Ideas for river tank set up

[oscnz]

Hay guys Im looking at putting togeather a high flow river tank and stocking it with hillstream loaches and the like I was just wondering if i set up a pair of external filters at one end with the pick up at the other with the substrate on a decline to the pick up end would it create enough flow for the little guys or should i look at something bigger?

[supasi]

Would work but would be better if you could do this

http://www.loaches.com/articles/river-t ... old-design

[oscnz]

That is exactly what i was thinking

Anyone have a old pair of powerheads?

[Stella]

Filters would normally be too low flow to do what you want.

I recommend this:

Take your total tank volume in litres, multiply it by 30. The result is the number of litres an hour flow you wan MINIMUM. Divide this across several pumps to distribute flow more evenly.

Remember if you do the system in the link above, every elbow and length of plastic slows down the water and increases motor wear, due to friction or having to bend the flow.

I had a 4ft (220lt) tank set up for a river flow. It had two 3500L/h pumps in it, giving a combined flow of 7000L/h. The fish dealt with it easily, they could have coped with much much more! Mine was for native torrentfish, bluegill bullies and shortjaw kokopu. Was awesome but had a tank disaster last year and it is no longer set up

[phoenix44]

he doesn't want natives. its for borneo suckers. temperate water.

[Stella]

I know same rule generally works for fast-water species. It attempts to recreate the hydrological conditions.

The huge advantage that tropical fishkeepers have with this sort of setup is that the heat from the pumps is a good thing. My two pumps raised the water temp by 7 degrees in WINTER. Not good for cold water fish.

[Ira]

A closed loop setup that puts the pumps outside the tank would minimise the heating from the pumps. Also using something like seios or streams that are a lot more energy efficient would help.

[purplecatfish]

I've got a FX5 on my 2m river tank with the intake at one end and a home made spraybar at the other. The spray bar points upwards. I've added 3 tunze 6025's, the first one is under the spray bar and points across the rocks. The other two are halfway down the tank, one pointing upwards and one downwards across the rocks. I've also got two internal filters near the intake which aerate the surface.

The whole setup give areas of fast current and slow patches, and most importantly a lot of surface agitation.

My other hillstream tank is 3ft with a Aquis 2200, the intake is at one end and the spray bar is at the other. The spray bar has one section agitating the surface and another spraying across the glass at the back. It also has a seio on the spraybar end which is directed at the glass at the front of the tank I've recently added a fluval 304 to the intake end to create more surface agitation.

I find that the hillstream loaches love to sit in the powerhead and spraybar flow on the rocks and on the glass. In both tanks the tiger hillstream loaches have bred.

[Zev]

I would be concerned with the smaller fish getting sucked into the Tunze 6025, the slots are fairly small, but you obviously don't have this problem?

[purplecatfish]

In the big tank there are angelicus loaches who are eating most of the swordtail fry and the Sewellia fry spend their time hiding amongst the plants and rocks. I've never seen them go up the sides.