Rio Negro Plants.

[Mettle]

I am trying to amass information on building a Rio Negro biotope. If anyone has any additions to the following plant list, it would be greatly appreciated:

Cabaomba, Vals, Tropical Hornwort, Star Grass, Sword Plants...

Seems like a sparse list. Any more ideas?

Also. How does one reconcile the 'subdued lighting' with the lighting needs of some of these plants? What would be an ideal lighting setup? I'd like a very lush and heavily planted atmosphere.

Does anyone have experience with any of the more 'specialized' substrates geared towards planted tanks that are better than your average store-bought variety? Also the most appropriate colouration? I've read 'dark' is good. However. That's very vague and I can't seem to find underwater shots of the area.

Lastly - and only semi-related to the plants - I've been reading about leaf litter substrates. I don't imagine these are easy to maintain in tanks. Anyone have experiences with these?

Thanks!

[NjOyRiD]

I like ppl like you
I'll try to help you find some infos
have you try mongabay.com?

[Mettle]

I like ppl like you
I'll try to help you find some infos
have you try mongabay.com?

That's where I got my info from, heh.

I'm going to slowly be turning my tanks into biotopes, I think. Right now I'm researching for my discus tank. However. I want it to end up being a heavily planted tank. (Long ways off, I know, but research has to start somewhere.) And I'm just not very impressed with that list so far.

[NjOyRiD]

ahhh you da man its funny my next tank will be Negro too
what kind of fish will you put?

my set up will be easy, ECHINODORUS amazonicus and some ECHINODORUS tenellus with a lot of driftwood, the gravel is a fine dark gravel with some red from humm, i have a blank  :oops: its good for the plants, whats the name of it?  :?:

have you seen that picture?
http://www.mongabay.org/images/brazil/blackwater_whitewater.gif

its amazon vs Negro

oh yeah and has soon as i get my fluval, I'll had some peat into it too....but liek you said, the subdu lightning, good question, i wanna know too

[mseguin]

Are you looking to do blackwater, whitewater or clearwater. Blackwater rivers tend to have very low plant life, due to the very low amount of mineral content.

[NjOyRiD]

These waters have almost no measurable water hardness and an acidic pH like 4.5-6.5

[Mettle]

Yeah.

The more I'm reading the more I'm finding out that this area isn't actually prone to a lot of plant life. Not sure if this is what I want to go with or not, then, heh.

My water harness is no where NEAR what that area is. Just crazy.

In the process I've also stumbled across some cool stuff about discus and where the different types are from, some of the debates, etc. Quite interesting to be honest.

Looks like I might have to invest in amazing driftwood instead of lots of plants... Maybe a DIY background with roots protruding and such.

Thinking about getting rid of the clown loaches, rams and cockatoos makes me kinda sad (in terms of sticking to the biotope). However. The idea of losing the SAEs just scares me, LOL.

Is it even worth going biotope for the discus? I mean - so much of what we have today is tank raised stuff. And though I'm not a fan of going against thousands of years of evolution and saying some 30 years of captive breeding changes physiology... Just curious. Especially since some of the different types of discus are found in different areas.

http://www.simplydiscus.com/library/biology/history/natural_habitats.shtml

http://www.aquaworldnet.com/dbws/biotope.shtml

I'm also pondering abandoning some of the designer discus lines (as much as I love red truq) and going for more 'wild' variations.

[BigDaddy]

The Negro is a blackwater biotype, so plants are limited.  Mostly sand, wood and leaf litter.

However, here's a list of some plants that have been found in the Upper Rio Negro:

Hydrocotyle leucocephala
Cabomba aquatica
Mayaca fluviatilis
Echinodorus tenellus
Eichhornia sp.
Ceratopteris sp.
Echinodorus horizontalis
Limnobium laevigatum

From the list... you can see it's mostly floaters... again because its a blackwater system.

[Mettle]

Thanks.

I'm no biology or chemistry major. And I never got an A in geography. So a lot of this is quite new to me. I've been doing some reading tonight on why plants don't grow well in blackwater regions and what properties actually make it that way.

Simply saying something is 'blackwater' doesn't mean too much to the uneducated like me, heh.

But I'm learning!

Also starting to look at some biotope stuff for my piranha tank.

[apistome]

I gave up and resigned myself to a biotopish tank
The floaters mentioned above will give the cover and subdued lighting you desire.

[mseguin]

It all depends how specific you want to be. A biotope can range from a specific river shore by a small village to a river tributary to a Amazonian basin, to South America, and so on.
Blackwater is just about as close to pure water as you can get in a river. It has little to no sediment load, and almost no nutrients or mineral, making it very poor at allowing all but the most generalist plant species survive.

[BigDaddy]

There's a four part series right now in TFH that covers the biotypes and biodiversity of South America.  You'd have to order the back issues... but the current newstand issue has an interesting look at four biotypes within a one square kilometer section of the Amazonian basin.

[Mettle]

Thanks. I'll check it out.

I know some people who receive the magazine regularly so I'll ask them for their old copies.

Much appreciated!

Thanks for all the hints/help/edumacation folks!  :lol: