Sad news means new opportunity

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Talked with my LFS. They happen to have all three species of interest in stock right now! Yay!

Just one more question: the kribs are about an inch long only but apparently the ctenos are about that size too. What size ratio is appropriate to avoid the cteno from eating them? If they are the same size I'll definitely get them all in one shot, but if not I may have to reconsider. They eat anything about half their body size, correct?

Another option is a tank divider, which might be the way I go.
Anything undet half their size is liable to get eaten. i would say all at an inch is fine.

For plants Java fern, Amazon swords, vallisneria and hornwort will work.

Just make sure you have root tabs for swords or vallisneria and wood for the Java fern.

Hornwort is for the butterfly's to reside in and will give them nice cover.

Also make sure you have multiple caves or spots for the Kribs due to the nature of their breeding and so on, they all like to have a space
 
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Yep, got a conch shell and a bunch of ammonite/petrified wood frags for the krebs.

Is there a rule of thumb for width/mouth size? I mean if the ctenos are like 1.5 inches and the kribs like 1...idk. I'll have to play it by ear, thinking of a tank divider regardless if there is even a single doubt in my mind.

Hornwort floating? That'll get chewed up by the filter, won't it? Hornwort in my experience is a horrible mess of a plant. It just seems to fall apart more than anything and it will get caught in the water cycle and be pushed up and down by the filter as it cycles through. Unless you mean planted, but even then it gets chewed up super easy. I have some trouble lately getting these dumb plants to grow. One anubias is thriving, one is doing okay and another two are stagnating (all are from the same original plant though.) The tall plant that has a skinny "trunk" has been stalling too of late. No matter what I do, fish, no fish, water changes etc it just wants to grow algae on the leaves. I am thinking maybe a plant specific light, but that I've seen also grows a metric **** ton of algae. If my snails were to be sniped, ho boy....

What is a root tab?

Also is it NEEDED for butterflies to have floating plants? Or is just being at the surface unmolested fine?

Sorry to ask so many questions, I've been doing days of reading and getting as much info as I can is really important for me since I've kept none of these species before.
 
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There is no rule of thumb, but if the kribs are much smaller than the bushfish they may try and eat the kribs

Hornwort is fine for me with a sponge over the intake. if your plants are not growing well they will get algae on, you have like no bioload in the tank so there is basically nothing to feed the plants

Root tabs are fertiliser pellets you put in the substrate for plants

Buttefly fish like some cover, and still water. using a ring of airline tubing joined by a connector to form a circle breaks the surface current and gives them a still spot to sit
 
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Water lettuce is a nice floating plant that drops down cool looking roots (that you can snip if you want). I think that most fish like cover, and I think that floating plants make them feel more secure.

I love my cteno! He loves to explore around all of the live plants, and is a huge pig and an interactive begger. He also grew pretty quickly. I got him at about the 1.5 inch mark in June, and he's now about 4 inches. He is captive bred - not sure if that makes any difference in growth. He was fine for a while with my large rummy nose tetras, but then one day he found them and it was over for them, even the big ones, so I had to remove them. He actually took a dislike to my white tipped tetras and started to harass them, so they had to go, too. It wasn't about eating them, it was about chasing them aggressively, which I found to be strange. He is fine with congos. I'm not sure how quickly kribs grow.... it might work at this size if they grow at a similar rate.
 
After a bacterial infection raged my bichir tank and killed my two bigger ones almost 8 months ago, I had a healthy and happy single male bichir left. I then changed the carbon this week and he decided it was time to stop eating, dying a few days later after losing weight rapidly. No idea what happened, only difference was that I changed the carbon. All the water parameters are fine, if not better, than before the carbon was changed.

Sad days indeed, but now I have a fully cycled, well maintained planted 45 gallon tank with 5 2 year old snails cleaning the hell out of it (it's spotless, though algae does like growing on this one plant.) It has no fish in it.

I'm thinking I want to put smaller cichlids in, but I am not sure. Maybe Neolamprologus brichardi? Maybe a single axolotl? Maybe a single Greater Siren? It is actually surprisingly difficult to get specific species in my city (Calgary) as one LFS was just closed down, another one is an abhorrent cancer and the third one typically only has one aisle of neat fish, spamming generic cichlids and guppies in all their others. The other stores are all mostly chain stores that have given me various parasites at times so I don't want to go back to them.

Any suggestions? I want something hardy because I sometimes have to go away for a week at a time, but something that will either be tremendously cool or maybe breed for me because yay babies. :)
Simple solution.....Trade it in for a bigger tank :cool: you know you want to.
 
Be sure to add a couple zebra nerites .why? Because their cool!

I already have 2 that are well established and 3 black cone snails that keep the glass spotless.

I Settled on one Ctenopoma and 6 keyhole cichlids. They were like a third the price of the kribs (20 bucks each) and I really prefer the look of these tall bodied south american cichlids.

HOORAY
 
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