how would you create a pangio oblonga heaven in a 29 gallon?

[Prometheus]

so, if you had a 29 gallon, and you were going to turn it into a veritable paradise for a bunch of cute rambunctious little pangio oblongas, what would you do? (im reorganizing my tank... and one of its main focuses now will be the black khulis, so... im not asking just for entertainment purposes, im asking cause i want to provide them with a fantastic home)

 

[aclockworkorange]

Sand and plenty of places to be creepy little loaches.

 

[Prometheus]

that's along the line of what i was thinking. iv already got sand, its that fine sand that you can find at petsmart, so im good there. i guess i could do tons of tangles of driftwood. i just removed all my driftwood though cause i got tired of the tannis always making my water less than perfect. i suppose i could cover the top with floating plants and have a fairly bare bottom... i wonder if the khulis would like that.

 

[andyjs]

When they're really active, they don't stick to the bottom, they're all over the place. I agree with sand. I'd leave maybe half of the bottom open, then fill the rest with driftwood and plants to hide in

 

[Mark Duffill]

A nice fine sand on the bottom and plenty of big cobbles in piles with smaller pebbles spread around them, they go wild chasing food into crevices, some nice wood rising up into the tank with Java fern or similar on it as the pangio's will move up into the water and swim in among the leaves and roots.

This was my tank that I spawned P.oblonga and a couple of other Pangio's in, the dither fish were Danio tinwini

 

[Prometheus]

im impressed Duff, i really like that tank.

so... here's what iv got so far, i took the driftwood out of the pico and put it all back in the 29 so they'd have little "houses" to live in -and under. i think the next step is to add some large floating plants with low hanging root systems and a few more mid-sized plants in the back; mid-sized as in i don't want any more enormous amazon swords that take up practically the whole aquarium. im gonna leave pretty much the whole front area open to give them room to zip back and forth across the length of the tank.

 

[Desert Bus]

I had the giant Amazon Sword problem as well. I fixed it by putting my current Amazon Sword into a corner. It restricts the size of the sword's normally massive root system, resulting in a stunted plant.