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!