Sue's Fish May 2017

More photos 

Great pics, Sue, and thanks - wow, what a contrast in colour between dominant and subordinate males.

How lush your tank is - and you're always saying that you can't keep plants. It is very impressive.

I have a massive soft spot for stiphodons. 

Me too!

@Sue your tank is looking fantastic! The colour of my Rams can change very quickly indeed and from stripes to spots... fascinating to watch.

The stiphodons look great.    All your fishies look happy and you've created a lovely habitat for them.

Thank you all for your kind comments 

I should have added to the first post that the tank is a custom build by ND Aquatics. It is 107 cm wide x 45 cm deep by 45 cm tall. The odd length is because they worked in inches and the sizes convert to 42 x 18 x 18 inches.
I measured the water in and it took 188 litres though I have added more wood since then so I call it 180 litres.
Plants include Java fern, both ordinary and Wendelov, several different species of anubias and bolbitis all attached to wood; hornwort wound round the branches of a piece of wood; floating water spirite (Ceratopteris cornuta) and Bucephalandra maia attached to a couple of stones.

I have it both tanks, on a big piece of wood in the 180 and a tiny piece in the betta's tank. It is doing well in both tanks. It has grown black brush/beard algae in the past but the floating plants have reduced that so the problem was probably too much light.
If you look at a big view of the whole tank photo, the bolbitis is the plant at the bottom end of the heater behind a clump of anubias. You can also see it in the last photo of the rasboras (with a couple of bits of Java moss sticking out of it). And I've also noticed the dominant male stiphodon at the bottom of this photo.

The plant at the front left of the whole tank photo in front of the filter is the Wendelov Java fern, Microsorum pteropus Wendelov, (with Anubias barteri var. coffeefolia on the same piece of wood) which does create a similar effect to the bolbitis.

At the back left is Anubias barteri barteri, there is a tiny bit of Anubias barteris var. nana bonzai out of sight, the one at the far right is A. lanceolata and the one more of less in the middle is A. hastifolia.

These are all slow growing, low light plants so they do take a while to achieve bushiness.




I should add that there is a decorative background on the tank. There is a fair amount of algae on the back wall which I can't reach to scrape off so it dulls the colours down somewhat. But the picture is rocks at the top, brown and brown/white stripey, and at the bottom lots of those plants that look a bit like grass. Any plant that looks like it is growng in the substrate is just the background 

2 dark males, wow 

They are lovely looking fish.

As for bolbitis, I bought one a while back, with plans to put it in the river tank when set up, so put it in my plant storage tank. The leaves died back and I thought I'd killed it, but looking at it more recently it has grown all new leaves (slowly) and looks great.

@Matt  Here is a photo of my Bolbitis so you can see that is doing fine in my tank. However I will admit that it is a slow growing plant and this is a few years old.
The advantage of plants that grow on decor is that you can move them round whenever you feel like it.

I moved the Bolbitis to the front during Wednesday's water change, and it was two days later that I noticed 2 dark blue stiphodons. I wonder if rearranging the tank was the cause?

Wow, Sue that looks great! Are all your plants attached to decor? (I remember when you had plastic plants in your tank!  )

Helen knows my reputation from the old forum. I killed every plant I put in the tank back then 


All my plants are attached to wood except the bucephelandra which is attached to rocks, and the water sprite which is floating on the surface.