Under the Surface

Another macro shot.

New inhabitant in the small tank. Net works fine so far! I was afraid these ones would get stuck in it.

If this doesn’t work I’m giving up this tank. The fish and shrimps constantly end up in the sump area and it drives me nuts to catch them from there!!

Update on the stream tank.

Yes :) I’m not entirely sure how I would catch fish illegally in Thailand. How to bring fish in to EU is another story, but I have done that legally as well, even arguably against airliner regulations.

Updated photo of the large tank. More monstera now, as you can see. 😊 I have “upgraded“ the previous 6000l/h ATK pump to this one: https://aqualight.de/easypumpe-24v-dc-sixpole-ep-12.000l/h-mit-digitalsteuerung Its 12 000 l/h so the water flow is significantly higher whish is very nice indeed. However, the new pump is also somewhat noisy. I find that to be quite annoying. The old ones where almost completely silent, so maybe I’ll buy a higher flow ATK someday. Expensive though… Also I bought new bulbs for the MH light. That made such a massive difference. I have realised that I have been focusing too much on light temperature, and to little on colour accuracy when I have bought bulbs previously. These are 4000 K which is less than the “correct” 6000 K. But they have a CRI (colour rendering index) over 95, which is very good. It’s probably the best bulbs I’ve ever had. Photo taken with iPhone 12 Pro, and edited in Lightroom. The dynamic range of this picture is the perfect use case for computational photography. It’s impossible to expose correctly with a “real” camera, and since the fish move around so much, multi exposure HDR is not really an option either.

Really happy with this project at the moment. Had a CO2 incident a month ago that probably killed half of the fish and introduced a lot of algae. Most of the plants have recovered nicely by now so I seized the opportunity to take a couple of shots while it’s looking good!

The best way to feed loaches in a heavily populated tank is to bury the food!

The new tank from three different angles. After two months or so it’s maturing nicely, and the algae growth is really not that much of an issue anymore. Now lit by an AI Prime that produces a wonderful light but also a horribly annoying noise from the fan. Hopefully it can be fixed.

Side view of my new project. Freshwater in an Aqua Medic Cubicus. Looking good so far, but still waiting for the right light. Now it’s being lit by a daylight LED from Amazon (Gosun). But its not as crisp as I would like it. Will get a AI Prime freshwater. Tank is 50x50x50 cm excluding the “sump” at the right side.

My daughter’s tank. I’ve posted it before, but I think it looks better now then ever. The only equipment is a thick filter mat that doubles as background and a really small pump. Cheap LED light from Ebay. Four tetras species, lots of ramshorn snails, and shrimps.

Danio kerri close up. They are insanely difficult to catch on camera.

Short clip from Prachuap Krikan province, Thailand showing schistura sp in their natural habitat. Not the spot where I have collected mine.

Really happy with this little aquarium stand. It’s a fairly new IKEA system called BROR. Cost next to nothing and rated to carry 130 kg per shelf. Also looks much better than your typical aluminium profiles. I’m using the largest shelves 85x55 cm.