Blind cave tetras

So I finally got sick of looking at my empty Vision180 and set up my cave tetra tank!

I had high hopes of carving stalagmites and stalactites out of aeroboard and painting and sealing them but that kind of fell by the wayside; I just didn't have the time, I was worried about putting in a lot of work and still being unhappy with the finished product and, as I said before, I got sick of looking at an empty tank.

Who says fishkeepers are a patient bunch?

What I did do is paint the back black and silicone some pieces of slate onto the back of the tank. I'm not sure how I feel about how it looks, but it is what it is...
For substrate I mixed some silver sand in with some gravel I collected from a river to get a sandy/coarse non-uniform look. I am pleased with how that turned out. It's very shallow, only about a centimetre or two deep in the deepest points. There's no plants, so why go deeper? The structure in the middle at the surface is a feature I bought from Seahorse and attached to the bar running across the tank with cable ties.
For the subdued lighting, I just flipped the reflectors upside down and therefore a minimum of light gets into the tank. The downside is, every time I open the lid to feed them, I get blinded! I had to angle them back into the tank to film this, otherwise the light level was so low, nothing on the background was showing up on film.
It's filtered with a JBL Crystalprofi 900 and I have two airstones at either end, but I'm not sure how I feel about them; I kinda feel it looks better and more serene without the bubbles. There's no heater and even without it the temperature is around 22^oC. It'll be a cheap tank to run too; no heater and the light will be off most of the day ... cos they be blind In fact, even when the light is on during the day, you'd hardly notice.

As for the fish? I'm very happy with them. They're everything I hoped for; energetic, fascinating and hopefully easy to keep. It's amazing to watch them feed. Once they know the food is in the tank, they hit the floor straight away and collect it from there, so I feed them sinking pellets. Also, in spite of looking like they're blundering around the tank, they engage in some very impressive feats of navigation, considering they have no eyes. More than once I've seen them either hammer through gaps in the rock on the left hand side or thread their way along the gaps in the slate at the back.
I know they're not the most complex of creatures, but I think they're a wonder of evolution

Nice 1 LJ. Cool looking set up you have. Fascinating the way they dont bang into anything and also how they find the food. Its the 1st time i saw a tank set up for these fish.

Eric

Thanks. I wanted to try something new but simple and these guys fit the bill. When they first went into the tank they swam around like crazy. Apparently they do that in a new environment to memorize their bearings. In this clip they're pretty calm by comparison.

Your tank looks fine ,i'd probably try to stick something like thin pieces of moor wood between the rocks (flat on back wall just to get rid of gaps ?)
Very nice and unusual fish in my opinion , i've seen them in SH some time ago and was gonna buy a few but unfortunately the fiancee was with me at the time, and said they would freak her out every time she looked at the tank ... Well she does wear quite strong glasses ,and ive mixed feelings looking at her every morning before she puts them on ..just saying ..

ABdarudeone wrote:

Your tank looks fine ,i'd probably try to stick something like thin pieces of moor wood between the rocks (flat on back wall just to get rid of gaps ?)
Very nice and unusual fish in my opinion , i've seen them in SH some time ago and was gonna buy a few but unfortunately the fiancee was with me at the time, and said they would freak her out every time she looked at the tank ... Well she does wear quite strong glasses ,and ive mixed feelings looking at her every morning before she puts them on ..just saying ..

she doesn't have access to this forum, does she?

now if I could only get a couple of Sinocyclocheilus furcodorsalis to go with them, I'd be a very happy man

Tank turned out prity well LJ, cheers for sharing, realy enjoyed the video

It's great to see someone setting up a tank for something unusual.
Love the way the rocks look like they are floating.

As for the S. furcodorsalis, good luck with that quest. But maybe not an impossible one.

Thanks guys

It might not be an impossible quest Darren... but I'd say it'd be an expensive one. I think I remember someone online saying they paid adult arowana prices for one S. furcodorsalis!

Thanks John. There's only 12 in there but I think with the way they dash about the place they look like more. My 3 year old grandson was counting them and got up to 29

I had plans to put in a few albino Mexican dwarf crayfish - not subterranean, I know, but at least they're Mexican and would go with the look - but I now think they'd suffer from the relentless activity of the cave tetras.