The first photo below is a small detail of the main tank on the moment the two couples met for an afternoon chat. These photos were taken in dark with my old a beloved Cannon camera, the film was developed and then I took digital photos of the photos… that is the reason of these faded colors. . When I first got one couple ( 2004 ), it was a gift and I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t return to the store and couldn’t just leave in a corner of the house. They were suffering in that small aquarium and I didn’t even slept at night thinking about the horrible life conditions those little beings were having. So I started to study and try to develop a perfect environment to then. I didn’t have money to buy larger aquarium, better filter and only solve the problem with better products. All had to be done with creativity and knowledge of their natural environment. With the passing of time I got largest aquariums , more fishes, and was able to develop better and more organic environment to then. I got fascinated with the idea to create an ideal world indoors. Well… all my life was a mess, I didn’t have money to eat, I didn’t have family or friends and was living in a violent city, ugly, and with this heavy, sterile concrete architecture called modernist or contemporary, no nature, no sign of the rain forest ( Mata Atlantica ) that once existed here. I hated every single aspect of my life and the world around me. Suddenly aquarium looked like a escape from all this. Was like a drug but with no collateral effects. It was exactly at the same time Mein Welt was created. The idea of breeding a rain forest indoors have exited me since then. Now I am working on a project of a Paludarium. I have worked on it for a couple of years developing new organic ways to filter the water and air, to heat it in as natural as possible way. to light it in a simple form not depending directly the sun, organic and self recycle soils…. I have no idea of how to put this in practice… or I don’t even know if I had a chance I would really do it. Maybe not. But dreaming and sketching and calculating crazy numbers has been my free time hobby these time I didn’t paint. Yesterday I felt a tiny, almost microscopic will to go back to the studio and keep developing what I was doing. But it is good to stop for a while, to see your own production from a bigger distance, to recognize what is really important on what you are doing and what must to be discarted. I like distances…. I like aquariums…. I like to live at the most distant and hidden corner of the world and do not even belong to this…. it makes me get closer to God and myself. . Angel Fishes , or Acara Bandeira as we call it here, are very moody, they all could be artists. Every individuals is very different of the other, physically and personality. With the passing of time I avoided the most aggressive and only focused on the very pacific, healthy and pretty ones for living in my pacific little worlds not causing trouble for their companions. Now I don’t care for reproducing then anymore. Because of many changes in my life on the past I had to avoid reproduction, but I kept all then in couples for not getting alone and living in very good aquariums. Is it sad to keep animals in tanks ? Yes, it is horrible. But I learned two things: these fishes wouldn’t exist in nature and if they return to there they wouldn’t be able to survive, the wild angel fish, as the one you see on the last images, is much stronger and more resistant. Other thing is that in Nature a fish only swim from one place to other if he needs to find food or escape from a predator, fishes don’t wim or exercise for fun. In well developed aquariums with lots of space to exercise they have more food than they find in nature and there are any kind of predators or stress. In aquarium a fish can live between 2 and 5 years more than would live in nature. So I do believe that if you create a proper environment for fishes bred ( never taken in wild ) you will be doing a good thing.
Acara Bandeira, pterophyllum scalare, albino koy veu, macho.
Acara Bandeira, pterophyllum scalare, Palhaço Albino Koy Veu. Macho.
Acara Bandeira,pterophyllum scalare, Albino Koy Veu , femea .
Acara Bandeira, pterophyllum scalare, Selvagem, macho This is the very first fish in my life, he and the wife which one I never can take a pic. I didn’t know they were wild. After this I decided to never acquire fishes taken from the nature as is very common to see in stores.
———————————————————————————
Ahhh !!! ………….few weeks ago I posted about my ultra natural amazonic aquarium and received may nice feed backs from you. Thank you. Just let me make you know that post on Tumblr and WordPress was as a matter of fact posted in 2009 or 2010 on Blogspot.
Today The aquariums with Tetra Green Neon fishes are much better, the water is excellent , you can even put a sick fish in it and in less than one week it will be all healed. Magic of the nature 
The fishes are not just very well but they are reproducing all the time, the vegetation is very dense but every 15 days I see a brand new baby coming out of it all shy… they don’t stop to born, what proves that the environment is perfect as this species doesn’t reproduce so easily in captivity, are few reports of it happen all over the world. And I don’t do nothing to make it happen, they do it spontaneously.
The fishes are health . I tried to introduce colonies of tiny insects and worms to see if the could reproduce there inside and be the natural fishes food . But the only thing that have worked so far was an accident . A little bit of chow fell on a corner near the lamp and i didn’t clean that . With the humidity weird tiny insects started to grow there . These insects ofen fall on the water feeding the fishes . Now i need a way to reproduce these insects in larger scale .
