Eirmotus octozona

[Vale!]

I've had a group of these fish in a community tank for a couple or three years now and have grown to like them very much. They're shy, lurking shoalers and have found a place in that tank to call their own. In order to observe them properly it's been necessary: a) to drop in some food ; and then b) to retire to a position where they can't readily see you, and keep still. The last time I went through that rigmarole, I was able to count one more than I started out with.

Here are a couple of pics from that rigmarole - male first, then female :







The pics are a bit dim because of all the shade in the tank (which they like).

Anyway, as I reported in passing in another thread, I was musing to myself how good it would be to have some of these fish in a species tank so I could observe them a bit better and, maybe, get them to breed on (my!) purpose. So I asked my #1 LFS last Monday to have a look in their fish lists to see if any were available (assuming on past experience that it would be weeks before they got back to me). Come Sunday, there was a phone call to advise me that they'd arrived!

So I've got prepare some suitable accommodation for them in somewhat of a hurry! I went to have a look at them and they're very small but numerous - I guess they bought in 50+. They're being kept in their 'South American' section which, if memory serves, is 50:50 RO:tap. Given local tapwater that's still outrageously hard for them. When I bought my previous group they were quarantined in a back room, so I was able to ferry regular quantities of soft/acidic water to them to use in water-changes ; but this lot are on public display in a system of tanks, so I can't do that. 

Anyway, this thread is just to document progress and to act as a bit of a notepad/reminder for me. Hopefully it may be of interest to one or two others.

[fr499y]

sounds interesting.
Oddballs are so much more interesting to me than the usual fish.

[Vale!]

I did have a spare-and-empty tank up to a couple of weeks back, but I had to decant the contents of another tank into it following a leak.

The only obvious candidate was the tank on the bottom tier of my rack which of late has been used a repository for redundant media, its latest donation having been a load of bags of alfagrog from the tank that leaked :


                                        


So I decided to use that. It's essentially two fifty-litre compartments, with its divider having a hole that can be plugged (or not) with sponge.  I'd like it not to be at floor level when refitted, so I'll have a bit of complicated juggling of tanks between tiers to do. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

The tank's lid is just a home-made acrylic job. It was only after I'd welded the hinges on and observed the resulting slight distortion that I realised I should have used thicker (or a different type of) acrylic! Anyway it's done a reasonable job despite that ; but I think I'll replace it with glass panels for this project.

                                  
                                         


I began by taking out its contents and immediately hit a dilemma. Ideally I'd just reuse stuff without any faffing, taking advantage of in situ biofilm and microblighters. But that tank has been prone to bouts of blue-green algae and, although it's somewhat likely to return anyway, I'd rather start off with an absolute minimum of it!

So the wood went in to my marmalade-making pan to boil …


                                         

... although one bit is really too big for purpose so I'll relocate it. The sponges from the air-driven filters went into a jug of water (I'll decide what to do with them later) and the plastic bits into a jug of bleach solution.  Out came the heaters (I'm going to use different ones) and the bags of alfagrog went into a bucket (I'll probably vigorously 'shoogle' them in the refilled tank to try to scrape at least some of their biofilm off) :



                                           

I then let everything settle again and had a good inspection just to make quite sure that there were no fish in the tank (I've been thusly surprised before!) then began draining it …



                                            

I hoiked the tank onto a table, so the dogfish could better see the rabbit snail, so to speak. I've kept the insulation on the back but have removed it from the sides, where it extended only halfway down because of the smaller tanks that once flanked it. I'll redo the sides with black foamboard eventually.


I scrubbed/washed with kitchen sponge and tapwater first. Then tapwater and bleach before rinsing that out with the garden hose  - that felt very very weird!



                                            

There followed a couple of rinses with reverse osmosis water (RO), then RO plus Seachem Prime (the plastic bits from the filters went in there too). Dried with kitchen towel then set overnight to dry thoroughly.  The sparkling result …



 
Since then I've been deliberating about the setup. I know that the fish will need at least one lurking spot, so the décor needs to include an overhang.  I want to use natural materials, so my boxful of oak bark bits will come in handy, I think.  Bogwood I have - I'll pinch bits from other tanks if required - and coal I have, if I fancy putting 'rocks' in which are in keeping with the gloomy theme!  


There's little point in having a deep substrate in which to plant, because 'normal' aquarium plants would just keel over due to the acidic water. So I'm just going to use Java fern and moss. The former is currently in with my Chocolate Gouramis (refugees from the flood!) ; and the latter is currently in a bucket :




 I've got various kinds/colours of gravel in my museum but I'm currently liking JBL's new 'black' colour of manado gravel. I have some for a project that's currently on hold (replacement for the tank that leaked!) so I'm going to use that.  I put 10 grams of unwashed manado into a litre of RO (it shows, I think, in the 'bucket of alfagrog' pic above) and conductivity rose only 18uS over a week, so it should be fine. 


That's pretty much where I am at the moment, except that I began the construction of the overhang this morning …


                                             

I shalln't subject you to a blow-by-blow account of each subsequent piece going in, don't worry! But I've decided to start off with the inter-tank hole unplugged, so I'm building the overhang around/above the hole as much as I can.  It'll take me a couple or three days I expect (have to wait for goo to dry a bit between pieces) so I'll report back when it's done.

[plankton]

Very nice V!.
I bet the fish ain't cheap......!

[Vale!]

I haven't dared ask, P! If I remember rightly from last time it wasn't too much of a shock.

I've now finished the 'hardscape' - such as it is, and if 'hardscape' is the correct term for a bunch of wood gooed higgleldy-piggledy into place.

Each roof-piece was supported before gooing, and the location(s) for applying goo between pieces indicated by masking tape. I made a tool from a bit of dowel to persuade the goo into place where necessary.








I then attached a few bits of bark to the floor (I shall pin Java fern and/or moss to them later) and, not having suitable pieces of bark left, I used pieces of cork on the sides ; the 'outer' ones there to help disguise a couple of nano pumps that I'm going to add for extra, gentle circulation.  While all this was going on I made reasonably sure that I'd be able to get my hand everywhere for maintenance or for shepherding fish around.  The one thing I've got left to do to the roof is to drill a couple of holes - the underside of the bark pieces is concave so I want to minimise trapped air after water-changes.  

I may or may not tidy up the smears of goo on the glass ; in theory they won't be all that noticeable when the tank has come of age.

The last thing I did was to add a 'curtain' between the compartments using a couple of offcuts of coconut matting that I had left over from a prior project - this to minimise frustration should the fish elect to lurk in two groups! Next pics are: left-hand compartment, eye-level ; ditto from above ; right-hand compartment, eye-level ; ditto from above.

















I'm now getting perilously close to having to rearrange the tanks on the rack to accommodate this one in the position I'd like it. It's going to be so disruptive that I'm seeking reasons to procrastinate : the fact that the extra 'muscle' that I'm going to need has left to go to his workplace helps enormously!

So I turned my attention to the water that I'm going to use. All other tanks, bar my community tank, share the same water recipe prepared in a garden butt. I normally just add some trace elements and some extra 'blackwater' components and leave it at that, doing around 10% water-changes - and not as frequently perhaps as one might do with a 'tapwater' tank.  However for reasons explained in a paragraph just snipped (because it surely would have tested people's patience to breaking point) I want to increase the volume of water-changes, and that means tweaking the recipe a bit.

The new target for change-water is going to be a pH between 5.0 and 5.3, with a conductivity still kept as low as reasonably poss. I think I may have got pretty close with my very first attempt - though I have a reasonable grasp of what's likely to happen when stuff is added to peat-water.

The water in the butt (c175 litres) was pH4.27 and conductivity 11.5uS. As usual I withdrew the peat sock (the peat itself adsorbs ++ ions, but its liquor doesn't) …





... and added a capful of Discus Trace plus 100mls of blackwater stuff. The latter is just a small container of water with aged leaves, into which I occasionally also chuck 'spent' leaves from tanks :




[As a sort of aside, and as mentioned previously in Another Place, when leaves such as Catappa or oak are added to a tank they lower the pH ; however after a couple or three weeks of degradation they go into reverse, as it were, and they tend then to raise the pH.  The pH of the above container, as measured this morning, is 8.06 and its conductivity 892uS!]

At this point I would either use the water as is or, if it's headed for the community tank, add some EI salts : I usually avoid any additives containing carbonates.  However today I added 1 gram of JBL Aquadur to raise the pH further toward my target  : after a couple of hours it was pH5.11 and conductivity 24.1uS . With a bit of luck it should tick up a little bit more overnight (it shouldn't bounce around too much) : if it goes over 5.3 I'll reduce the Aquadur for the next batch.

[plankton]

Brilliant!

[Gingerlove05]

Loving this Vale! You really dont do it by half do you! lol
Its looking good! I neber thought about coal in a tank, i suppose it would be just like having a carbon filter in there. I also never realised that decaying leaves have the opposite effect on the water (increasing ph etc).
Always a science lesson

[Vale!]

[This morning the butt was at pH5.12 and 24.0uS]

Of the various 'grades' of coal (IMO) it's only the 'top' grade, anthracite, that's sufficiently inert for use in aquariums. It's very hard, almost metallic-looking and doesn't affect water chemistry in any way that I've been able to detect. So far as I'm aware it doesn't/can't act as a carbon filter. I'm sure it's probably gettable online now, but when I bought my bag maybe ten years ago I had to drive to Wales to get it! One name for it is 'Welsh Steam Coal'. With your connections it's probably readily available to you, GL, but you're welcome to some from my bag if you want to try it.

And just to reiterate for clarity: leaves acidify until they degrade enough for (I'm guessing!) cell walls to break down and release their contents, after a few weeks. Those who like 'clean' tanks may simply replace all leaves after a couple of weeks to maintain the acidifying property ; but I like to have at least some rotten leaf-litter on the floor of my 'dirty' tanks, so I have to keep adding a new leaf or two (or alder cones, or whatever) quite regularly to keep up!

But within limits (I've not tried to keep soft/acidic fish in neutral or definitely alkaline water!) if the pH and/or conductivity does creep up beyond what one might consider 'ideal' I've learned not to get too paranoid -it doesn't seem to negatively affect either their day-to-day health or behaviour, but any attempt they may make to breed is highly unlikely to succeed. In the case of Liquorice Gouramis (or Licorice if they're American!) for example, and according to the experts, an elevated conductivity prevents eggs from sticking to the roofs of their caves and they're then lost to the guarding male. 

I'm just about to take a trip to #1LFS, amongst other things to inspect the fish - I'll ask if they'll let me take a photo.

[Gingerlove05]

Not so sure about that! Lol The last person i knew who had a coal fire (my next door neighbour) had hers taken out a good few years ago, which also means the coal shed will have been cleared now, it’s funny i sort of miss shovelling it all forward for her and getting coal dust literally everywhere!. Felt kind of natural
Anyway back on point the coal would be highly compacted so (as you say) wouldnt act as a filter as it’s probably not porous enough to allow a flow though it and (as you also mention) it is inert as far as you can tell by testing (which I’m sure you will have done everyway thought possible ). Which would make sense as the carbon/active carbon filters dont effect the water chemistry and its all “the same stuff” more or less (ie. it’s just carbon in a different form).
It also makes sense (in my head) what you have said about the leaves breaking down as an minerals the plants were carrying wouldnt be released into the environment until the cells degrade enough to actually release any remaining minerals/nutrients.
I reiterate: Always a science lesson! (Which i love )

[Vale!]

Bit of an alarm at #1LFS when I saw that the tank they were in a week ago is now empty!  Turns out they'd moved them a few tanks along.  Anyway …


                                                     

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… on closer inspection they're big enough for me to have at least a stab at distinguishing probable-male from probable-female, so I'll have a reasonable chance of getting a mix. 

I still haven't got round to moving tanks ; the more I think about it the more daunting it seems!  I have however triumphantly boiled up a pan of mangetout peas ("whoopie-doo!" says my conscience!).