Planning for new planted Australe tank

[Auril]

Hello everyone,
I will setup a new 25 gal(100 liters) planted tank in a month. It will be a high light heavily planted tank (3wats/gal) and CO2 will be added. I plan to put Aphyosemion Australe and maybe a few otos.

I have read that many killies prefer low-light. I wonder if killies will be stressed in such a setup.

Also, what kind of a filter would you recommed for such a setup? I want to put an external filter, however I do not know the amount of circulation suitable for killies. My original choice was Eheim 2213 but I now lean more on
Tetra Tec MX 600 (for up to 120 liters).

Regards, Yıldız

[Auril]

Arg, I doulble-posted the thread, sorry.

[KillieOrCory]

Hi Yıldız,

Your tank should look great!

Bright Lights: As long as you have some broad leaved plants that cast shadows like swords, lillies, anubias etc. The australe should be alright. In time as your plant population grows there will be plenty of shaded spots to keep the australe comfortable.

If you want to bother with it you can try this:
As you are initially setting up the tank you might have couple of bunches of water wisteria floating at the surface on one side/corner of the tank. To keep them restricted to that area and not float over your high light requiring plants just put two suction caps on opposing sides and have cotton thread or fishing line attached from on to other just at water level. This will keep the surface plants restricted to your specific area. Once the rest of the tank is established and your plants are growing well in the other areas you could remove the floating plants and plant high light requiring plants in that corner.

Somebodyelse will hopefully help you with circulation. All my tanks bar one have quite low circulation so can't give you advice on high circulating tanks.

[timebomb]

Hi, Yıldız,

Welcome to Killies.com.

Your setup seems fine. Using an Eheim 2213 would be a bit overkill for a 100 litre tank so I think you made the right choice to switch to another filter. I believe the A. australes prefer dark conditions but high lights shouldn't be a problem.

I used to have a tank solely for A. australes too but they all died from a mysterious disease. Click here to see the tank.

Loh K L

[Auril]

Thanks for the help!
Your tank was so beautiful Kwek Leong.
What kind of filter were you using? Also, what was the size of that tank?

[timebomb]

Thanks for the compliment, Yıldız but the tank is nothing great. The plants were thrown in haphazardly as my goal was just to provide a densely planted environment for the fish.

The tank is about 80 litres. As for filtration, I was using just 2 small sponge filters. Here's a pic of the filter.

The thing to bear in mind about breeding the A. australe is you have to collect the eggs or you will never see fry. In a planted tank, the fish mate all the time but somehow or other, the fry never appears. I suspect this is because the australe fry, unlike other Killifish fry, swim at the bottom of the tank just above the substrate where they are likely to be eaten by the parent fish.

By the way, Yıldız, where are you from? Your name is rather unusual, I must say. It looks like there are 2 i's but there's no dot above the i. In fact, the only way I can type out your name is by doing a copy and paste

Loh K L

[Auril]

I will cover the bottom with a thick layer of glosso, maybe a few fry can survive. Actually, I have an empty 30 liter tank. I will condition the best pair there and raise a few fry. If I get a lot of eggs, I will use additional containers.

I am from Ankara, Turkey. My name means "star" in Turkish.
In Turkish we also have interesting letters like ğ,ü,ö,ş,ç. (Lots of dots )
However, we do not use q,w and x.