Need Underwater Photos of the Different Pl*c Biotopes

[mokmu]

Anyone? I'd like to see underwater shots of Different Pl*co Biotopes. I have seen some from a Japanese site:

http://tiger.towson.edu/~hnonog1/Field%20excursion.htm

but I must say it is not too clear and too small. Can anyone post pictures of these natural biotopes? I am fresh out of ideas. It is hard trying to visualize what Shane means here:

http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworld/177.PHP

I'm sorry Shane but some of the items you mentioned you had no photos of.

Questions still:

1) Did I get it right? There only stones, boulders and sand in the Black Water River Channel? No plantation because of high acidity? So would there be some driftwood stuck beneath or in between all these rocks that "...It should look like a mountain in the middle of the tank.... "?

2)Would this be the bottom of most of the biotopes you mentioned:



3) I made a driftwood snag recently but am not sure of it. Do I understand it right that there should be a "maze" of driftwood in the tank? I'd like to know because I just sort of dumped everything in there. So there won't really be large open spaces in the tank? Do they really need large open spaces for Panaques & Panaqolus?

4) I haven't translated this page using babelfish but did the group eat the Royal for a meal here in this page?:

http://tiger.towson.edu/~hnonog1/Field%20Japanese.htm

Thanks
Mike D.

[Shane]

Mike,
Blackwater river channels never have small stones. Look at the photos in my article from the Orinoco. You can see that there are no stones, just sand and driftwood. Underwater there are huge black boulders which have been worn down from the Guyana Shield. You can try to replicate these formations with stones in the aqurium. The picture in your post is from the Rio Sumapaz a tributary of the upper Magdalena. This is a piedmont habitat where you typically find Chaetostoma and Ancisrtus. There are almost never any plants in either white or blackwaters. The main reason (I believe) is because the water is not transparent and thus the plants would never get any light. This is also why it is VERY difficult to get underwater habitat shots. Jools experimented with this a lot when he came to visit me in Venezuela and he can tell you how difficult it is. Your driftwood snag sound just right. I would love to see a photo of it.

Look under Corydoras venezuelanus in the Cat-E-Log. There is a photo of me standing in the Rio Chirgua (Don Kinyon is holding up a jug of Corys in the photo). This is a typical lower peidmont stream which contains Ancistrus, Chaetostoma, and Farlowella.

There are some nice photos of an upper piedmont stream under Chaetostoma milesi. This high up there are no Ancistrus or Farlowella. Just lots of Chaetostoma spp. and some Hypostomus.

For shots of a typical driftwood snag, look under Panaqolus maccus.
-Shane
PS I'll try to send some additional photos to Rusty so I can post them to the forum.

[Jools]

These might help...






Jools

[mokmu]

Thank you very much for the clarification. I have been setting up my tank slowly. It is a good thing that I haven't put the water yet. It appears my set up was all wrong. I shall be making the necessary adjustments.

I haven't seen a nice dark boulder or big dark stone to put in the tank just yet. Can I use large white or yellowish rocks that have holes in them instead. The pl*cs can hide in them. I have seen some cichlid tanks that have them. I shall compliment them later with darker large rocks when I find them. The sand is reddish?

Please post new pictures as soon as you can. Thanks again for all the help.

By the way, does anyone know the answer to my question regarding that Japanese site.

[Caol_ila]

hi!

The white rocks you want to add will make your water harder most probably as these contain "hardnessbuilders" (the stones are referred to as "Lochgestein" in german).

this is my tank a couple of months back
http://www.pbase.com/valarauko/tanks
edit: sorry have no clue why it didnt work its the tank top left first pic
the L77 have removed all the plants... so i added large pieces of wood on the left and middle hanging from the top like parts of a tree would in the wild...on the right side ive built a tower with volcanic stones as these are "inert" and wont mess up the water parameters.

@silurus and rusty in case you see this post you can check out the filter i was talking about on the left side of the tank...sorry that the pic isnt so great.

[polkadot]

The pic is down?

[mokmu]

Yeah, can't see the pic. It says, we are forbidden.

[TKP]

http://www.rva.ne.jp/gallery/gallary_cry.html