We've owned a 12-gallon Eclipse System 12 for about 2 weeks now and we are loving it. =) As usual it is overstocked with 27 fish and 3 shrimp but at least for now, it seems to be fine and after a surprisingly few initial losses, the fish seem to be doing quite well.
More pictures after the break...
These are our two original
gold barbs that we still have in our first 3-gallon tank. Will be transferring them over to the new tank tomorrow since we'll be giving the 3-gallon tank to my mother over the weekend.
Gold barbs are becoming one of my favorite breeds. They're very active, not overly timid, and the males have spectacular coloring with the black on gold. Tough to come by though. Took me quite a few trips to a whole bunch of different fish stores in the tri-state area to find the two that we currently have in the new tank. Right now they're passing the time swimming upstream against the flow of water coming out of the filter. And for some reason they also come in different head shapes. The original two we purchased had pointy heads but while searching for two more, I came across
gold barbs that had stubby, really ugly heads that looked like if someone had took a hammer to 'em.
This is a slightly closer view of the four main decorations we have in the tank. Spongebob was Erin's idea. =p The chunk of wood behind Bob actually has a lot of cracks in the middle that our two
Japonica shrimp like to shelter in. Occassionally one of the cories and
cherry barbs will hang out there too. The pipe fragment on the right side we bought a week ago to provide more cover for the
cories. Most of them still seem to prefer hiding out in the back towards the left of the tank when they're resting though since that's where the big filter intake and most of the plants are so they like using the leaves as cover. But most of the fish will tunnel in and out so it has its uses.
The main fish in this picture is one of our two
pristella tetras. They're probably the biggest fish that we have in the tank. Very quick swimmers and they tend to hang out in the mid to lower regions of the tank. We had these in our old tank originally and they've acclimated well to the new one. Their skin is completely transparent which makes their silver organs and black/yellow fins stand out. The fuzzy fish to the right is the male
gold barb and the red blur on the top left is one of our six
cherry barbs.
Here we have two of our bottom feeders. The grey/silver
bronze cory poking around on the driftwood and the even funnier-looking
oto(cinclus) resting on the gravel. Four out of the five cories that we have are generally pretty active. Spend alot of time rooting around the tank or just swimming around. They're surprisingly quick and active for catfish. Always fun to see a group of them wiggling around together.
This is a closeup view of an
oto. They are algae eaters and have a big sucker-like mouth. They usually cling to any vertical surface in the tank but also seem to hang out on the gravel every now and then. The interesting thing is that they seem to cling to the vertical surfaces not with their mouth which I had originally thought, but with their pelvic fins. Which is pretty impressive cause those fins aren't all that big. Anyway, we have two in the tank to help with any algae that might start growing. They seem to be mostly active when the lights go down.
This is one of our two
Japonica shrimp (we have one remaining
ghost shrimp as well) doing what it does best. Eat. These shrimp are pretty proactive when feeding time comes around. No problems facing off with the fish for food. But they get along fine with everyone else in the tank. Fun to watch as their arms are constantly in motion, shoveling stuff into their mouth.
Anyway, more pics to come hopefully. Taking pictures of these guys are tough. Gotta work with a tripod next time.
