By the way, this post is a bit long, so if your in a hurry I'd suggest you come back later!
Background, for the past two years previously I'd been running my Clearseal 119 litre (48 x 12 x 15 inch - 25 Gallon in old money) as a wild aquarium, I say wild, because the algae, plants where allowed grow where ever with little or no interference from me. If leaves died I left them for the snails and shrimp, some trimming of the plants if they where filling the tank too much, and only did general maintenance, waterchanges and daily dosing of ferts.
Some of you may remember this picture below of the Endler tank before the change in January 2017 from my first post.
So I removed the rocks from the previous set-up to increase the water volume, added more driftwood, then added quite few botanicals which were purchased from Blackwater UK. Continued with my two large Chinese air sponge filters, never going back powered filters I find them too unreliable long term. Heating is taken care with a Eheim Jager 150 watt and lighting as before a T8 Arcadia LED Tropical and two Chinese ebay LED waterproof light tubes, yes I know but their cheap and do work well. Lighting was set up for four hours morning and again in the evening. Most of the plants species where removed too just leaving Amazon Swords, Java moss, Nymphaea Lotus lilies and Brazilian waterweed (Egeria densa) great plant but this I found it would die off up the stems and grow across the surface instead cutting the light out and oh boy did it grow! Later the this plant I replaced with Najas guadalupensis better known to some of you as Guppy grass.
Leaf litter was added weekly using whole and torn up Catappa leaves plus some whole leaves left floating after every waterchange. The torn parts would sink within a day, the whole leaves could take anywhere between three to six days to succumb. All of botanicals, which where never pre-soaked and sank to the bottom in their own time where ever they fell. The algae was left to grow no matter what type, Cladophora, Green Spot Algae, Hair algae, Oedogonium, Staghorn and even some Black Brush Algae on the wood appeared over the life of this system. Except for the front and side glass I would remove the algae before each waterchange and overtime as the tank matured a lot of the varieties of algae's disappeared on their own. I knew this would happen overtime with some species but not as much as I expected. Neither to say the BBA algae didn't go but didn't get any worse either. If something of decor got accidentally moved during maintenance, it was simply left where it ended up. After all no-one rearranges logs, branches, seed cases or plants in the wild. The Monkey pot at the front of the aquarium spent it's first month spinning around at the top of the water column at the front glass until it sunk upside down, later I knocked the pot over during a waterchange. One note I will make to you is I found best to use a old prefilter sponge on my siphon tube, otherwise half a ton of leaves, shrimp, and other decor leave the tank rather rapidly!
Wild aquarium at eighteen months old.
My wife remarked ''it looks like an overgrown garden'' till I showed her some videos on YouTube showing Endlers in the wild and other underwater footage from South America rivers and streams.
Results over this time were very good and interesting. The ammonia was a concern with amount of decaying leaf litter that had been introduced on a weekly basis, but I need not of worried as the NH3/4 stayed at zero though out the life of this set-up, plus I was performing a 50% waterchange regime every weekend probably helped. The PH was 7.8-8.0, I live in a very hard water area not that the Endlers or Neocaridina Shrimp mind and Nitrate hung around 20 to 30 ppm but there was no ill effects to the fauna. Plants were dosed with Easylife Profito daily at 2ml's and at no time was any CO2 added to this aquarium, only natural cycle. The Cherry Shrimp population went though the roof despite the amount of Endlers housed at any one time in the aquarium. I put this down the to the amount of Java moss but mostly the leaf litter which was covering most of the exposed substrate and that's where I would see most the young Shrimp feeding and hiding. The substrate was pure aquarium Unipac gravel and JBL Sansibar River sand and where it had become thick with decomposing leaf litter I observed various white worms living within the brown layer of sediment and there was a constant haze of Infusoria over the decaying leaves above.
The Endlers thrived, the males colours were amazing but like all livebearers I had keep on top of the population and selling on Endlers every three months or so. Eventually I swapped some thirty Endlers with my local fish shop for some X-Ray Tetras - Pristella maxillaris and Black Neon Tetra - Hyphessobrycon herbertaxelrodi as fry control and to a point this did work for a while but hit the young shrimp population. Despite the high bio load this set-up worked well, the water parameters seem to hold probably due to the weekly waterchanges and high volume of plant life growing.
If your still with me, not got bored or fallen asleep, I'll go on.
Most of the Neocaridina Shrimp returned to wild form over the life of this set-up, but all the same, the shrimp numbers run into the hundreds, possibly more. The only real issue I did have during hot weather the Shrimp population did seem to suffer as well as the odd algae bloom. Maybe it was to be expected with type of set up. Interestingly all the nuisance bladder snails disappeared over first six months and I did think they would breed into their thousands and out populate the Endlers, yet they all vanished with no intervention from yours truly. This question I just cannot explain why.
On conclusion, it was all in all very successful aquarium and I'm still amazed I didn't have more troubles or get something like a disease or even outbreak of pests like Hydra. I think anyone with a reasonable amount of fishkeeping knowledge could managed this type of set-up and maybe even maintain longer than I did. Maybe try this set-up with a soil substrate and only use Tetra or Rasboras from the start and not have a constant battle keeping livebearer numbers down! .
By the start of December 2019 I was thinking seriously of changing the set-up to something more in line with a community aquarium which I hadn't had for quite sometime now and wanted to come away from livebearers. Much as I love them, they are a bit of a breeding nuisance. So I sold off the last of adult Endlers, Shrimps and any plants I no longer wanted to my local dealer in mid December and began changing the system once more.
Same equipment as before but this time I have cleaned the substrate, removed all the leaf litter, kept the botanicals and all the driftwood. Removed all the plants except two large Amazon Swords, a small amount of Java Moss and kept two Lotus Lilies, one green, one red, both I found have sent out runners, so the lilies should start appearing around the aquarium. All inmates where moved out during this time because of the worry of a getting ammonia spike, of which there was a minor one. Once the fish were returned a 10% waterchange was carried out for the first five days and daily testing just to be on the safe side. During the life of the previous set-up I never saw my Zebra Nerite snails, yet was surprised to find them still doing well, so they will be staying on.
Since the completion of this new set-up I purchased 8 Zebra Danios plus 6 Black Ruby Barbs to add to the 8 Black Neons and 6 X-Ray Tetras already housed in the aquarium which means this system is now fully stocked. Your all going to laugh, I have never kept Zebra Danios before, not ever so this is a first for me, don't think I want to ever and try and catch them anytime soon though! Catappa leaves, this time I will add a couple of once a month, with waterchange routine as before, 50% every weekend. That size waterchange might seem extreme to some but ever since I have done such volumes I don't seem to get any issues with my aquariums. Lighting photo period will be as before and dosing will be 2.5ml of Easylife Profito once a week. Inverts, I also added some Ramshorn snails as well as the Zebra Nerite snails and there are still some Neocaridina Shrimp but they are wild colour form and I have noticed they have become a little more secretive now and the fish haven't taken any notice of them so far. We shall see how they get on with their new camouflage, I will keep you posted one that issue along with more images.
If your wonder about any left over fry, well at the moment they are now in a 20 litre tank beside the main aquarium. Some 20 to 30 youngsters plus young shrimp are in there, once the Endlers are big enough I will be selling them on. The Shrimp, well who knows what I'll do with them... Prawn cocktail, now there's an idea!
