Ripariums for Plant Filtration

Hi All,

This is one of my first posts here. I have been more active on some of the planted aquarium forums. Most of my setups are ripariums and I have grown some cool plants in them. These include some plants of particular botanical interest as well as attractive flowering and foliage specimens.

Here my riparium tank in a 65-gallon tank.



This one has various Echinodorus swords and other plants in the abovewater (emersed) area, and Hygrophila, Nymphaea & other low-tech plants in the underwater (immersed area).

Here is a shot of the fish that I have there.



I really like the Apistogramma a lot, and the tetras make a nice display too.

Most of the riparium setups that I have done have included the common community tropical fish, especially the kinds already popular for traditional planted tanks (tetras, barbs, platies, and others). I have wondered about trying to branch out into some group of fishes that are less commonly used in planted tanks. There are a number of compelling advantages that one might enjoy by keeping fish like cichlids, catfish or various oddballs in ripariums. For one, since most of the plant foliage is abovewater, it would be less susceptible to herbivory or other damage caused by fish. The plants are all supported in hanging or floating planters, so they should be less susceptible to damage caused by digging cichilds. The vigorous growth of the emersed plants should be quite effective as a mechanism of biological filtration. Unlike traditional planted tanks, the emersed riparium plants get all of the carbon that they need from the air, so they do not require CO2 injection to replace the gas as it is taken up by the fully immersed plants.

At any rate, this is an idea that I would like to explore further. I wan to ask around here some more for suggestions for larger and less common fish that might work in riparium setups, since most of my experience has been with smaller community fish.

Here is another new riparium tank that I am just starting to put together, in a 56-gallon Column.



I still haven't put much thought to fish seletion for this one, but I would like to try to include a more unusual cichlid or catfish. I will fill this one to 40% of its depth with water, so it will only have about 20 gallons of water. Does anybody have any suggestions for good fish to use?

Thanks so much for those suggestions. My 65 already has a bristlenose pleco, and like I said I am hoping to branch out into other things in addition to tetras. Although it could be be cool to find some kind of unusual centerpiece fish, then combine with a shoal of tetras.

Those acara cichlids sound interesting, although I see that the common one, Aequidens pulcher, gets pretty big. Do you know which species in particular stay smaller?

A good-sized shoal of cories is another option that comes to mind, although I might be limited to pygmy cories for this small volume of water. I wonder what other very small corie species there might be(?).

I have always like synodontis. Are there any small species that might be workable for 20-30 gallons of water?

Here is another one of my setups. This one is in a 120-gallon.



This is closer to what I have in mind for this new setup. I want to just have nice gravel and stones in the underwater area, but no plants. I also intend to fill the tank to about 2/3 full, then have a lot of the foliage growing up and out of the top.