The Brazilian-Bolivian borderland closed in a glass – Kamil Hazy

Kamil Hazy

A biotope aquarist with experience in international competitions. Advocate of systematization of environmental aquaristics. Organizer – together with ”Aquarium Magazine” – of the Polish Biotope Contest. He offers services of consulting and arrangement of biotope, habitat and environmental aquariums. He believes that aquaria are primarily intended to meet the needs of their inhabitants.

A small tributary of the Rio Guapore in a standard fi fty-four litre aquarium

THE BRAZILIAN-BOLIVIAN BORDERLAND CLOSED IN A GLASS

THE BRAZILIAN-BOLIVIAN borderland closed in a glass – my first biotope story (part 1)

I remember my first aquarium as clearly as if I had started it yesterday... I guess that each experienced aquarium hobbyist could start their story this way. Most of us, especially at the beginning of our adventure, are looking for ideas in one moment, and end up with several tanks at home in another. The longer you are in this hobby, the harder it is to find limits.

I went through this first stage quite calmly, because in the my “hottest” period I had only three aquariums. At the moment I have two, and soon I will be setting up a third one for the purpose of Tropical EDU project. This is already quite a lot for a biotope aquarium hobbyist who wants to keep his tanks on a long-term basis in order to learn as much as possible about the behavior of his animals. However, instead of sharing my concerns at this point I’d rather tell you what I have been doing over the last few years to get to know a certain region of the world. So far, I have got to know it in a virtual way, however I hope to get a chance to see it in real life as well. So how did it all begin?

Apistogramma trifasciata harem, six Nannostomus eques and six Corydoras hastatus – a project of a small tributary of Rio Guapore in a standard fifty-four litre aquarium. The aquarium was praised by Heiko Bleher himself, and I – a fresh aquarist (status: fry) – was extremely pleased that I was noticed by a “living legend”. A moment later, a tank of similar volume has been inhabited by Apistogramma borelli harem and six Nannostomus eques. The project of a small pond in the Pantanal region, thanks to which I was able to meet the above-mentioned wildlife explorer and a group of excellent aquarists from Europe, is one of my favourite until today. These two aquariums gave me a lot of fun and I spent a good few hundred hours with them both for learning and acquiring knowledge about the recreated region and for improving my arrangement skills too. But it was still a small scale, and I wanted more. The next step was changing my apartment and moving everything I had into one tank. I made a deal with my wife: only one permanent tank at home allowed. I managed to convince her to have 180 x 60 x 32 cm one and that’s where I created my first “serious” Pantanal. The tank of this size gave me plenty of options when it came to stock, new decorations, more plants, new fish species. And that’s what aquarists love most. The fauna in this reservoir consisted of Apistogramma borelli, Apistogramma trifasciata, Nannostomus eques, Corydoras hastatus, Corydoras sterbai and Nannostomus beckfordi. Flora included Hydrocotiles leucocephala, Pistia stratiotes, Myriophyllum aquaticum, Helanthium tenellum, Helanthium bolivianum angustifolius, Bacopa monnieri, Eichhornia crassipes, Cabomba furcata. Over time, the aquarium started looking more like a plant aquarium than a biotope one and some mistakes became obvious. The two most serious ones were incomplete verification of information about the reproduced biotope and too much species diversity when it came to plants. The first mistake I made was relying on only one, seemingly one hundred percent sure source of information. The most scientific book published so far about several dozen biotopes from all over the world turned out to contain information unconfirmed by anyone but the author. When I realized that, my approach to biotope aquaristics has become significantly more professional. With this change, I also noticed a second mistake. Since we’re talking about mistakes, let me make a small digression.

COMPETITIONS AND HUMILITY TOWARDS THE ECOSYSTEM After I had moved I started to participate in various biotope aquarium arrangement competitions. I wanted to develop in this very direction and ensure the best possible conditions for my animals. I have encountered various challenges and obstacles along the way and it took me some time to solve them. But I was always consistent. At first I was motivated by the opportunity to occupy high positions, but I quickly realized that’s not what it is all about. With each competition, I was satisfied with something completely different. Thanks to my tanks, many aquarium hobbyists have paid attention to the area I was recreating. People were chatting with me, asking for advice, materials, sources of knowledge... I was tempted by the vision of becoming biotope aquarium “missionary”. Today I know I wasn’t ready then. After all, I had only three years of experience in aquaristics, and I only started making a name for myself, but I believed in my skills a little too much. I have fought some unnecessary Internet wars, learned a lot about myself and others. Now I have the Dunning-Kruger effect be-

“Pantanal” in the tank

hind me, a few not entirely successful projects, and a few very promising ones. I’ve verified the people I have around me, and I’m still doing my job, as consistently as before. I know whom to respect, who expects my help and whom I can trust. As you can see, biotope aquaristics can develop humans on many levels, including non-aquarium territories. The competitions, which I treated as a platform to share my knowledge and work pushed me to change the arrangement of my aquarium. However, I have tried to avoid changes in the livestock density or at least to make them very carefully. Some fish have been with me all the time, since the beginning of my adventure. Several species until now live in the tanks of my fellow aquarium owners and I can be sure they have the best possible care. It’s very important to me. The changes in my tanks were gradual and the “revolutions” took place in such a way as not to destabilize the microbiology acting in favor of the tank. I must point out here that I consider ecosystem stability to be the most important thing in good biotope reservoirs. Such stability is usually built for months, and along the way the tank goes

through different phases of “maturation”. One of the most enjoyable aspects of our hobby is watching this natural evolution and trying to understand it as much as possible, so it is worth being patient and in most cases simply letting nature doing its job. Every rearrangement, shaping of the ground, cleaning of filters, water changes or lack of them affect the tank and determine a different direction of the ecosystem development. The trick is to master these activities in such a way that the ecosystem develops roughly in the direction planned by the aquarium hobbyist. However, in biotope aquaristics, unlike in natural aquaristics, the owner has to shape much less, and leave more to the nature. This is what I learned from my own mistakes and today I approach wild ecosystems with greater humility. And now I’m getting back to my story.

RIO GUAPORE Pantanal, and more specifically its northern regions, made me look closer at the basin of a very interesting river – Rio Guapore, as the inhabitants of Brazil call it, or Rio Itenez, as the Bolivians call it. I will not focus on the river

The arrangement of the Rio Guapore basin’s “rooting area” with lush vegetation

itself today, and I will only mention that it is an interesting example of an atypical (according to Harald Sioli classifi cation) black water environment. The river is similar to classical black waters in color, but more like clear waters in terms of its chemical parameters. The main tributaries of the Itenez are a “mix” of rivers of different colous and relatively similar chemical parameters, which makes the underwater life in its river basin lush and it is largely the same as the entire Amazon basin, although there are places where we can also fi nd endemic animals. So, during the fi rst revolution in the tank, I moved from a shallow pond on the northern outskirts of Pantanal to a bend of the stream, located in the Rio Guapore basin. The arrangement from a typical plant evolved strongly in the direction of a root arrangement, but I also left enough room for the development of plants. I gave the top of the roots, often sticking out above the water, to one of my favorite plants – Hydrocotiles leucocephala, which quickly began to expand, also above the water. Two plant species remained in the tank: Helanthium tenellum and Helanthium bolivianum “angustifolius”. The latter has long been the basis for the subsequent versions of my tank, and its expansion has completely changed the visual perception of my second “big” arrangement. Changes also included animal stock. It has been simplifi ed and limited to only three species: Apistogramma trifasciata, Corydoras sterbai and Hyphessobrycon eques. The Apistogramma borelli, Nannostomus eques and Corydoras hastatus, which previously lived in this tank, were partly trans-

Sixty-three litre tank refl ecting the Pantanal region

ferred to aquariums of other hobbyists and to an aquarium I had set up at work. This small, sixty-three litre opti-white tank led me back to Pantanal and was my last tank recreating this amazing region. I guess I don’t have to write about the benefi ts of having a tank at work, it is enough to say that people love to drop by to have a cup of coffee “in front of the glass”. While at work Apistogramma borelli harem

provided an interesting visual experience, in my home tank you could mainly admire the incredibly interesting layout of Apistogramma trifasciata. I could watch three males and six females of this species for hours and I think their fi ghts for territory, domination and offspring breeding are something every aquarist should experience. The feeding school of a dozen or so Corydoras sterbai and several dozen Hyphessobrycon eques, sometimes grouping together and exploring the tank together, was an excellent “addition” to the cichlids’ behaviour. When changing the arrangeA unique composition of ingredients in the form of soft granules for omnivorous fish from South, Central and North America

ment I didn’t change the livestock density, and I limited plants to one species only, but you will learn about it in the next issue of Tropical EDU Magazine.

HERRING • CALANUS • KRILL • INSECTS • ALGAE