Azedenkae's Rheoheros lentiginosus Aquarium, Part 1: Setting Up Aquarium and Acquiring Livestock

My next four R. lentiginosus has arrived!

Packaging from CotA is great. Seems like they use methylene blue to help the fish during transport... I think. Not sure, just know that the water is blue. One of the bag was leaking water.

With these, I did not add the water in their bag to the tank... in hindsight, I probably should have not done that with the other four R. lentiginosus either. But anyways, too late. So I just cut the bags and scooped each fish into the tank.

We have a bit of an issue.

These are much larger than the other four, lol. They are not as active as the previous four, and lies on the substrate almost constantly - especially the one that was in the leaking bag. I am keeping an eye on them to see how they fair.

It's been about an hour and they are getting a bit more active, but yeah, still not great.

With that said, could also just be due to the length of transport. I estimate the previous four to have been transport maybe 18 hours max. The new ones, probably more like 30.

That concludes this thread. Next part continued here.

So… turns out there were some confusion on my part. I had another shipment of snails incoming for a different tank via USPS. I had saw a shipment of R. lentiginosus coming from UPS and figured it was from CotA but turned out it was from TuiC, just that Kevin (from TuiC) did not send a separate email letting me know the fish was shipped but Dan (from CotA) did.

So yeah was a bit surprised when the UPS shipment came and it was fish from Rio Chacamax lol. But yeah quickly figured I actually do indeed have two separate USPS shipments coming in, one containing the R. lentiginosus from CotA. Unfortunately they seem to be taking some time to get here. Flights from the south east seems to be a bit delayed versus flights from north east.

Packaging by TuiC was great, very well done. Each fish had its own bag and there was padding to ensure they would be safe during transport. I added the four fish together and then poured everything into my tank.

No I don’t acclimatize, quarantine, etc. my fish or anything, I tend to just dump them straight in. Doesn’t mean that is what I’d recommend for everyone, that’s just how I roll lol.

I measured parameters of the tank (top) and the water in the bags (bottom) and they were pretty much identical, tank water is just slightly more alkaline.

Water in the bag was 25.2C, while the tank was a whopping 28.7C! Whoops! Luckily according to my research, they can do fine in temperatures up to 30C, so should be okay for now.

I have removed the partition at the back side of my lids to give more air and heat exchange, but now there’s a decent gap. Hope the fish won’t jump out.

Well at least now I can install the autofeeder.

Andddd here are the fish! Or two of them anyways.

Final look. Green because of algae I suppose, and probs a bit of tannin at the very least.

More updates to come!

Today I have started to see baby snails all over, whooo! Hopefully the fish will eat the snaile, and if so, hopefully the snails will somehow maintain a constant population going.

Dan from CotA has sent the fish today and expected arrival is either tomorrow or Wednesday, though tracking by UPS so far indicates tomorrow! Yay!

Fish from TuiC has not been sent yet.

Alright, Kevin has responded to my order from TuiC today and order is done. 4x R. lentiginosus var. Rio Chacamax also coming on Tuesday. :D These ones are slightly smaller (1.5 - 2") than the ones I got from CotA, and are a bit cheaper ($20 vs. $28).

Alrighty, measured ammonia and nitrite today and both are zero, i.e. the tank is cycled - or at least as close to being able to be considered 'cycled' as possible when cycling without certain limitations in place to ensure only/mostly nitrifiers growing.

Ammonia and nitrite progress over the past week or so. It looks weird because of the irregularity of measurements. Ammonia was 0.5ppm on June 30th (as I mentioned previously), and when I came back from the long weekend it was zero, and nitrite dropped during that time.

I re-dosed ammonia twice afterwards, not quite waiting for nitrite to hit zero, thus you can see nitrite rising a bit each time, though today it has managed to finally zero out, so that's great. I have re-dosed ammonia, probably to around 1.2ppm or so (again, the dosing is not 100% accurate). Will see how well things are. With that said, at least based on the amount of nitrite produced, seems like most of the ammonia dosed is consumed by nitrifiers and not by something else, which is great.

Snails and scuds are generally doing fine, despite the ammonia/nitrite, and I also added like three teaspoons of marine salt (Red Sea Coral Pro salt, just some that I still have on hand). I tend to add salt to all of my freshwater aquariums just to generally improve the health of fish when they come in. Doesn't work with all fish as some are sensitive to salt, but for cichlids it is generally fine.

Quite a few snails died mysteriously though. Doesn't seem to be because of the salt, because plenty are alive and breeding, plus the amount I added should not be enough to kill them off. On that note, yeah there are snail eggs everywhere, including on the glass, so I need to hold off on cleaning the glass for some time to let my snail population build.

I have also put in my fish orders now, knowing my cycle is most likely coming close to an end soon. I ordered four from Cichlids of the Americas (CotA), and four from Tangled Up in Cichlids (TuiC), reasoning I already discussed in my research thread here. Dan from CotA is great, was very quick in responding and order is done. $200 for four fish from him, should be between 2-2.5". They will be shipped Monday. TuiC has not replied yet, so... yeah. Still time though.