I believe keeping live plants is an important part of raising healthy fish. The fish we keep like soft water, so we choose plants that do well in soft water. Angelfish come from the Amazon where the water has practically no carbonate hardness. My favorites plants are the Broad Leaf Sword and Java Moss. Java Moss is a great plant which requires no planting media! When acclimated it will grow over almost anything. I let it cover my sponge filters.
I do not use an under gravel filter in my tanks. In fact I do not cover the bottom of my tanks with gravel. With a glass bottom tank it is easy to do a thorough cleaning with a siphon. I use foam filters as well as an external filter to provide adequate surface area for biological filtration.
I keep my plants in standard clay pots. I drill holes in the pots (with a drill bit suitable for cutting tile or ceramic) to allow water circulation. To get a new plant started I put a small peat pot in the ceramic pot. The plant goes in this peat pot with a mixture of aquarium gravel and sphagnum moss. I never use fertilizer (the fish provide that) but will occasionally add a few drops of chelated Iron which is available at any aquarium store.
| Several fry swimming in their tank among the leaves of a broad leaf sword. The fine filaments on the sword is Java Moss. These fry have been free swimming for about 5 days. |
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| Healthy plants metabolize ammonia and help maintain good water quality. These fry are still quite small and feeding only on brine shrimp. I will keep all 200 to 300 fish from a single spawning in one 20 gal. aquarium for three to four weeks or until the fry are accustomed to eating flake food. At that point I will divide the fry among two 20 gal. tanks. After 5 weeks, as the fish grow, it becomes necessary to sell or give away 30 to 50 fish a week. This prevents overcrowding and fin rot (a common fungus that afflicts fish that are stressed and overcrowded). As they grow I select out the most interesting angelfish to grow large and possibly to breed. |
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| Photographing fry in a 20 Gal tank is problematic as the limited depth of field of the lens and extension ring combination will guarantee some of the photograph is out of focus. However, for older fry and lower magnification some of the fish will be in focus. To obtain good images it is very important to clean the glass well (this image reveals a few smudges I missed). I clean the glass with white vinegar and a paper towel on the outside and a razor blade scraper inside. |
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| A time exposure with no attempt to focus. Hold still little fry... Of course art is a matter of taste. |
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| Cardinal Tetras make friendly companions in any community tank. The
cardinal tetra is a long lived and hardy fish but difficult to get acclimated.
Once acclimated they can live up to ten years.
I also keep Kuhli Loaches and Clown Loaches in my community tanks. Loaches are fun social fish and do best when kept in pairs or small schools. Clown Loaches will eat snail eggs and are useful in controlling snail problems. |
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