Covered aquarium

Raul-7

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Oct 21, 2011
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What I've learned is that most plecos come from deep, rocky crevice-laden areas and receive very little light [hence no plants].

Wouldn't it be wise to covered the aquarium from at least 3 sides, have very little to no lighting and very little human intervention (ie. no redecorating, no checking the caves with your hand, etc.) to get them to breed?

I was planning on doing that for my setup in my basement, then just using an IP camera to monitor them. Of course feeding would be done 2-3 times. But I'd like to leave them alone.
 

Nat's Fish

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Nov 14, 2011
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Exactly what I have done. I am not usually home in daylight hours and do most of my water changes and all feeding at night. It's amazing how active my fish are when I check on the remote cameras but hide when I am home.
I also foster rescue kittens for adoption and the fish also hide when the kittens get close to the tank despite some of the kittens being smaller than my hand
 

Raul-7

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Oct 21, 2011
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Ya, I think plecos are best left alone especially given the habitat they come from. I used to keep them with plants and bright lights. But this time I want to keep it simple and give them as much cover as I can.
 

scobie140

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May 4, 2011
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Falkirk
My l333's only get natural sunlight. Used to have an led set up when I had rams in with them but binned when I removed the rams. Tank seems to be fine so far and they've even bred and kept it top secret
 

bigbird

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Sep 9, 2010
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I had my 6 , 3ft custom made tanks build and then painted them three sides a very dark blue. The only plants I have are anubius and java fern as they can also tolerate low light. you do not have to paint but use that plastic from the aquarium fish store as well and tape it on. They love the peace an quiet. Now however my other way of thinking is as follows. My LFS has about 4 tanks with Ls in them and customers constantly walking in front of the tank and they still regularly lay and produce offspring. I think it is a matter of taste and way of thining. good luck cheers jk :thumbup:
 

Bigjohnnofish

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Apr 15, 2010
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havent experienced any problems tanks have 14 hours of full light per day and another 5 hours of room light and 5 hours of actual darkness....
vast majority of all my fish breed like mofos.... zeb fry eat during the day in full light and most do until they are 6-7cm.... fish are all tank bred and raised so im pretty sure they dont know what their natural habitat actually is....
caves all facing the tank front and you can see 3/4 of the way into the cave without a torch... and have plants in most tanks...

i understand people wanting to recreate nature in their tanks but in all honesty once a fish is tank raised does it really matter ? i dont think so.. obviously its instinctive to breed inside a hollow log or dug out hole in river bank... thats why they breed in caves that we make for them.... and they breed after a dry/wet spell - simulated by a water change... or when theres big barometric pressure drop indicating storm approaching... go back to dry/wet simulation... people try and bring too much into breeding fish when its dead simple...
 

Raul-7

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Oct 21, 2011
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Well it simpler to maintain a plantless tank. Plants need micros and K [assuming N/P] are provided by fish and food. They also need lighting. And they compete for O2 when the lights are out. Floating plants would be the best bet. They grow fast and are nutrient sponges.

I'd say simple would be BB and no lights, wouldn't it?
 

dw1305

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May 5, 2009
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Hi all,
Well it simpler to maintain a plantless tank.
They are easier in some ways, but you need to much better at water management.

I only have planted tanks, mainly because plants are the single factor that has the largest positive effect on water quality. There is a more complete discussion of this in our article: <Aeration and dissolved oxygen .....>

Plants need micros and K [assuming N/P] are provided by fish and food.
You don't need to add any nutrients, there are a whole range of plants that will grow in very nutrient poor situations.
They also need lighting.
They do, but it can be fairly low light and with a relatively short photo-period.
And they compete for O2 when the lights are out.
It is true that both plants and animals will be respiring at night, but actually planted tanks normally have higher dissolved oxygen levels at night than non-planted ones. There are several reasons for this:

One is that plants store oxygen in their tissues during the day, and mainly use this oxygen supply outside of the photo-period.

The second is that plants remove ammonium from the water column, and biological filtration (the conversion of NH3 - NO2 - NO3) is an oxygen intensive process. Less NH3/NH4+ means more oxygen.

A third is that plants will add oxygen to the water column when they are photosynthesising, meaning that the water will be fairly fully saturated with oxygen at the end of the photo-period. If you don't have plants you will have lower levels of oxygen to start with.

If you have fish death due to low oxygen levels in a planted tank it will always be at night, and often this leads to people to the not unresonable conclusion that "plants killed my fish", where realistically their fish would already have died without the plants.
Floating plants would be the best bet. They grow fast and are nutrient sponges.
I always have floating plants.

cheers Darrel
 

Bigjohnnofish

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:goodpost: very informative for people that arent plant savvy... one other thing i find with having plants is they will indicate to you very quickly when your nitrate levels are increasing by showing rapid growth and a darker green to their colour... but you also need to be switched on and observant to pick up these subtle changes early... i have had no adverse effects from using plants and never a death that could be related to using plants...

plants are cool :hug:
 

Raul-7

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Oct 21, 2011
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You can increase oxygenation by causing water turbulence at the surface [Amano does this in his planted tanks at night to prevent fish deaths] or you can add a Mazzei venturi or have a needle wheel pump [they can add between between 300-900L/H of air] just before your return pump.
 

dw1305

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Hi all,
one other thing i find with having plants is they will indicate to you very quickly when your nitrate levels are increasing by showing rapid growth and a darker green to their colour..
This was the idea behind the "Duckweed Index", basically you use the growth and colour of the plants as an indicator of the nutrient status of the tank water.

I chose a floating plant to take CO2 out of the equation.

There were a number of disadvantages to Duckweed, as well as the obvious one that it gets everywhere, it also doesn't grow very well in soft water, and it needs a reasonable level of nutrients to grow at all.

After a bit of trial and error I found that Amazon Frogbit (Limnobium laevgatum) was the perfect "duckweed". Frogbit will survive in very low nutrient conditions, and shows a rapid response in both growth and greenness when supplied with nutrients.
You can increase oxygenation by causing water turbulence at the surface [Amano does this in his planted tanks at night to prevent fish deaths] or you can add a Mazzei venturi or have a needle wheel pump [they can add between between 300-900L/H of air] just before your return pump
These a good suggestions, I always recommend the "Amano night-time air pump" to CO2 users to rapidly out-gas excess CO2, and if I don't have a "wet and dry filter" I like a venturi device on the external/internal filter outlet.

For low tech keepers, both planted and non-planted, lots of flow is a win, win situation, as it continually replenishes oxygen, and replenishes, or out gases, CO2 when it has been used by photosynthesis or built up due to respiration.

I'm definitely not saying that you can't maintain aeration and water quality in non-planted tanks, a lot of people can and do, but plants buy you some "wriggle room" for when circumstances mean that you can't spend as much time with he tanks as you would like.

If people are interested in this sort of area I'd recommend, <"Aeration and dissolved oxygen .....">. I wrote it after talking with a number of plec breeders and keepers about unexplained plec death (notably the much missed Bob Marklew "macvsog23"), and it was based upon these conversations and my experience working with the re-mediation of landfill leachate, as well as my own fairly amateur fish keeping.

cheers Darrel
 
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Bigjohnnofish

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yeah hit the nail on the head... frogbit in a lot of my tanks :) duckweed has been banned in my tanks for years now... but every now and then a bit sneaks in from somewhere and once seen its war on duckee lol :)
and when you get too much frogbit.... local fishop takes it off my hands...