Bombina Podcasts and Blog How to create and maintain naturalistic and interesting enclosures for tropical fish, exotic reptiles, amphibians, insects and invertebrates

April Aquarium Updates

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:35:45 +0100

I have been trying to decide on a way to let you know how my various tanks and animals are getting on and share any interesting observations and plans. So I have decided that in addition to the normal information and discussion posts I will post a monthly update all about my various aquariums, terrariums and animals.
So here is the activity update for April.

Freshwater invertebrate aquarium

So lets start with the Freshwater planted invertebrate aquarium that I set up in the video podcast at the start of the month.
I added pipefish, along with two freshwater sole Brachirus elongatus, seven bee shrimps Caridina sp and two cherry shrimps Neocaridina Heteropoda from abbey aquatics in Stowmarket UK. The pipefish are doing really well they are growing and feeding very well on live daphnia and cyclops collected from my garden pond.
They appear to be active 24 hours lurking in plants or sliding along just above the sand. The sole are much harder to spot as they hide perfectly in the sand, however they are harder to feed and despite being offered live foods, including bloodworm, daphnia, chopped earthworms, chunks of cooked prawn and pellets they do not appear to have fed. The bee shrimps are small and translucent, and since adding them to the tank have been very hard to find, but two days ago I was really surprised to see a wonderful glossy black shrimp with a lateral white stripe, so it appears that they have moulted and changed to their adult colouration.

The female Endlers livebearer Poecilia wingei that gave birth to around 30 fry at the end of march gave birth to at least 20 young yesterday, her first batch are now all around 15-20mm long and the new ones are 5mm.
all of the Elodea, Vallisina, Hygrophilia, Bacopa and Cambomba plants in the tank have grown at least 4 inches this month.
Last week I added two more or the unidentified "tiger gobies" bringing the number in the tank to 4, in the hope that they might breed one day, to facilitate this i added a couple of old snail shells to the tank as gobies will often use these as nesting chambers.

I also added two golden tropical mussels, which have now buried themselves half in the sand. I also managed to track down four "freshwater shrimp" that I recognised as a long armed shrimp species belonging to the Macrobrachium genus. These have been a great addition to the aquarium as unlike the Bee shrimps Caridina sp and Amano shrimp Caridina japonica they are very active scavengers, always foraging for food, cleaning up, and are easily visible any time. I must mention however that I have no way of identifying the species yet and will have to wait and see if they develop any colouration to help me identify them, as they could reach sizes of 250mm and be completely unsuitable for this aquarium! as they will disturb the plants and smaller shrimp if they grow overly large.

I also added some Salvinia floating plant in the tank to provide a more natural shade from the light and provide cover for the new Endlers fry. Interestingly the pipefish seem to really like this new cover and I often find one or two floating suspended among the trailing roots at the surface.

My next tank is the Ephemeral Stream aquarium.
I made a few changes to this tank as I had access to some black peat soil from the fen farmland, so I decided to update the tank. The substrate is now a black soil, that so far have worked out well, and I really like it despite the fact my Fiancee thinks it looks messy, the water is clear and the apple snails Pomacea bridgesii and sand snails Melanoides tuberculata really like it. About two weeks ago I finally had a batch of apple snail eggs hatch in this tank and the adults laid another set up eggs and even as I type this are mating again!

I added 4 new fish to this tank last week, a pair of Golden Panchax Aplocheilus lineatus and a pair of Bluefin Notho Nothobranchius rachovii which are really very stunning and a truly voracious invertebrate predator! despite being only 25mm long the male has a massive mouth and will eat anything that will fit in. I guess its understandable when you live in muddy puddles and only live a few months in the wild, you need as much food as possible. I have added Spirulina algae and moss to the substrate banks where they leave the water and will be keeping a close eye on them to see if they spawn soon.

Forest Pool aquarium
In the forest pool tank I discovered an interesting behaviour in my Softshell Turtle today, When feeding the butterfly fish Pantodon buchholzi with crickets on the surface, a few climbed up the waterfall log and out of the water, but the turtle spotted them and followed them out of the water and onto a log where he caught and ate them, a behaviour I had not observed before!

Well that is about all that has occurred of note this month, thanks very much for stopping by, if you want live status updates and upto date information about who has given birth or exhibited interesting behaviours, tune into the Twitter feed @bombinapodcast

Live Mail

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 22:02:04 +0000

One of the most irritating jobs when keeping exotic animals is obtaining livefood all year round.
The way most of us get round this is to buy small boxes of crickets, mealworms or locusts from our local pet shop. However I have found that as soon as you get more than a few animals that eat crickets, or the pet shop runs out for whatever reason it can get very awkward and expensive, as the pet shop sell boxes that often have dead crickets and charge around £2.50 for 30ish crickets (my mudskippers will eat 20 in a sitting!)
To get around this problem I have been using a mail order livefood company, that way I dont have to try and get a dozen boxes of crickets every few weeks.
I get around 500 crickets once a month, on a standing order, they arrive in the post and almost all of them are alive and fully gut loaded ready for use. I can also order any livefood they stock from pinkies to waxworms and they will just add it to my account, along with any hardware or books that they stock. So all in all a superb service.
So I really recommend looking around and seeing if you can find a mail order livefood company near you as once you try it you will never go back.
For pictures of the Crickets arriving and being unboxed have a look in the photo galleries Crickets

Wonders of wood

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:49:22 +0000

When creating a natural setup I often incorporate wood as it looks great, is natural and provides food and habitats for some of the inhabitants, however for new users adding wood to a setup wood can be confusing and dangerous so I will try to explain how to incorporate wood into aquatic and terrestrial enclosures.

There are two main types of wood used in setting up aquariums and terrariums, shop brought and collected.
Shop brought wood is sold by the kilo/pound and is normally the hard wood tree species Mopani Colophospermum mopane from subsaharan Africa, the wood is extremely durable and intricately patterned and gnarled. The other kind of wood often sold is cork bark used mainly in vivariums it is very light, floats, resists rot and is easy to carve and shape thus lends itself to natural vivarium set ups.

The second variety of wood used, is the stuff we collect from the wild, bark, logs and branches.
This is normally done to save money and to get rotten wood for invertebrate enclosures. However it can be risky as in some locations removing anything from the wild is illegal so always seek permission from the land owner before collecting wood. The next risk is that you can introduce disease, parasites and even predators and pests to your new set up, so always boil your wood for at least 10 minutes before adding it to your enclosure. Wild wood can also be toxic so please make sure you know the species of tree that the wood is from and that it is not toxic to the inhabitant of your setup (a rough rule of thumb is that if their are no detritivores on the wood, no sign of rot, no sign of it being eaten at all then it is toxic!)

Using wild wood can be very rewarding though and provides wood in all kinds of shapes and sizes unavailable any other way, so plan ahead and always keep your eyes open for a likely log or branch.

Before adding any wood to your enclosure either wild or brought, boil it for at least 10 minutes to kill any mould, bacteria and pests that might be living in it, and can harm your animals.
If you are using wood in an aquarium then you might want to soak the wood for a few days after boiling and change the water every 6 hours to remove the worst of the tannins from the wood, otherwise it will stain the water brown and decrease the PH of your water. However if you are aiming for an Amazonian or Asian river biotope the water would naturally be tannin rich and acidic and this often enhances the colours of your fish.

If using wood in a vivarium make sure that the wood is stable and can not be dislodged or fall on the vivarium inhabitants or break the glass. Using wood in vivariums can be extremely useful as it will provide a source of food for springtails and other micro detrivores that newly metamorphosed frogs and newts feed on. it also creates a substrate for epiphytic plants such as bromeliads and orchids and moss to
grow on. It can also be used to hide life support equipment and as a waterfall, just arrange a suitably shaped piece of wood under a water outlet and let the water run over the wood and into the pool inside the vivarium.

If you are adding wood to an aquarium it will often sprout a bloom of translucent filamentous fungus and algae for a few weeks but after that it will fade and is nothing to worry about. In fact many fish and invertebrates in the aquarium love to graze on the wood, Plecs will often remain on one piece of wood for weeks slowly scouring all loose bark off until they produce a wonderfully patterned piece of wood!
Wood can also be utilised in an aquarium as a planting medium as plants like Java Fern Microsorum pteropus, Java Moss Taxiphyllum barbieri syn Vesicularia dubyana and Anubias Sp. will root and grow on the wood creating stunning additions to any aquarium.

So get out there and add some wood to your Aquariums and Vivariums today.

Introduction to Planted Aquariums

Thu, 5 Mar 2009 20:09:48 +0000

Planted aquariums are often treated as a mysterious and exact art by inexperienced aquarium keepers, but this does not need to be the case as a planted aquarium can be created and maintained easily as long as you provide a few basic requirements. The is now an entire movement and Industry dedicated to planted aquaria, that provides detailed information on the more advanced side of things, so rather than repeat their work I shall concentrate on the simple and introductory topics.

All plants need light, food, and CO2 so let's start with food.
For years I struggled to grow any plant more demanding than hornwort, I finally realised my problem when I was to given a second hand canister filter, the substrate! I had always used gravel and under gravel filtration, but once I had a filter I could use sand and voilà my plants began to take and grow, the reason for this is that plants need a fine grain soft substrate to grow roots, once they have roots they can begin to extract nutrients from the water and take up excess waste such as nitrate from the water.
So requirement 1 for successful plants is a fine grain substrate like sand or aquarium soil.

The next most important feature is light, try to picture a bright sunny day in summer, the sun is so bright you can feel it's warmth on your exposed skin. Well many aquarium plants grow in habitats that enjoy bright sun everyday, yet we provide them with paltry 25w florescent tube lights through a layer of glass or plastic. Whilst this ok for some deep water and rainforest plants such as specific crypts and java fern, to really get them most out of your plants a minimum of 40 watts of lighting balanced to provide the optimum light wavelengths for plant growth is essential, or sunlight on the tank( beware algae and temperature problems)
So requirement for plant growth 2 sufficient strong lighting.

The next requirement is by far the most complex, CO2
For the purposes of this post I will not go into CO2 injection systems just pop over to Practical Fishkeeping site. All plants need Carbon Dioxide the best way to provide this simply is to ensure you have a good flow of water over the water surface and use an air pump connected to an airstone somewhere in the tank to introduce higher dissolved air into the aquarium water.
The more dissolved air the greater plant growth you will see.
Requirement 3 dissolved CO2

There are a few other salient points to remember, many aquarium shops are sold unsuitable plants that are not aquatic! These will die, so research. Your plant species before buying.
Plants come potted or bunched, although more expensive potter is generally best as your plants are more likely to have roots and grow, even better order your plants online as these always seen healthier and 9 times out if ten arrive with roots!

And finally be careful and make sure the fish in your tank will not devour all plants you add, the same goes for most species of lobster/crayfish/crabs

The Beauty of Books

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:38:47 +0000

Although I have worked with wild snakes I have never kept them in captivity, party due to having to get frozen mice and rats and partly due to the fact that they often wreck all vivarium decor and their enclosures can end up looking bland.
Recently I found a supplier of a species of snake that I have been trying to get for years, The Smooth / Rough Green Snake Opheodryas vernalis / aestivus, (Suppliers rarely differentiate between the two species). This wonderful little snake feeds on invertebrates and loves a planted vivarium, so I ordered one and promptly set about refreshing my memory on their care and requirements.
I have a good selection of books here that generally provide all the information I need but I thought I would look online to see what I could find on keeping these guys, before delving into my reference collection. However after looking for around an hour, the internet had turned up very little in addition to the first site I tried.
No one differentiated between species and nor did they really tell me anything other than a rough temperature suggestion and that they originate from the Northern USA down to Florida (only a few different biotopes in that range!). So I returned to my trusty books (Click for List) and within minutes I had the information I needed and more importantly I was able to look at the different species habitats as well as compare all of the information from the books to build up a good picture of their requirements.

So the moral of the story is make sure you always double check what you find online with books and never underestimate the value of a good reference guide when keeping exotic animals and fish

Oscar has Lost an Eye!

Thu, 5 Feb 2009 20:51:03 +0000

Emergency! When I arrived home today I checked my fish only to discover that my poor Red Oscar Astronotus ocellatus had lost an eye, I could not believe it, I have no idea how it could of happened he is not with any fish that would attack an oscar! so I can only guess that he caught it on a bit of driftwood in the tank. The strangest thing though is that apart from having trouble judging distance when he is catching his food, he is completely unaffected!
This is the reason for this post, has anyone every noticed the amazing ability of Fish and Amphibians to regenerate injured fins, limbs, tails and almost never suffer from infection. Take salamanders for example if a salamander loses a foot or tail it will just grow replacements over the following months!

The question is of course how can they achieve this?
Well the first thing to consider is that they evolved at least 30 million years ago and have an incredible amount of time to evolve extremely robust immune systems especially when you consider they can live is very poor quality water in the wild. The next reason they heal so well is that they live in very wet environments which produces superb conditions for skin to grow, (we even copy them with deep therapy water tanks for seriously injured people)
The physiological adaptations they have are to complex to go into here but the point to take away is that if your wards are injured, don’t worry to much just make sure they are feeding, that they are kept clean and 90% of the time they will heal very quickly, (unfortunately I doubt my Oscar will regrow his eye though)
By Neil Ellis