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Ok, so I have descided to do a Brazilian Amazon biotope for my new house. It will consist of hatchet fish on top, many dwarf cichlids in the middle, and for the cleanup crew I am going to have two shoals of dwarf cory. I am thinking of 2 to 3 dwarf cory shoals and then a pleco i think. I can use otocinclus but I can purchace an L030]http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loricari/oliganci/1807_F.PHP[/link] for 25 dollars. Its not from the amazon but it is from brazil. There are also two amazon plecos that I may find somewere they are [link=L183]http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loricari/ancistru/221_F.PHP[/link] and [link=L015. These are all planning on going into an 80g planted pressurized co2 tank with native plants. So here the poll is between the algae eaters at this point as the rest is pretty much selected. Please keep in mind I am going for colour or unique patterns in dwarf fish (smaller than average for their spieces)

All of the species above, especially L-15 are fastwater fish, mostly blackwater. Oxygen is quite important to these species, and thus, a stagnant, planted environment is not one that suits them well. I'd stick to ottos. L-15 is from the Rio Xingu, by the way.

If you really want a "biotope" tank for your fish, you're better off with a nonplanted, sand substrate tank with high turnover, containing a few driftwood tangles and HEAVILY interspersed with rockwork. You could call it the jack-of-all-trades loricariid tank (after all, Amazon really isn't a biotope).

Fish base has them in the amazon also. The L015's that is. I know that they need fast water, I am planning on having at least one power head from the sump tank I was thinking moving 300-600gph would be good. Is that to slow? At this point I am thinking that ottos would still be best but I am basically looking for confirmation as to a reason not to go and buy the L30

Powerheads aren't the only issue. The primary point worthy of note is, of course, the CO2 injection.

Most exports of pckoltia sp. L-15 come from the Xingu. While they are found in several areas (depending on who you talk to, these variants are new species) throughout the lower Amazon basin, it is more expedient and easy on the pocketbook to pluck them from the blooming aquarium trade that has established itself on said river, especially Altamira.

L-30: They grow large (moreso than the former two species, IME) and can be plant destructive. If that's not means enough to deter you, than go right ahead; it should still do fine and prosper in your tank.

Earlier on I had the plant thought and remembered the old pleco But its enough argument. I just dread seeing algae again and the ottos arnt up for the task of my normal algae problems (green spot and bb)I dont see it much in the larger tanks but the problems are the silicats (diatoms) and phosphate/nitrate from the tap I am getting a large RO in the new system so it should be a solution to most of the problems so... OTTOS forevery one!

I don't know if Cup would agree with me on this, and whether your budget would stand it, but a team of Otocinclus cocama, the Zebra or Tiger Otocinclus, would probably do VERY well in your setup, and be an efficient algae control into the bargain.

I know I'd LOVE to have these guys, but here in the UJK they're still £30 each - that's around $50 US per fish! (Yeep).


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Easily. Otocinclus are slow-water fish, far preferring the stagnant leaf litter of charcal dead-ends to the fast flowing white/blackwaters many of our other conventional loricariidae are accustomed to.

Well I kinda have no budget on three tanks. I will be pouring money into a lot of apistogrammas I am still having trouble finding out exactly what plants I need for this tank. These Otocinclus cocama sound neat just got to find them, I will have to check aquabid.com I guess.


What is the best sand, or should I say most like actual brazilian amazon clear water sand. I think I may get a passport and make a trip to brazil and do the research there it may be easier That may be a lil dangerous and out of my budget but it would be great. I know amazon swords and I heared banana plant. And top dwelling plant Amazon Frogbit maybe. Biotope plants are hard to find when sales sites dont give you the information. Tropica.com does but you cant buy tropica plants in the USA well either way I can look on liveaquaria and aquariumplants.com.

I have 2 L030 in my tank and cant get enough of them.

The male is larger then the female and is very scared with people come up to see him. the female has no problems with anything.

I havent had a problem with them in regards to plants.

Cheers

A little comment about 'Amazon biotope' is apposite here, by the way.

The Amazon isn't just a river all on its own - it's a river system. The Amazon proper is itself a 4,000 mile river, that is capable of taking ocean going steamships for 2,000 miles of its length, right the way up to the inland port of Manaus. For at least 500 miles of its length, it's big enough to sail an aircraft carrier on. Toward the exit to the sea, it's so wide that you can't see the south bank from the north - it looks to the untrained eye as if you're on the seashore, other than the fact that if you taste the water, it's most definiitely fresh.

Add to this that something like sizteen other rivers greater than 1,000 miles long feed directly into it, and you have some idea of how much water we're dealing with. no less than 20% of the entire world's supply of fresh water passes through the Amazon or one of its feeder rivers. This is a watercourse constructed on an epic scale, and there's room in all of that water for literally millions of distinct biotopes. Chances are that even if you devoted your life to the enterprise, you would not live long enough to catalogue them all, let alone describe them in detail with respect to constituent species. It's entirely possible to pick a spot, study it, and find that just a mile upstream or downstream you're dealing with a completely different fish population. You could find one selection of Catfishes and small Characins living in the first location, and discover a separate selection of species living in the other. Chances are that when all the scientiifc work is done, 'biotopes' will have to be classified by GPS references because there are so many of them waiting to be discovered and analysed.

Take my aquarium as an example. I think it unlikely that you would find Panda Corys, Cardinal Tetras and otocinclus living side by side. To that extent, my aquarium is 'South American', but it's not a faithful representation of any one part of it. It just so happens that throughout that vast body of water, parameters are sufficiently similar to allow a range of fishes from different parts of the Amazon river system to live together in an aquarium. Even then, there are areas with distinct differences - the Rio Negro, home to my Cardinals, is a blackwater river that contains significant quantities of humic acids that aren't found in the streams inhabited in the wild by my Pandas. Cardinals will live in aquarium water adapted to the Pandas, and mine have even spawned once or twice in it, but it's moot as to whether any baby Cardinals would result from this, not least because Cardinals have very specialised requirements for breeding. Likewise, my Otocinclus, while happy in my aquarium, probably won't breed in it, and indeed persuading Otocinclus to breed in an aquarium is still something of a challenge for experienced aquarists. It's something I'll have a go at one day, but I'll have to think long and hard planning the project beforehand. I'll probably need a LOT more Bacopa in the aquarium too!

Of course, the beauty of all this is that if you DO want to set up a 'biotope' aquarium, you have literally millions of options. Getting the biotope aquarium 'right' in the sense that it mimics to a decent degree of precision the body of water you've set out to mimic, is of course a nice exercise for you to decide how much time, money and intellectual effort you're going to dedicate thereto. Go for it by all means, and don't be worried at the start if you don't manage to mimic every last nit picking detail, because part of the fun of going down the biotope route is learning what lives together in your chosen locale, and how those fishes live together. You have the opportunity to do something that is the envy of everyone who keeps land based animals, namely mimic with a decent level of accuracy the real life home of your fishes, and within an affordable budget - one of the reasons fishkeeping is so utterly marvellous!

For example, if I was a parrot keeper, and I wanted to build a 'biotope aviary' for Golden Conures, for example, have you any idea what the budget would be like? First I'd need a building capable of enclosing a 100ft tall tree! Then I'd need to keep it heated and at the right humidity - my fuel bills would be astronomical! Then I'd have to import all the correct organisms (including the tree), and even if I grew the tree from a sapling, the cost for the exercise would again be horrendous. I'd be looking at a multi-million pound civil engineering project just for the building - to give you an idea, a building of the requisite size has recently been built in my home town as a healtcare facility, and the construction costs alone were in excess of £10 million. That's before fitting out is even considered. Then there's the running costs - I'd be looking at £20,000 a year minimum in fuel costs. To help me run it, I'd have to hire staff and pay them. To pay for all of this, I'd have to take paying visitors and make it a public zoo.

You and I. on the other hand, can create a decent facimile of the underwater rainforest that is much of the Amazon on a budget that is a tiny fraction of one per cent of the costs of replicating rainforest on land in a temperate climate. Isn't that just so amazing?

Go and do it. Don't be afraid to make mistakes along the way, and don't let the nit-picking details become an obsession unless you've the time and money to devote to that. let the exercise teach you things. Learn from it. And above all, enjoy it. Because you can create in your living room a 'window on the world far away' that, within its limitations, will be just that, and which will give you one HELL of a feeling of satisfaction once it's in place. You'll have achieved something, learned a lot along the way, and be able to hold your head up high in the knowledge that when people start wittering on about conservation and biodiversity, you'll have a stack of solid knowledge that in all probablility they don't. You'll have come a long way at the end of it, and you'll be a force to be reckoned with. Go do it, embark on the adventure, and feel yourself grow as you do.

Good grief, did I just write that?

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Yes, quite a mouthful though I can't say much because I am very wordy. However, It was very good and well stated. I do agree that the amazon biotope is a wide scope and the reason I went to the wide upper basin was because that was the place the fish I chose were found and was able to narrow it down easily from the fish that I wanted. I found a wonderfully piece on the amazon biotope on this website. I stumbled on that site when following a link little fish produced for aquarium plants. This will get me started.

I think that when it comes to the biotope idea that I may just go down to the river rent a house boat or something and troll around looking for fish that I want to build a biotope around using information on where they were collected. This may well be out of the scope of a reasonable persons trip but I believe it may in fact be the only way to accurately create a biotope. Besides how should one expect to assemble a biotope of a river for which he has never seen.

But obviously for now I am stuck with books and the Internet and searching down this information while time consuming is very fun for me. I love the challenge and just as I am feeling confident in my abilities as a fish-keeper I feel that I am up for some new challenges. So foraging on this path of the biotope and breeding some fish and maybe cutting my teeth on something never done before in a couple of decades or so.

The experience of keeping fish has been rewarding for me especially since my body is limited in what it can do. Though bending over a tank for 3+ hours is tough, I can always take a break because the fish will be there in a few hours and as long as they have water, heat, and a filter they will live.

All in all it should be said that a lot of my success with fish is owed greatly in part to the members and moderators and administrators here at fishprofiles and hope that I to can share my knowledge with other fledglings more than how to test water and select lights. Everyday I am humbled and everyday I am given a reason to learn more.

Thank you, and thank the rest of our group for without you many fish would be sent to the great tank in the sky... or down the toilet... ahem, I think I am venturing into a cheesy hole from which I may never return!

Michael

Best of luck with your Amazon biotope. It'll be amazing and pics when done please

ps - Zebra otos ARE amazing otos, my fave although I don't have any yet. Last time I seen them in a store down here they were $10. Canadian dollars. (About 9 US dollars ?) each but don't know if they're in stock anymore. $50. U.S seems a bit like robbery.

The Amazon Nut...