New crew for the 180

Well, I've started stocking.

The setting is...
3 terracotta pots
3 pieces of driftwood, w/ more possibly coming (each representing cross-continental driftwood chunks)
Silk-leaved plant on a long plastic chain purchased at a craft store
Playsand substrate

The stage management:

The biggest aquaclear
The Wal-mart Emperor stripped for mechnical filtration only
The XP4
2 250 watt heaters

And finally, the players:
2 oscars, a red and a common variety
2 blood parrots
1 firemouth
1 EBJD
3 severums (2 turq and 1 green)
1 5 inch war veteran Raph cat

A quick word on the blood parrots:

I actually bought these fish from Wal-mart, thinking they had mislabeled the species and had stocked a rare breed of severums. Juvie blood parrots look A LOT like baby severums. Dark body, striped, nice plump shape, very little deformity, FAST swimmers... all I knew about blood parrots and even the juveniles is they look like ugly red devils or midas cichlids, once they've been through the car wash a few times too many. I actually thought I had some nice severums for a couple weeks until the big one started to pinken up and I knew they were properly labeled.

So word to the wise: baby blood parrots, though they look really cool and natural, will get ugly and mutated in short order.

For a while I thought about putting them with the ray so he could eat them, but in the end their personalities won out on me and I actually enjoy the behavior of these hybrid fish (a midas or red devil and severum!) but do not plan on getting any more.

Recently I put in a plastic craft plan... silk leaves glued to a plastic chain... and it looks great. As these fish will go to town on plants, I said what the hell, let them pull on a plant that's not rooted to anything.

My plan is to cram the tank with these baby fish and monitor them as they grow. Once the oscars are medium size I will lose the more aggressive fish. Same with the severum, most likely. And we'll let the firemouths settle any problems they may have... internally.

I never knew how cool raphael catfish are. I stumbled on a near full grown specimen that I snatched up the other day. The armor on a big raph cat is pretty wild... spines, tough skin... definitely not a fish you'd want to handle unless you had it secured so you wouldn't get cut.

- J