A Brief Introduction

I'm the Skeptical Aquarist. I've been a beginner at keeping apartment-sized freshwater tropical fishes in planted aquaria for over fifty years.

Ancistrus cf cirrhosus

A. cf cirrhosus is the common Bushynose of aquariums that is "compared to" ("cf.") the species described by the French ichthyologist Achille Valenciennes in 1836.

Electrified aquaria: heated and filtered

Modern aquarium-keeping was effectively created by the application of electricity to "natural" aquaria.

Victorian aquaria: glass tanks

The glass fish tank was a Victorian invention. Glass is essential to the concept of an aquarium: you look through it at the fishes and invertebrates, not gaze at them from above.

Captive fishes: a prologue

Millennia before fishes were kept as objects of religious awe and tabu, or out of the sheer love of them, captive fishes were maintained as a method of storing reserves of protein.

Ancistrus dolichopterus

Ancistrus dolichopterus ("L 183" for years) is a small Loricariid catfish, a warm black, peppered with tiny off-white spots and with a bold edging of skim-milk blue on its dorsal and caudal fins.

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