Blackwater biotope aquarium: Kalimantan Barat, Kapuas, copying a small forest stream near Sungai Tekam

[RooLee]

Dear all,

I haven’t posted on a forum for a very long time, but heck I’ll give it a try.

I am crazy about fish from Indonesia, so a while back I decided to do a biotope aquarium setup. After a lot of studying, I found several reports of excursions in Kalimantan Barat and decided to use these as a guide for my setup. M. Schlueter (in 2001) & T.R. Roberts  (in 1976) Both visited a small forest stream near Sungai Tekam about 5-6 km upstream from Sanggau and I used their reports to choose fish and the decoration of the tank.

Decorating the tank was quite difficult as no Crypto’s from Borneo were available and many other plants from Borneo which are available do not live in blackwater. Reports from blackwater biotopes in Kalimantan Barat often mention Cabomba of Mycrophilum growing there (invasive or wrongly reported?). Because I never have succeeded in keeping Cabomba beautiful,  I instead chose to recreate the ‘feel’ of a jungle stream using some plants from Borneo/SE asia and some from South America.

Tank specs:

500 Ltr

2 external filters 1600 ltr cap. (25 ltr content)

9 watt UV filter

Philips ozone filter 120 ltr cap.

Water parameters

Temp. min. 24 C (winter) up to 29-30 C (summer), I use no heater.

Ph : 6,9

320 µS/ccm ³

In the near future I will bring parameters down to:

Ph: 6-6,5

< 100 µS/ccm ³ 

Fish are:

17 x Sphaerichthys Vaillanti

36 x Brevibora dorsiocellata 

15 x Desmopuntius hexazona (sold as pentazona) 

6 x Pangio semicincta

I have two questions:

1. Did I overstock?

2. What do you think of my setup?

 

 

 

 

 Thanx for your feedback!

Regards,

RooLee

[oaken]

Very nice setup! It looks great and I don’t think you overstocked it at all.

[RooLee]

Thanx!

Happy to hear I didn’t overstock.

[Author]

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