Suggestions for a FW setup?

Cap'n · #1 08-10-2006, 02:59 AM

The large clown loaches are going to make it difficult to keep smaller schooling fish. I like the ideas of rainbowfish and especially the silver dollars. Add in a pair of severums and you have a similar setup to the one I am planning to change my tanganyikan tank to.

What about a pair of firemouth cichlids? Not the school you were thinking of but they would go great with the loaches and would be very visible.

Delphinus · #2 08-10-2006, 08:23 PM

Cool, thanks for the suggestions. yeah, maybe "schooling" isn't quite what I meant, I meant something that "doesn't sit on the bottom and hide all day long".

Midgetwaiter, I keep my temp around 23. I didn't realize that the two loaches were incompatible (at least in the water temps they prefer). You can tell that the butterfly loach likes fast flow. I dunno, I've had this guy at least 5 years or so now. I haven't a clue what he eats, never comes out for food, but I see him at night darting about. I kind of wonder if I did go to a cleaner setup whether he'd have a harder time, maybe he's subsisting on the cyanoslime I get growing on my plants all the time.

Yeah, I know my loaches are pretty wee all things considered. They are pretty comical fish, it's too bad they make keeping any kind of snail impossible. Every now and again I'll throw some excess snails out of my outdoor pond barrell into the tank for them to go nuts on. Kinda mean to the snails I guess but there are hundreds of them in that barrell anyhow, they hitchhiked in on some cattails, the cattails never lived through the winter but the snails sure did.

midgetwaiter · #3 08-10-2006, 11:16 PM

That's a comfortable temp for the butterfly but lower than most people keep clown loaches. A big part of that is that the clowns seem to resist ich better at those temps and being scale less and wild caught that's always a bonus. If you aren't having trouble though don't mess with it.

StirCrazy · #4 08-11-2006, 01:03 AM

First, you should find the clown loaches a new home as that tank is way to small for them.. at that age they should be 12 to 14" long, but all that aside why not fix the problem for the live plants instead of scrapping them? got to be some reason why they don't do well.

Steve

Delphinus · #5 08-11-2006, 04:10 AM

If someone could tell me what I was doing wrong for the plants, I'd be all over it. Seriously, I've given this a go for a few years now, it's just degrades way too fast. I've tried CO2, no CO2, more light, less light, more flow, less flow, more fertilizer, no fertilizer, etc. etc. etc. etc. When I ask people for advice on how they keep their FW setups top-notch, usually I get vague answers like "oh I don't really do much."

All things considered, I'd rather have the loaches than the plants anyhow.

12" to 14" long at 5-6 years? Ok they're not that big yet but they're big .. and growing still ... agreed they need a bigger tank, but that's sort of why I was wondering if say a 48" 50g would be a better choice than say a 36" 65g (Ok maybe I didn't come out and ask that specifically yet, but I am now, wouldn't a 50g but 48" tank be better than a 65g but 36" tank? Given that I don't want to go heavier than say 70g total water volume in the spot the tank occupies.)

trilinearmipmap · #6 08-11-2006, 07:26 PM

As far as the plants it can be troubleshot if you want to take the time I could help you fix it. I have a high-light CO2 system, and a low light non-CO2 system, I have been through bad troubles with both of them and now they are both running great. IMO you need a multifactorial approach to deal with it including substrate, macro and micro ferts, lighting balanced to CO2, and an algae-eating crew to include shrimp otos and snails. But if you want to keep clown loaches IMO they are not well compatible with a planted tank because they will eat snails and probably shrimp too.

Delphinus · #7 08-11-2006, 07:37 PM

Yeah... it seems that what it comes down to, the loaches or the plants. Not that I'm against the idea of a nice planted tank, if done well they are amazing setups, just thinking that it's best to separate the goals for now.

Ok given that I need to get the loaches into a bigger system, but can't give them a 90g (or bigger) tank *at this time*, but I could, say, fit into the spot the current tank is in, either a 3' 65g, or a 4' 50g, what's a better choice? The length or the overall volume?

Tri, got any pics of your setups?

midgetwaiter · #8 08-11-2006, 08:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

First, you should find the clown loaches a new home as that tank is way to small for them.. at that age they should be 12 to 14" long, but all that aside why not fix the problem for the live plants instead of scrapping them? got to be some reason why they don't do well.

12 to 14 is pushing it a bit, I think his are a pretty resonable size. IME clowns don't get up to that foot size until about 8 or 9 years

As far as the plant issues go, what were you using as substrate? Plants just don't thrive in sand or gravel, a nice planted tank is setup with that in mind using a loam mixture or something like eco complete right from the get go.

StirCrazy · #9 08-11-2006, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by midgetwaiter

12 to 14 is pushing it a bit, I think his are a pretty resonable size. IME clowns don't get up to that foot size until about 8 or 9 years

As far as the plant issues go, what were you using as substrate? Plants just don't thrive in sand or gravel, a nice planted tank is setup with that in mind using a loam mixture or something like eco complete right from the get go.

If you go to the rivers where the clown loaches are from they are actual a food source and they were fishing them and talking about how big they have to be for eating and that coralated to age, anyways it ended up being about 4 years for them to reach the 1 foot mark and big enuf to be worth eating.

in tanks yes they grow a lot slower as we don't feed them enuf, they don't have enuf room ect.. but they are still a fresh water fish that is listed in the books as sutible for larger tanks only, even though store owners will sell them with 5 gal cubes.

Steve

Delphinus · #10 08-11-2006, 03:57 PM

So will a 48" 50g work or am I going to have to make my 75g reef into a clown loach tank for the next couple of years?

I should mention it's not the plants that don't grow, it's the cyanoslime and other crap (beard algae?? or something) that just overtakes it. I can prune the plants and clean the slime of the plants and other items, but the fuzzy stuff on the rocks and other items is impossible to remove. It's like the tank needs a complete tear-down and scrubbing from top to bottom once per month. That's just way too much work, when I compare to the incremental maintenance that the reef tanks require, there's no comparison. I actually find my one FW tank a much harder chore than my multiple reef tanks.

My thinking is that by abandoning the approach to having a highly planted tank that I can go to a tank that is not as brightly lit and may therefore be a bit easier to keep on top of.

So it sounds like I can expect the clowns to double in the next year or two? That would sort of explain why I suddenly find myself wondering if I'm actually noticing them bigger from one day to the previous. They were maybe 1.5" - 2" when I got them, and it took at least two years for them to double from that size, and then again maybe another two years to double from that size. To think that in another two years they will be double from here almost means we're talking about exponential growth.. I thought maybe it would be more of a tapered curve?

Man... I obviously need to bone up a bit on my FW reading. Despite that the tank is ten years going strong now, I have nowhere near the knowledge that you guys have for FW..