After a day and a night fishing in the black water Rio Atabapo, we decide to motor back toward Puerto Inirida, up the white water Rio Guaviare and try to access the Lago Macasabe, a large oxbow lake we saw from the airplane as we were landing at the start of the trip.
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This website was hacked a few weeks ago, and it took me a while to get it cleaned up. In the process, I had to restore from an old backup and lost several posts. Here are Colombia 2016! episodes 10 – 13:
In the last episode of the series we stopped at a nice stream with a colony of bats living under the bridge, and found the target species Corydoras metae. The section of the stream we looked at was deep and calm, so in this episode we will take a look at the shallow, swifter section below a rock dam. The most impressive features are beds of Echinodoras sp. sword plants that dominate the habitat. This is the last stop, and the last video, in the Llanos region around Villavicencio. The time has come to head back to Bogota to meet some friends (Vin Kutty, Jeff Cardwell and Eduardo Gomez) to take off for the second week of this adventure exploring the lowland rivers of eastern Colombia.
But you will have to wait a couple weeks…. I am going to take a two week break from publishing Colombia 2016 videos, and Episode 10 will air on Sunday, April 16 (Easter). I am not being lazy. I am traveling again! The destination is Mexico to visit some streams in the central highlands and in the desert around Monterey. I will finally get the chance to visit Quatro Cienegas… one of the places on my bucket list. See you in a few weeks!
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Episode 8 features my last day out exploring the waters of the Llanos region of Colombia. We had already seen a lot of really cools fish on the trip, but almost no catfish. I had really hoped to see some Corydoras sp. while in the Llanos, because there are so many species from that area in the hobby. Most notably, Corydoras metae. So I asked Hernando and Allesandro to take me to a place we would find them… Enjoy.
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This episode of Colombia 2016 revisits the ditch habitat from Episode 6, which has inspired me to aquascape an aquarium to give the impression of that ditch. Trying to recreate a specific ‘biotope’ in an aquarium is very hard to do… I actually think it is impossible, but there will always be someone willing to make it happen. A ‘biotope’ aquarium, in my opinion, is an impression of a habitat that looks as close as possible, but is also manageable. For example, trying to maintain an aquarium with several inches of organic mud on the bottom is not a good idea. Sometimes getting the actual species of plants or fish is also impossible, so another species that is similar is used to fill that niche. The idea is to have an aquarium that gives the impression of the biotope. When I look at this aquarium, I am reminded of the Llanos ditch. That is the effect I am after.
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I am hosting a live stream event each week that we are calling the Tuesday Night Mixer. Tonight was the first one, and it was a lot of fun. The topic was how I work with killifish. Here is the recording… join us next week!
This episode takes us to a very small blackwater stream that is really more of a flooded ditch just off the main flow of a larger river. The creek is choked with plants, and finding a place with enough open water to film is difficult. There are a lot of really cool little fish in this stream, including an undescribed tetra that looks like a dusky-bodied silver tip tetra. There are also a lot more Apistogramma alacrina at this location, including many females with fry.
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Here is a video about the changes I made to the downstairs 75-gallon aquarium several months ago. Again, this is old footage that I had misplaced. I will be doing more recent update videos on these tanks.
Here is a video that was created on my FaceBook page as a live feed. The topic is working with DIY LED lights.
This episode of Colombia 2016 takes us back onto the Llanos to search for Apistogramma alacrina. Our plan was to spend most of the morning on the Rio Guejar, a larger river with a lot of cool fish, but the water was too high and muddy after overnight rains. We then retraced our steps and visited a few streams on the way back to Villavicencio. The first stop was a stream near the town of San Juan des Arama, a place close to the type locality of A. alacrina. That stream is the focus of this video… Enjoy.
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