Preparing for channa (aurantimaculata or pleurophtalma)

[Joao M]

This is how the tank looks atm (excuse the terrible pic; just a quick shot with the mobile)

It is starting to have the "jungle caos look" but not yet finished.
If I end up with the aurantis, I will add a few more plants (especially for the front); If I can only get pleuros, I believe I only need to rearrange them a lit bit. In any case I´ll add a few leaves and once I low the water level, one or two pieces of cork.

What do you think?

ps.1: I have no idea how I´m going to net the convict cichlid I have in the tank, just to keep the filters alive until I get the snakeheads....

ps.2: breaking news - I am also setting-up a 200 lts(55g) tank for a dwarf species. Bleheri,sp. assam, other? It will depend on what I can find

 

[-DC-]

Looks great!

Looks almost perfect for pleuro's .

For other species you'll want too pull the plans out to more of the center, let it fill in completely, add floating cover as well as come hides/caves, but pleuro's will do better with that open space.

Also Congrats on the second tank for them ! you've got the bug now lol haven't got the first species and setting up for another ! I'm also just waiting on the season to open, when the season hit's though I'm sure there will be many dwarf options available , i doubt I'll be so lucky here in Canada...

As for that convict don't worry about him, whatever species you end up with will get rid of him for you , much healthier then goldfish or guppies !

 

[Joao M]

Thanks DC
the pic doesn´t show it bu the back is fully covered by vallisneria and the big echonodorus in the center (that may be moved to another tank as the single plant; should that happen I have more valls for this one).
There are also lots of floating plants in there already and the idea is to have the surface fully covered, of course.

IF I can get the aurantis, I will add more caves and hides (there are 3 in there already but that is not enough).

As regards the other tank, I have a 55g(200lts) in good shape that I use for quarantine and a 42g (150lts) in bad shape that was going to be a sump. I chnaged the plans slighty and won´t be needing this tank for the sump.
So, I will use the 42g as a QT and convert the 55g to a SH dwarf species.Which one will depend on a species to be imported to my country.~

And you don´t see SHin our LFS. Only under special order...

 

[Joao M]

The convict has a "story" already..
A friend gave me 40-50 small ones when I got my (then baby) gars that needed live food 24/7. For some reason, this one made it and he is now around 3". He deserves to live somewhere, so I´ll try to catch him.
But, if he doesn´t cooperate...

 

[-DC-]

I had a red jewel like that, he was too aggressive for the small SA community, so we went in with some larger SA's and still caused problems lol, so he went into the Mbuna tank for a while, when that tank was shut down i had no place with tank ates suitable for him so I tossed him to my dwarf caimans tank where he lived for a year, when i swapped the caiman to a new home,the jewel went into a a snakehead tank (an old pair of auranti actually) and he lived there for almost a year and was moved into my mix monster tank with a nice sized gar, datniod, bichirs and large arowana, all fish in that tank 14-22" all large enough to eat him but he was fine lol.

Came close once, a large endlie had him half swallowed but spit him out and he somehow recovered and survived never went near that bichir again though ha ha ha. When he finally died he was back into a tank with similar sized cichlids,I will never know how he survived in those pred tanks. Just a smart fish I guess, he knew what end of the tankmates to avoid lol