Letters of a Betta Addict

I’ve never had a community tank. Not really. Red my Red-tail shark has never been what I would call tank-mate friendly, and I’ve never had a tank large enough for him where I would try tank-mates. I’d need to upgrade his 32 gallon to something like a 55 before I felt comfortable doing that simply because he’s grown so large and his tank-mates would need to be so big as well.

I suppose the 20 was sort of like a community tank but really the Cory’s were little anti-social bits of adorable that fled whenever I entered the room and the WCMM just stayed in the top few inches of the tank nothing really exciting happening there. Well with the leaking of the 32 Gallon tank earlier this week I comendered the 20 Gallon for Red until I get his tank fixed and so moved the Cory’s and the WCMM into the 56 gallon with the goldies. It’s an interesting learning curve.

The 56 is a bare-bottom tank with a bit of an algae carpet thing going on. There’s river rock in the two front corners, and then various decor scattered around 3 pieces of drift wood. With the canister from the 32 currently running along with the Whisper 72 EX along with a box filter that I’m keeping cycled… you could defiantly call it over filtered at the moment.

My three Goldies (Charlie, Sin, and Sam) seem to have adapted well to their new room-mates. Charlie ignores them unless he feels like bossing them around. Sin and Sam spar with the Cory’s for the shimp pellets I slip in on the sly. The White-clouds seem much more active, swimming in more area’s of the tank now and loosely shoaling where ever they may. The bare-bottom doesn’t seem to bother the Cory’s and I see them out and about allot more now, the loner Cory even stays with them more as they wiggle along in search of their next meal.  Overall I have to say that no-body is to un-content with the new set-up.  Well, no-body other then me anyway.

I’m happy with the stocking. I’d have loved to add a goldie or two more but I’ll have to try to resist that temptation. No what bothers me are two other aspects of the tank. 1 the lack of live plants and the lighting. Both of these are fairly easy to rectify but will have to wait until I move into the new place. The other is an aspect of a community tank that I knew of, had heard of, but didn’t really understand. The concept of have 3 different species needing 3 different diets. I suppose I could teach each group to spot feed but that’s almost too much hassle. I’ve been soaking the Goldies pellets in garlic guard to help soften them out so that Sin and Sam could have a better chance at getting some. The WCMM seem to end up getting whatever kind of flake I have so I’ve moved them from a Tropical Flake over onto a crumbled up Goldfish Flake now. That way it doesn’t matter if the Goldies decide to eat that. The Cory’s are getting a shrimp pellet dropped in the far corner from where the others get there stuff. This way once the Cory’s find it they have a chance to have some before the Goldies wander by and try for a share.

Until Later,

A Betta Addict

So, well… I’ve been thinking (WARNING DANGEROUS HABIT)… I’d really like to work on a spawn, not nessicarily a Betta spawn (sniff I wanna but I can’t) but some sort of Breeding Challenge. Now there are a few requirements for whatever species I choose.

1st) I need them to have some sort of value. That means no Guppies, Platy’s, Molly’s or Convicts. They’re all great fish but they breed so easy they tend to be hard to give away never mind sell.

2nd) I want to limit the number of grow-out tanks. Which means I either need smaller spawns to begin with or fish that can be raised in the tank with their parents at least for awhile.

3rd) They can’t be huge. I like Goldfish but I don’t have to room to house that many excess fish if I can’t sell them.

4th) I want parents that can RAISE their fry. (Which would likely mean cichilids or wild caught fish)

Current Idea’s:

• Dragon Goby -Rhinogobius Wuii (old name)
• Bearded Cory-
• Lamporologus Signatus-
• Rams
• Apisto’s

However I’m still toying with this idea.

~*~

More Thinking! (this is becoming and dangerous and expensive past time…)

OK, Well I’ love my Betta’s. I do! But Lately I’ve been thinking about trying different species. So let’s sit back and take a look at what we’re working with. According to the stock that I’ve got now.

For tanks I current have the following:

56 gal -cool water-

• Current stock: 2 Fancy Goldies
• Lightly planted (sort of)
• Substrate: None
• Filter: Whisper 70 gal

32 gal -tropical-

• Current stock: 1 RTS
• planted
• Substrate: gravel and laterite substrate
• Filter: canister filter

20 gal -tropical-

• Current stock: 3 Bronse Cory’s
• 2 plants
• Substrate: gravel and laterite
• FIlter: AquaClear 30

10 gal -tropical-

Divided Betta Tank

• Current stock: 1 M.Betta, 1 F.Betta
• planted
• Substrate: soil under gravel
• Filter: 5-15 gal filter

5 gal -tropical-

• Shpae: hex betta tank
• Current stock: 1 M.Betta
• planted
• substrate: soil under gravel
• filter: box filter

5 gal -tropical-

• current stock: 1 M.Betta
• one plant
• substrate: gravel
• filter: box filter

5 gal -tropical-

• current stock: 1 M.Betta
• planted
• soil under gravel
• sponge filter

5 gal - tropical-

• current stock: 1 F.Betta
• planted
• substrate: soil under gravel
• Filter: Elite 5 Hush

3 gal -tropical-

• current stock: 1 M.Betta
• non planted
• substrate: gravel
• filter: box filter

2.5 gal -empty-

• shape:hex tank
• planted
• substrate: soil under gravel
• filter: none

2.5 gal -empty-

• substrate: gravel
• Filter: none
• non-planted

2.5 gal - empty-

• substrate: gravel
• filter: sponge
• non-planted

So now what’s the plan?

56 Gal -cool-

+ 1 fancy Goldie = 16 gals remaining

32 Gal -tropical-

+ 7 Tiger Barbs = 0 gals remining

20 -tropical-

switch to cool water

+ 3 Bronze Cory’s = 5 gals remaining

(asking fishlore about adding White Cloud Mountian Minnows)

NOTE: After debating the conclusion was come to that with regular water changes, an extra filter for increased current and a stock of 7-10 WCMM this stocking would be possible

5 Gals are stocked

3 Gal are stocked

10 Gal is stocked

2.5’s are unstocked QT/Shrimp?

Shrimp links:

• Petshrimp.com
• Canadianaquatics.com

So I’ve been doing reasearch and working on the article for the last few days. Part 1 is going well and Part 2 needs some more work yet. I’ve been thinking on the 56 gal and I think I’ve settled on a goldfish only tank. So to break down my stocking:

56 total gallons

-20 gallons (1st goldie)

leaves : 36 gallons

-10 gallons (2nd goldie)

leaves: 26 gallons

-10 gallons (3rd goldie)

leaves: 16 gallons

- 10 gallons (4th goldie)

leaves: 6 gallons

Therefore with this method I’ll be fully stocked with 4 Goldies. Now I’m going with fancy golies rather than comets of common feeders. However I still need to decide on a filtration system.

GREEN AND GROWY:

This system will give ideal biological filtration as well as be very good for alage control along with visually appealing. Now there are 3 parts to this plan that need to be ironed out.

1st: Construction. - What will I need? How am I going to put it togeather?

2nd: “Media”. - What to use as plant anchor/bio filter?

3rd: “Plants” - What plants to use? What layout? How many?

or

CONVENTIONAL

Set it up it’s done.

Inspired by the Thread: I think I’m just venting…

Thread begun by: AlyeskaGirl

In her first post AlyeskaGirl asked the following questions.

1) What is the average size aqarium?

2) What makes an appropirate sized tank?

3) What happens to fish kept in too small a tank?

4) What happens in a tank that is too croweded?

The posts that followed focused on the traditional fish keeper responce. Which is that the fish release hormones into the water that in certian consentrations inhibite their growth. However this inhibition was limited to the outside of the fish and eventually the fish dies as it’s internal organs continue to grow and eventually run out of room. However as this thread progressed we came to realise that we had no scientific proof that this was actually what happened. One reason for this is that most growth study research is done on commercial fisheries and aquaculture related species.

However I thought that this was a very interesting series of questions so I’ve decided to try and find an answer to each of them. This may be a bit tricky since I’m a 3 hour drive each way from the university library but I’ll do my best. For the ease of research I’ll be breaking this “article” into 3 parts (not including this). The first part will focus on the first two questions. What is the “average size aquarium”, and how do we define an “appropriate” aquarium size? Part two is going to look at the effects of tank size and stocking density on fish growth. Lastly I’ll post the conclusion in part three and bring both of these idea’s togeather, and how they affect the aquarist and fishkeeping.