Marc's fish room build

[Viktor Jarikov]

Great job. Lovely and enviable feeling when much labor starts to pay off bit by bit.

[SLIMESLAYER10]

Looking good! where did you get your Aphanotorulus ammophilus from? I have never seen them for sale before

[MarcW]

Thanks Victor, it does feel good to have the fish in now, still work to do but it's more enjoyable knowing good progress has been made!

Slimeslayer, I got the Aphanotorulus from Pier, I bought 4 in March when I was at the CSG convention, when I went back last week some of the same group was still there, so I got the last few they had too.

[FredMotorhead]

Hi Marc,

Too bad you live in UK, I would really want this in real life. But then if you have bought the L095. And who knows, I'll come to you once to admire your fishroom, haha ​​!!

Greetings Fred

[MarcW]

Thanks Fred, I'm looking forward to getting some

L095

, I'm working on the big tank at the moment, the sand is in, hopefully over the weekend I'll get the wood and rocks in and have some time to put a few plants in too.

I've added pictures below of some tanks for everyone. You may notice ceramic rings behind the mattenfilters, this was questioned in another thread recently, in my case they are from an established filter, once the mattenfilters are fully established I will remove the media, and store it in the sump of the big tank.

As you can see I have added two large caves in the Tenellus tank but they still insist on bundling up in the corner! Any suggestions on how to make them feel comfortable/safe would be appreciated, maybe they are just more comfortable in the dark?

[FredMotorhead]

Hey Marc,

I've found something 'bout the Tennellus Ternetzi. "Avoid boisterous or aggressive tankmates as this is a shy species that will hide out during the day and appear for food at night under darkness. Provide a dimly lit tank with floating plants" A litlle bit the opposite of what you have now in their tank.

Greets Fred

[MarcW]

Thanks Fred, they do seem to be a little more settled now. Still haven't seen even one of them go into a cave, they do seem happier when all the lights are off, but when they are on, they insist on staying in the brightest part of the tank!

If their behavior doesn't change i'll probably pull the java fern out, cover the top with floating plants and try some open ended tubes for them to hide in.

[MarcW]

As people seem to like the Tenellus I took a short video of them feeding. It's fascinating watching them swimming about 5mm above the sand with their barbels trailing under their chin, as soon as they sense food they stop immediately and dive onto it!

[Jools]

The

Tenellus

will settle soon. They are a wild caught species and congregate in large numbers in open spaces in the wild, so they're just getting used to the new space they find themselves in. Great to see a decent sized shoal.

Jools

[MarcW]

Thanks for the information Jools. They do seem to be slowly settling, I much prefer to get groups of fish when possible.

[MarcW]

I've just added some more fish .

Four

Liosomadoras oncinus

, they are only small about thumb sized, but have really nice patterns, it was a bit tricky to get a good picture while they were being acclimatised, as they wouldn't stop moving. Hopefully once they are settled I'll be able to get some better pictures.

I'm having trouble adding pictures at the moment, I'll try again later.

[MarcW]

Managed to get the pictures attached from my PC. They are eating now, but seem extremely nocturnal at the moment, hopefully once they've had a chance to settle in, they might venture out when the lights are on!

[Viktor Jarikov]

Cute little buttons! Indeed, a very attractive variant of the coloration and pattern. I've seen this one before only a few times.

In the vast majority of cases, they either never come out when there is light or rarely people report they may come out for feed. They avoid light maniacally and like to be tightly tucked away in some crevice, driftwood, etc. all day long only to come out at night in pitch dark and swim all night.

Usually if you'd like to see them people utilize such hiding quarters where they are visible - a rock leaned against the front glass, a piece of driftwood consisting of an array of thin branches or roots, etc.

This trait is so bad that most keepers report seeing their jaquar cats once or twice a year when they remodel or do a thorough cleaning. Also, it is sometimes reported that they are able to wedge themselves into such tight spots from which they can't free themselves later and perish because, again, a keeper thinks they are just hiding as usual and should be fine.

[MarcW]

Thanks for the details Victor, they are very nicely patterned, I'm hoping they keep it, but maybe it'll change to smaller markings like the pictures you shared as they mature?

I saw those pictures in one of your posts over on MFK while I was reading up about these fish before I bought them!

They currently have 4 large caves available (10 inch long ~2 inch diameter), one for each of them, and a few large pieces of bogwood. Two of them share a cave and the others have disappeared completely, I have seen them at night by dim torch light when they are feeding!

They are in a 4 ft long tank on their own at the moment, I'll leave them to settle for a few months, then maybe add a group of large tetras or similar, I haven't read any evidence of dither fish combating their nocturnal tenancies but I may give it a go.

I'm also planning to set up my IR WiFi camera to spy on them overnight just to make sure I can count all 4 of them!

[Viktor Jarikov]

Thumbs up!

I have seen photos of larger jag catfish looking more similar to yours than to mine (usual). For instance this one - see posts by Justarn on this page: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/foru ... st-7898022 He too is in the UK.

[MarcW]

That does look a similar pattern to mine, hopefully the variation is due to local populations of the fish and they'll keep it as they grow.

I setup my infrared camera last night, I caught them feeding (not in the video below) but didn't see a huge amount of activity, I was thinking they would be extremely active like my

Centromochlus schultzi

.

[MarcW]

I just dropped some food in and two of the Jaguars came out to eat with the lights still on! There was only dim lighting, so dim my phone couldn't focus to take a video, but plenty bright enough for me to easily see them.

I'll try feeding them slightly earlier tomorrow and see if they come out again!

[Viktor Jarikov]

Likely they are still settling in but that was a huge, encouraging sign!

[MarcW]

Well I'm keeping everything crossed that this is normal behaviour for my group, I dropped some food in, and within 5 seconds they were out with all the lights on. At one point you can see 3 at the same time in the video!

[Viktor Jarikov]

Cute stuff. You are already doing better by them than I ever have. Wonderful.

[MarcW]

Thanks Victor, I'm hoping it's a good sign, they didn't come out for food tonight, although they did during a water change at lunch!

[MarcW]

We have just had our power restored after an outage of 4 hours, although that's very unusual for us, I'm very glad I had a backup.

I hadn't got around to charging the battery, but luckily it was charged to somewhere between 50 and 75% of its capacity already. It ran my linear piston air pump drawing around 60 watts for the whole outage and the inverter still showed ~50% remaining after that.

It seems that air driven filtration is a good option if you suffer from power outages, just one thing needs to be powered rather than multiple filters or pumps.

Now I don't have anything in my big tank yet which does use a pump in the sump, I'm thinking I'll get an additional battery so I can power the sump pump and air pump for about 8 hours in total.

Needless to say the battery is being charged as we speak!

[Jools]

Good work, I remain amazed at how many fishrooms with zillions of pounds/dollars/euros of fishes in them have no resilience especially when it comes to power.

Jools

[bekateen]

Your fish room is looking great, Marc! Keep the updates coming.

Cheers, Eric

[kvnbyl]

i lived in cambridge ma (USA) for about 10 years and was forced to buy an inverter and a couple of deep cycle marine batteries for my tanks. the inverter was a good one, tripp lite i believe and the batteries were good and i lost count of how many times that setup saved me from disaster, in the hot weather whenever the temp went over 85 the power would go out, might be 45 min but was often 4,5,6 hours. after a couple of years they finally fixed the issue, my house was at the end of the line and we were getting really low voltage, i measured it as low as 88 volts ac. and made them come out to the house and see it. threatened to sue them and they replaced about a dozen high end ($25.00 each) 48' lights that would flicker and burn off it i didn't happen to be home to turn them off and 3 window a/c units. i was using fluval 404s then and they would rattle and bang and i would have to turn them off to. short of it is: i felt it was my responsibility to do right by my charges and eventually moved and i had the chance to put in a backup standby generator and have never regretted it. still have the batteries and the inverter too, you can never be too careful

[MarcW]

Just thought I'd share a short video of the Jaguars. They are doing really well, and seem to have a good sense of the timing of the lights. If I put food in about 30 minutes before the lights go out they come out and scoff the lot!

[be4morgan]

It seems like the other fish is way playful than the other one that has decided to hide and tends to be shy. They are both lovely.

[bekateen]

Marc, I like your jaguars. Lovely fish!

Cheers, Eric

[MarcW]

Thanks Belle and Eric.

I'm really pleased with them, they seem to be thriving, still come out with the lights on to feed.

Also they seem to get on well with each other, hopefully that continues as they grow.

[MarcW]

I've got around to setting up my battery backup properly, we've had a fair bit of snow for the area I live in, 7.5 inches was the number from the MET office measured a few miles away. So I thought I'd better be ready, it turns out 1500 houses were without power most of last night nearby, but luckily we were OK.

Here it is, two 12v 50ah batteries connected in parallel, and the inverter, which is cabled through the wall to the fish room. The inverter uses an ethernet cable to allow you to remotely control it from a small panel the size of a beer mat, this is located in the fish room. So, although not perfect, it is now down to pushing a button and putting the air pump plug in the next socket along if there is an outage.

My next step is to see if this can all be automatically switched in the event of an outage for a reasonable cost.