC. I have S. repens and HC in the same tank and the S. Repens is so much lower maintenance.

Don't worry about the English or some of the not perfect photos. I, for one, love the frequent updates and day by day explanation and closeups of what's going on! Keep it coming.

I'm only allowed one tank per room, so I had to "make" a home office to get a second one in the den.

Very nice Mats. Where do you find room for all these? I guess that's the advantage of having a fishroom (or the semblance of one).

Very nice. I've not seen these Peckoltia locally before.

Those are some great photos. And a great journal documenting the development of the eggs. Thanks for continuing.

Krawallo wrote:
PS. what´s the right name for the Aquarium Frontglas ? Windshield is from a car

We all just call it the front glass.

Gold nuggets are actually pretty cheap, but as MatsP says, they are difficult to keep. I've had a number through the years and I currently still have only one. They only take a long time to mature and require a bigger tank to breed. I would recommend Ancistrus (the common one) if you just want to br...

Sorry to hear that. So you think the temperature being too high may have caused them not to utilize the yolk sac?

Wow, they still have full yolksacs?

Thank you for clarifying the bending of light. I did say that there is some bending of light, though. I've studied up on acrylic and its use in aquariums in the recent past, and it is really amazing that it possesses all these qualities! I've seen warning labels depicting a person swinging a baseba...

I guess I might just purchase a new tank one of these days. I'll have to find a bow front 47 gallon acrylic aquarium. These things being one whole solid piece, having no sealants, and just being acrylic means they are much stronger than glass. Plus, acrylic, being light-weight and a lot more heat e...

that is brilliant new. thanks for the info, as these are hard to breed indeed. keep up the photos of the development. cheers jk I wonder if part of the problem is that they're being kept in water that's too cool. The Cat-e-log says 22 - 25 and furrfred's report and others I have read said they bred...

Thanks very much for the info.

Looks like a to me, but a good pic from the side would help. I have both and my L147 doesn't exhibit any yellow.

Very nice. Did you extract the eggs and are trying to hatch them without the male? Is that why they're on the substrate?

Oops, I see that they are fry with yolk sacks.

Can you provide some details of the breeding setup?

James0816 wrote:One interesting thing going on with the tank now is the appearance of BBA. Not really sure why this has cropped up as the lighting, ferts and CO2 haven't changed. Have to think on this one for a bit.

What about plant mass? If the tank has grown in a lot the balance has been upset.

I believe the reason you haven't found it here is just naming convention. Most here call it a "mat filter" or "Hamburg matten filter" or some variant. If you search for that, you'll find many threads here and people using them in their fishrooms for plecos, even panaque. Here's o...

If anyone collecting rain water has a TDS meter I'd be interested to see what it measures, last time I checked mine it had basically no detectable hardness, and about 7ppm TDS. By definition rain water should be pretty close to zero. Any TDS collected would have been on the fall to the roof from th...

Hmmm...wonder if it's a size thing. I had 5 L. joselimai with probably 200 cherry shrimp and the popular still grew. But the L. joselimai were very small, like 4 - 5 cm and I had a lot of Subwasstertang in the tank, and since it was a quarantine/growout, I fed the baby fish 2x a day. I've never had ...

Freshwater shrimp appear to be fine with most plecos. I have cherry shrimp currently with Ancistrus, small Pseuda (L600), Peckoltia, Baryancistrus and Scobiancistrus in my growout tanks without problems. But I wouldn't do at pair. If you get a half dozen in there then the colony will establish itsel...

Iron oxidizes quickly in water and iron oxide is stable in water. Plus iron is not very soluble in water, hence the need for chelates for people with planted tanks, so I wouldn't worry too much about, as you're doing plenty of water changes.

That's a beautiful specimen.