Update.
Been out doing my favourite thing,buying new fish.
I've also been busy setting up a new scape for my Bolivian ram biotope.
First of all the scape.
I've been studying the rio mamore, rio guapore and rio maderia.
These are the natural ranges of the Bolivian ram.
The Bolivian ram tends to hang in loose groups near the rivers edge or in flooded forests amongst tree trunks and roots.
The substrate is sandy and covered in leaves, branches,fallen seed pods, nuts and fruits from over growing trees that form a canopy over some of the floodplains.
This was what I wanted to try and mimic in my tank.
I already had lots of driftwood, but for this tank I felt I needed more.
I found some large beech tree branches that were ideal for what I had in mind.
They were totally dried out and they were big.
They were perfect to mimic tree trunks in the flooded forest look I had in mind.
These combined with all the branches I already had were just enough to complete the look I wanted.
I also wanted a lot of leaf litter in this tank. I normally collect my own, however this time I decided to try catappa leaves and have 200 of them to play with.
The next thing I wanted were some caves as I'm planning on adding an Apistogramma harem. I'm leaning towards Apistogramma trifasciata. They are biotope correct and I like the look of them.
For caves I looked into various seed pods. The more I looked the more interesting things I found to scatter among my substrate. For this I used savu pods,monkey pods,jungle pods and smashed coconut.
All these items mixed with catappa and various other leaves made a very natural look sitting on the sand and providing many spawn sites and areas of refuge.
Enough about the scape for now,on to the fish.
Fish i have so far..
11 Bolivian rams
6 rineloricaria whiptail catfish
21 bentosi tetra
200 black neons.
I'm really pleased with the way this tank is going. The black neons are incredible in numbers and they have kind of stole the show from my Bolivian rams.
That's it for now. Pictures will come when it's finished.
