OK, my camera is old, tired and has been dropped too many times, plus the water is still a bit cloudy, so bear with me on the pix.  The blackside darters are camera hogs. 

** EDITED:  for some reason the rest of the pix won't upload right.  They're the same size as this one but are coming out all pixelated.  I'll try uploading them to photobucket and linking them later tonight.

the blur in the front is Mr. Personality, the blackside darter who always has to come see who you are and what you're doing when you go over to the tank.  The two in the back are log perch

More o Mr. Personality

orange throat darters(sorry so blurry)

awsome tank, love the aquascape. 

Nice scaping!

Edit: If you need any help with Photobucket let me know. I post all my pictures through them.

I know your focus is on those really neat native fish, but your tank is beautiful!  Is that real driftwood?  Where did you find it?

--Tim

Young Timothy, a compliment from a Marine guy(and one with tanks that look like yours!!) on how my simple little native tank looks means a lot! Thank you!

Thanks Burks!  And I like PhotoBucket too(at first glance I thought you said you LOST all your pix...)  I used PhotoBucket when I was doing PPI's MySpace page.  It has less compatibility issues with message boards and stuff than Picture Trail did.

Tim, thank you too for the compliment!  I really do enjoy the "scaping" aspect of the aquariums. I used to do all sorts of "theme" type stuff with my tanks, but anymore I really find myself preferring to aim for as natural a look as possible.

I don't have NEARLY the plants I want in there yet, but the Val is doing great already in just a few weeks in the soil, and I'm going to add more when I switch the 55 over to soil substrate too.  I'm trying to stay with plants that would be likely to be found growing native in our area, since that's where the fish are from.

The driftwood is a cool piece somebody gave me a long time ago that they bought somewhere-- it's affixed to a piece of slate. I'm going to take the rest of the lace java fern out of the 55 and try to get it to attach to the wood also.  The fish like swimming in and out of those holes.

The big root-looking thing is one of those fake roots you can get at any of the chain pet stores.  The rocks and slate I got from various places around town or at the barn.  My plan was to use aquarium epoxy and create some formations with the slate pieces, but that turned out to be way more of a project than I am up for at the moment.  Maybe eventually, because I like having "cave" areas where the fish can hideout.  It would be a more natural aquascape I think, since most rivers have roots and underhangs and holes and such.

***

I'm really enjoying these fish.  They are so fun to watch! And I swear the have personalities.  I am so looking forward to getting the plants added, and a wider variety of natives.  Nobody who has seen them is believing me that we caught them ourselves locally.