Here are some pics of a tank I put up about 3 weeks ago.... hope you enjoy.... its a work in progress...
I work at Preuss Pets in Lansing, MI. You can check it out online at www.preusspets.com . We have a guy who travels to malaysia and africa and hand collects wood for us..... he gets us some pretty amazing wood......The wood looks awesome! Where did you get those pieces?
I really enjoy seeing native-type tanks.
Thanks for all of the adivce. I am not planning on spawning any of the fish. It is good to know how if I ever decided to.Nice! As for the fish, make sure the pumpkinseed is close to the bluegill's size. I use to have 4 redear sunfish and 2 warmouth with a dinner plate sized bluegill. 2 days after adding the lunker bluegill all redears were dead! One BAD fish! Warmouths were fine though.
Catfish are awesome! Bullheads get big quick though, and make plecos look clean as far as the poo factor goes. Shell out a little money and buy a tadpole madtom or other madtom species. All of the character that the bigger cats have bundled up in 5 inches.
I spawned pumpkinseeds 2 times in my 110gal, I think one major factor (besides live food) was that I did not use a heater. The aquarium would get cold during winter, and when summer hit and the water in the aquarium reached mid 70's BOOM! Tons of babies. Don't want to raise 200 fry? My bullhead answered that question for me, but the pumpkinseeds gave him a bad beating.
The other factor was that I had a sand pool in the middle of the tank. The sunfish would make a nest in the middle and left my plants alone, so a bit of sandy beach is a must. Plus the fish loved to root around the sand for food (and they left my plants alone!).
The best advice I can offer is that you should provide a fast stream of current somewhere. My sunfish used to be VERY territorial, and any crossing of boundary lines meant an instant beating! Torn fins ! One day I decided I wanted to make waterchanges a little easier on myself and put an unused powerhead in with the output on full blast to drain water quicker, and like other aquariumites out there I got real lazy when the tank was filled back up, so the powerhead was left running and in one section of the tank fish would get blown stupid.
After an hour I decided I should stop the raging river and turn the aquarium back into the lazy backwaters that the fish come from, but I noticed all 3 pumpkinseeds were crammed in a little 5% area of my tank, right in front of the output! From then on they still had their preferred territories, but half of the time they would swim like crazy in the jetstream. Aggression came to a halt! Except during breeding time...Add a powerhead to blow the fish stupid. They will thank you!!
I love your tank! Keep us updated!