Need your opinions (pic)

Not yet, Kevin--I just set it up yesterday!

Jeff, what sort of floating plants are you thinking?

Carlos, I'm thinking a huge stand of C. ciliata could look quite impressive, maybe something simulating this type of habitat:

As I've thought about this, I've worked on a little bit of a direction to go with this tank:

I'm thinking of going along with Diana Walstad's "natural" tank method, since all the plants will most likely be root feeders and probably end up growing emmersed with the lowered water level. This would consist of a lower substrate layer of plain potting soil, covered with an equal layer of gravel (although I REALLY prefer the look of sand, but supposedly it prevent oxygen from reaching the bacteria in the soil).

For water circulation, I'm thinking of an Aquaclear powerhead (126 gph) or two with the Quickfilter attachment to help with chemical filtration. I assume this will be small enough to keep water moving, but not too much for the chocolates? I haven't ever used one of these powerheads, so input is appreciated.

Plants will consist of a bunch of C. ciliata. They will be on the left side (which is slightly inclined, which you can't really tell in the pic) and taper off. In the very back left I might also put in some H. corymbosa. Both these plants should do very well and end up emmersed in no time. I'm not sure about the other species of plant...and maybe I'll just stick with these two. Either way, I want the space beneath the water to be an absolute jungle of stalks and leaves, and I'll probably add a decent amount of magnolia leaf litter to the tank as well. I want it as overgrown as possible to create a nice swampy and covered environment for the chocos, especially breaking up fields of view to curb aggression, etc.

Thoughts?

Aaron, I do have a bit of a slope in this one...but I took the picture at a slight angle and a bit from above, so you can't quite see it. It's definitely not as dramatic as the smaller tank. I may move the tank this week, and when I do, I think I'm going to add more "drama" to the substrate.

I couldn't find C. cordata offered anywhere, so I wasn't sure of its price. I haven't found any information that specifically associates C. ciliata with chocolates, but I may have to make due.

Robert, I may go with C. ciliata (which I see you have available), instead. I'll definitely be getting ahold of you when I'm reading to stock the tank. I realize it gets pretty tall, and I actually hope that it does so I can get some really good emmersed growth in the tank (I believe the height of the tank is just shy of 24").

I dropped a line over in Diana Walstad's forum mat All Wet Thumb regarding my water parameters and the "natural" method. I would really like to go this direction, but my concern is that it may be difficult to maintain softwater conditions and still provide the plants what they need. However, being accustomed to those conditions anyway, they may be fine.

Thanks for the link, tsunami--I've never checked that place out before.

I kept 10 chocos in a 20 long a few years ago, and lost 3-4 simply from aggression. From what I could tell, there was definitely a dominant male of the group, and he focused most of his aggression on what seemed to be the fish at the bottom of the ladder (as did the others). Once the "bottom rung" fish was taken out, then next in line took the brunt of the aggression and so on. It's difficult to sex from males and females, but from I saw, it seemed there was a seperate but similar heirarchy that occured among the females as well. It could have been that with the number of fish I had in that tank, it was just too much, and I'm wondering if they would have naturally winnowed down their numbers to something smaller and more tolerable, and then the group would have sustained itself from there.

They weren't shy at all in regards to feeding, and when I housed them with a few rasbora species, they completely ignored them. However, when I temporarily housed a betta with them, the entire group of chocos were constantly being attacked by the lone betta. It was after this that I housed them in a species tank and was actually surprised at how nasty they were toward each other.

In a larger tank, I'm hoping to curb some of this aggression as it will provide more space for individuals to escape. And as I said earlier, I'm not going to worry too much about aquascaping initially, but rather allow things to just become overgrown and dense with stalks and plants to form a dense jungle for them (i.e. blocking lines of site, territories, etc.).

***

Here are some shots where chocolate gouramies were actually collected:





As you can see, what looks like the bottom of the pool is actually a mass carpet of plants covered with mulm and algae. The chocolates were hanging out beneath that carpet.



As far as translating something like this over to an aquarium, I'm thinking of probably have a slope and the left half or 2/3 of the tank would basically consist of a monospecific stand of C. blassii, both submerged and emmersed to create variation...and then opening up toward the front a little bit. Then a branch or a few twigs on the bottom in this open area and use some moss to give things an overgrown and swampy feeling of algae and whatnot.

Thoughts?