Siren and Noto Tanks

[peter]

I just finished planting my siren tank, and then redid the tank my notos were in since it looked awful. In any event, since there aren't many recent siren photos, I thought I'd share some of them. I apologize for the lack in quality of the photos, but I guess I'll make up for it in quantity. Anyhow, here they are.

Here's a photo of the noto tank. It's a 20 gallon tank with 4 adult n. viridescens louisianensis. I added a sand bottom since I've found it's so easy to plant, though it adds a lot of weight, and takes forever to get clean before using.

Aside from the elodea and java moss, I do not know what type of plants they are. I also planted the siren tank heavily with them, and the ones I've had in there for a while are doing really well.

Here is a side view of the siren tank, which houses four adult siren intermedia nettingi. It is a 55 gallon tank, again with the sand bottom.

This shows the left half of the tank, where the filter is. The sirens tend to spend more of their time on the other half of the tank, though they will utilize the PVC pipes. The white bucket in the upper left is outside the tank and in hindsight should have been moved. You can see that this tank uses a lot of elodea; I recently found a local source for it, along with some coon's tail. I also use a few plastic plants, i.e, the thick dark green one on the right.

This picture shows more elodea, and a nice reedy-type plant that washed down the river. I found a location full of these rooted plants floating on the surface and have added more, especially in the noto tank and another that I hope to show in a few weeks. You can also barely see the roots of water hyacinth on the top; I understand that this plant requires high intensity light. I'm hoping a 150W bulb will be enough; the sirens really like to hide in the roots, especially at night. Another PVC pipe is also here; next time I go into town I plan on removing this pipe and replacing with a longer straight one.

This is one of the males. I believe I have 2.1.1 in this tank.

Here's one of them going up for air. I wish I'd have moved the camera up an inch or so, but no such luck. This is the right side of the tank, and is more heavily planted, mostly because the sirens uprooted most of the elodea, leaving room to plant others. I still have to re-root several plants every day or so, but it's getting better. The light is also over on this side.

Here are two of the sirens. I've found sirens to be very aggressive, and they will bite each other hard enough to kill. Despite this, they still will stay very close to other sirens. Since moving the animals into this larger tank, and especially after planting, I've seen a large decrease in aggression. I'd originally had 7 sirens, but three killed each other in a possibly heat-stress related accident in my dorm during vacation. Two of these sirens also were almost killed a bit later and had to be seperated; they were in a 30 gallon tank with the others I still have. They've healed up well though, and are doing fine now together in the tank.

This is the smallest siren. As you can see, he took some damage from the large male. Luckily, both eyes weren't hurt, though I'm fairly sure they have really bad eyesight regardless.

This image is of the smallest siren with the male that attacked him. It's kind of amazing that he would get so close to the male, but at any given time, two of the four are generally touching each other. Papers I've read have suggested a very high density of sirens in the wild, and a 55g is starting to get closer to actual densities seen there.

Unlike mudpuppies, sirens are very active animals and can be seen swiming through the water collumn. They're not as fun to feed, though. I feed my sirens fake crab, which is almost always present in my house due to my unnatural obsession with it. They generally sniff it out and then a feeding frenzy ensues. They also get lots of invertebrates during the summer; a lot of bugs came in on the plants and others I introduced intentionally. I also feed them worms when I have them.

Those are just some more pictures of them swimming. Anyhow, there's my siren tank. Most of the shots from the noto tank didn't turn out, so I guess this is siren heavy.

If anyone knows the name of any of the plants in my tank, I'd appreciate it if you're tell me. I'm just hoping they'll survive, though I am prepared for a massive die off if they don't. Anyhow, thanks for looking!

 

[mark]

Wow, great tanks Pete, makes me truly jealous (with a touch of guilt mine aren't as admirable). Plants - best ask someone (cough Mike cough) although I might be imagining seeing some Valisneria - the long grassy sort of plant and of course the Elodea.

I too prefer sand bottoms. Despite some cleaning problems they present they are over all much more aesthetically pleasing and better for plant growth.

I'd give you a scratch and sniff sticker for this post (read as: good job, you're cool).

 

[william]

there's some hornwort in there, and some arrowhead??

 

[ronald]

hello, i'm new, seen anacharis also.

 

[william]

hello and welcome! i don't think we have anyone else from the philippines! nice to see were growing all over the world!

 

[nate]

An obssession for fake crab...so I'm not the only surimiphile!

Great tanks Pete. The observations you've made on their captive behavior are really interesting to me. I see Elodea/Anacharis, hornwort, arrowhead, and some sort of Valisinerai-type of grass. Are all of them local natives?

 

[pin-pin]

The notos look like they're living large.

Man, I wish I had the space to keep 50-gallon tanks!

The siren I saw on display at the CAS did seem to be locating its food by smell. I shot a video of it (large file for people with dial-up): Feeding-time!

 

[peter]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. The hornwort is more difficult to find and I don't have too much of it, but we typically snag it a lot when fishing or I've been finding it drifting down the river. Everything in the tank is local natives (aside from the sirens); the hornwort, arrowhead and grass all being found on the river, and some hornwort and the elodea are both found 10 minutes from here in a ditch type area going out from the river. I currently have five gallon buckets with elodea and another with the arrowheads/grass thingies; the grass is extremely common and easy to find on the river. I try to avoid collecting from this ditch though, since it is probably the worse mosquito infested area I've ever seen, which disappoints me since there are some really small crayfish that I could find if I was able to take the time, as well as large quantities of aquatic insects.

Thanks for sharing that movie, Pin-pin. My sirens are much the same way, except they congregate in the same spot and will sometimes attack each other at this time. I've reduced some of this fighting by spreading the crab throughout the aquarium and leaving the pieces in there for a day or so; though this can potentially foul the water. Most of it is eaten the first day, and the filter and large volume of water can handle the extra crab for another day without problems.

In any event, now that I have sufficient plant cover for them and a large enough tank, I hope to be able to cycle them such that they breed this winter/spring, provided I am able to manipulate the temperatures effectively; dorm rooms aren't the best for temperature control.