My new favorite for planted community fish

[greenlangtern]

Well I got a 20 gal acrylic cube, its been setup since late january but most things were put in as I bought them. Now its got pressurized CO2 system, nano koralia pump, eheiem filter, and a coralife 6700K 96 Watt Light fixture.

There are three cherry shrimp and these awesome looking guys:

Know what they are? They are Native to the U.S.

They are Pygmy Sunfish. (Elassoma evergladei) and (Elassoma okefenokee) only grow up to 3.4 cm ~ 1.3 in.

Nice fish to have, get really nice colors. Also I was wondering if anyone has recommendations on helping my plants live. Some are starting to melt away as in the pics and some have lots of algae.

What kind of fish/invertebrate eats algae best and won't bother my shrimp/pygmies. I also got a lot of algae on the acrylic too, should I get someOtocinclus or some other algae eater?

 

[Ullopincrate]

I've never seen a pygmy sunfish. Where in the US would one acquire this particular species? Very cool

 

[greenlangtern]

I recently bought mine from Paul @ http://www.aquaculturestore.com/fwverts.html
They all survived the shipping and he even gave me an extra of both species. Mine are eating brine shrimp and small tubifex worms.

 

[greenlangtern]

They are supposedly native in Florida and north carolina. Only thing that annoys me is that they are pretty shy fish and like to stick to the bottom, but once they live in there for long they occassionally swim around mid water level.

Oh and I got some Phoxinus oreas - Mountain Redbelly Dace from Paul too. They are cool fish too except they swim a whole lot and much too fast (they mess up my substrate eventually) so they are in another tank with some danios. They are also pretty big too I got a big one thats about 2 inches and looks like its about to blow out some eggs because of its fat belly.

 

[Itsadeepbluesea]

Did you have a good experience with Aquaculturestore.com? I discovered them the other day and was thinking about getting some blue spotted sunfish from there. How long did the shipping take?

 

[greenlangtern]

I had a good experience with them. Nice prices, healthy fish, and approximately 2 days of shipping. Fish all arrived alive and well, including a 6 in. red fin pickerel.