oh NO! not another el cheapo cichlid.being at rm2 or less, the kribensis has often been overlooked, underated and snobbed at by most aquarist. the kribensis has the unfortunate luck of being term as a novice cichlid, and true to form the majority of malaysian aquarist wouldnt wanna have anything to do with a fish that tags its owners as freshies.
To me the kribs is one of the most beautiful cichlid and at its low price it is a cichlid worth keeping ... the reward of its colourful courting display and a spawn or two is almost assured. infact the very nature of the kribs in turnning their body colour on or off really reflexs the true calibre of their owners. a self proclaimed cichlid sifu is worth only 2 bucks if he cant get a kribs to turn its colour on......shall i go on?...so i thinkl its about time Kribs are given their proper respect.
i have been planning on a kribs only biotype setup for years , somehow for one reason or another i never got started.
so how does a kribs biotype looks like?
The books says clear water stream, pebble bed ,rocks and boulders....but how many times have we seen all that?...its begining to get stale on just pebbles and rocks. our imagnation is not being tested with such setups.
what about a planted setup with loads of exotic plants...half a dozen species a least. nice and attractive ...but then again everyone seems to doing the same setup and how often do we see aquarist who got the combination of plants wrong?..when something that dont suppose to be there appears there, then the whole setup becomes out of place...an eye sore ...especially to a fussy aquarist like me.
typical clear water stream in Nigeria...home of the Kribensis
the solution is to head out to one of our cleaner clear water streams in Malaysia to observe what its really like. im sure the streams in Malaysia are not much different then the ones in Nigeria....u cant go wrong here ...not on a long shot.
what i had in mind for my set up is the slower section of the stream. where moss grows on boulders, moss covered tree roots jolting out from the banks, and the slow current permits a small section of the bed to be infested with crawler plants. no fancy exotic plants here...they wont stand a chance in real life.
Tree root setup is not often seen since the problem of getting bogwood to look like roots.,,, unless u use actual roots.. roots have the natural curve but they must be in miniture size to fit into our tanks.
tree roots was the least of my problem....the real test ...can i get the 3 plant species i wanted for this setup?
JAVA MOSS, COLYSIS WRIGHT (poorman's java fern..hahaha) and Glossostigma.
so off i went to 88, a well known FS that supplies aquatic plants,....and luck indeed is on my side...they happen to have a bunch of java moss and glossostigma for sale.....but as often with me ..luck doesnt always means my lucky day.
I was told the java moss cost Rm3.50 per 10 grams!!!
wow!...and another wow!....wait a minute,...lets walk thru this again, Man, im serious...i aint the type who wanna trouble my brains with calculations, but this piece of information just needs to be calculated.
now, rm3.50 per 10gramms, that means 100grams would be rm35, and a kilo worth of java moss will cost a cool rm350.....cool for the lady behind behind the cash register, that is.
im trying very hard to appreciate the value of money no matter how fast the ringgit is skydiving...but to spend that kind of money for moss?...well this sure is something else....for as i could remember i last paid rm300 for a kilo worth of top grade Cambodian reeds and if my calculations are correct...the price of java moss tops the price of Rastafarian Wisdom Weeds!
Boy oh boy, guess the coloumbian boys would simply have to switch crop and start harvesting java moss.
hell...if the boys at 88 suppose i would paying any money for their moss...they sure got something else coming.
this tank has to go ..its a rush job for my nics....a real sore eye of a setup
