Finally joined the forum

[hgrad98]

hey everyone. I've known about OVAS for a few years, but for some reason didn't join until today.

I've only been in the hobby for about 5 years, but I learn quickly and I know some stuff. (my knowledge probably pales in comparison to everyone else here)

I am a south american biotope guy, so [almost] everything I keep is from south america. My main area of focus is the genus Apistogramma. I've bred A. baenschi, A. cacatuoides, A. agassizii, but haven't had success with A. macmasteri, or A. borelli. currently I only have a pair of gold body double red A. cacatuoides, and a pair of fire red A. agassizii, so let me know if anyone knows of where to get some cooler/rarer species.

currently, I only have 3 tanks running.

29GALLON:
LIGHTING: coralife compact fluorescent 65w 6700k + a standard 20w fluorescent tube.
PLANTS: Cabomba furcata, Cabomba caroliniana, Echinodorus sp 'Ozelot', 2x Echinodorus bleheri, carpet of S. repens, and too much Riccia fluitans.
FISH: pair of fire red A. agassizii, 4 glass bloodfin tetras, 4 neon tetras, 1 bristlenose pleco, 1 red lizard whiptail catfish, 3 otocinclus
SUBSTRATE: dirted with sand on top
no co2 or ferts atm

16H
LIGHTING: 20w fluorescent
PLANTS: Cabomba caroliniana, Echinodorus bleheri, Lilaeopsis brasiliensis, patches of S. repens, and some R. fluitans.
FISH: pair of gold body double red A. cacatuoides, 4 glowlight tetras, 3 albino cory catfish, 2 otocinclus.

5GAL
just a small quarantine atm.

A bit about me
I'm almost 19, so i've been in the hobby since I was 14ish. I used to work at the big al's in kanata for a while. I'm really interested in sciences, so naturally, I can't just keep fish... I must study them. I do too much research on fish, and yet never enough it seems. I'm hoping to get into university this fall for Biomedical Electrical Engineering, or Health Sciences - Biomed. One of my life goals is to go down to Peru and collect my own fish.

My Projects
I wanted to grow my own plants for my aquariums, and I had heard that the big companies sometimes grow their plants emersed. So i made a small plant nursery to grow my own plants. I grew Lilaeopsis brasiliensis, Eleocharis sp. 'mini', Echinodorus sp. 'Ozelot', Echinodorus paniculatis, S. repens, Micranthemum montecarlo, HC 'Cuba', Lilaeopsis mauritiana. I considered it a success, as it did stock my aquariums for a while, but clearly wasn't the way to go.

I really wanted to breed apistos (my favourite fish), so I started a breeding operation in my basement. I got five 10gal tanks for this, and bought a pair each of A. cacatuoides (triple red), A. cacatuoides (orange flash), A. baenschi, and A. agassizii, and A. macmasteri. Each tank had 4 bloodfin tetras as dither fish. each tank had a bubble filter, and they were all hooked up to a divider and a powerful air pump. Heaters in each tank, set to 81C. what happened with this is a long story, but a heater broke in one of the tanks, and somehow killed the fish (A. cacatuoides orange flash), A. agassizii was taken out by ich, never found out what killed A. macmasteri, and the others I moved back into some other tanks and lived there for a few months. So... this wasn't a success, although I managed to breed a few of the pairs. (they ate their fry though)

anyway, just pm to learn more. Oh and HMU if anyone wants to do plant trades if that's a thing. I'd definitely be interested in obtaining some cool SA species that I don't have. also if you have any cool SA fish species, i'd be interested in learning about them.

[Dxpert]

Welcome! Do you have any pictures of your tanks?

[hgrad98]

none that are recent. I'll grab some tomorrow at some point and put them here.

[charlie]

Welcome aboard, see you already have the multi tank syndrome 
Great to have a another younger hobbyist , we already have a few with us, looking forward to seeing pictures of your tanks.
Regards

[sas]

Hi and welcome🙂
We all love pictures that's for sure.
Post them in the tank build section that way everyone will enjoy them since some members don't visit the intro thread too often.
Welcome again.