Before leaving the house today I did some home work on describing the tank conditions I keep my Stiphodons and how I retrieved the fry. Since this is a work in progress do not mind typos but questions and advice is always welcome. Pictures wil follow in day or two.
Housing of the group
A group of 6 Stiphodon rutilaureus composed of 2 males and 4 females is housed in a 60*30*40 cm tank containing 45 liter water.
Layout of the tank
The bottom of the tank is covered with gravel sized 3-5 mm. On both sides of the tank sheets of lime stone are stacked horizontally in such way that a three- to four- floored “apartment” building is formed, thus allowing two territories to be formed. Some plants are put in the middle area such as Hygrophila polysperma, Elodea densa and Lysimachia nummularia aurea. The plants are to provide some cover but are not allowed to dominate, finally scattered over the floor are some lime stone chips.
Technical aspects
The tank is situated in front of a window facing north east thus allowing sunlight from sunrise for about 90 minutes. Additional light comes from a single T8 (Philips 827) from 9 am til 9 pm.
The tank is filtered over a pot filter of 1.2 liter that is driven by a 330 L/h pump creating quite some current.
The temperature is kept at 25 degrees C.
Water treatment
Every other week 10 L of water is removed and replaced with 10 L cold (!) tap water. Based on a daily basis, plant fertilizer and chelated iron is added to stimulate plant and algae growth.
No additional CO2 is added.
Water Values
Water temperature: 25 degrees C
pH: 7.2 (measured with calibrated Milwaukee pH 600)
KH: 6.0 (measured by drop test from Sera in “sensitive mode”= double volume)
Maintenance of the tank
Algae are allowed to grow in the tank however, green algae are removed from the glass although not very thoroughly because I don't want to disturb the inhabitants. Hairy algae are removed if they cover more than 5 % of the tank.
Plants are trimmed if they grow higher than about half the height of the water level ( I have seen pictures of the natural habitat and these streams seem to be devoid of plant life and is flooded with light. Streams are in open grassland so little shade is provided.).
Feeding of the parental fish
The fish are always seen grazing on algae. Initially when I got them they stayed in a well planted 23 L tank together with some cherry shrimp and in that tank they seemed to enjoy the hairy algae growing on the back ground the best. They never touched the Vipachips from Sera but they loved the Wels-chips from the same manufacturer. That is until this day what they eat, however there is an article (I think it was in a German aquaristic magazine) that postulates that fish eating algae are actually also absorbing a substantial portion of biofilm. So there is a debate on how vegetarian these grazing fish really are. That is also why I try to do as little on the tank as possible, in order to obtain a (near) complete as possible spectrum of bacteria and aquatic plankton.
