My new pikes

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
fish speaker;1140996; said:
Nice group of pikes! Nice pic of the 142, too. Do you use CO2?

No I use the lowtech/Walstad method. Just a soil layer under the gravel and good lighting. And then lots and lots of plants. :)
 
Geez!! That tank looks tight! What plants did you have in there? I am looking to plant my 55gal once I set up my other tanks, and absolutely love your layout. What substrate exactly is it? I'm not really worried about the lights since I've gotta great hook up on them already...lol. Thankz in advance!
 
The substrate is aquaclay ground ( http://www.aquaclay.de/engl/index.htm ). I use it for all my tanks. The plants seem to really like it. It's a bit light though so it can be a bit problematic to get the plants to stick in the beginning.

I actually don't know exactly which plants I used. I bought a lot of different species and some worked and some didn't. The aquarium is open so I used a lot of floating plants and some of the big plants grew emergent. The large plants to the right was about 30-40cm above the water and had flowers when I moved the tank.

The lighting is 4x54W T5 with reflectors.

I should add that that picture is taken about 3 months after I set up the tank. It was growing really fast so I had to prune every week.
 
I really like your style J-. You and I have very similar tastes in both fish and tanks. Excellent work my friend!!! You are definitley raising the bar for me!! Stay tuned. Also I really hope that those fish continue to get along, if so , you have been smiled upon by the crenicichla gods!!!
 
The pikes have been in the 142g tank for a week now. They seem to like it a lot better than the small tank, eating a lot and getting some color. Except for some ancistrus catfish the only tankmate is a blue acara that they are getting along with very well. It seems to have tanken on some kind of big brother role, breaking up fights and so on.

Here are some new pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jegt/sets/72157602202848335/

Looks to me like I have one male and five females. One of the females is bigger than the other.

This is a male, right?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jegt/1457340314/in/set-72157602202848335/

And this is a female?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jegt/1456470401/in/set-72157602202848335/

So far I have been giving them guppies and shrimp mix which they seem to like.

There has been some fighting but nothing major so far. The male and the large female is definitely in charge among the pikes but even they are moving out of the way of the blue acara, don't know how long that will last though.

/ Jonas
 
Awesome!

Looking through those pics, it seems like there might be two different types of pikes in there - based on the shape of the suborbital stripe. Maybe the patterns aren't showing strong enough yet. Looking good!
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com