Setting up my second loach tank.

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

2 of the Odessas died. ?
I'm sad but not surprised, they were extremely thin and did not look particularly apt to bounce back. So now down to 11 as the maximum number for this tank, hopefully at least 9 will grow into healthy adults!

Has anyone else ever ran into very thin baby Odessa barbs, out of curiosity?

 

[phreeflow]

Everyone’s run into thin baby fish that failed to thrive, Odessa or not, for one reason or another, even with the best care and intentions. Just buy a couple more.

It’s okay to make mistakes…

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Reporting back with some good news and scary news!

Good news:

Just picked up the Sicce Voyagers for the tank. Yes, that's Voyagers.

I had read a lot of comments by duanes about riverine fish becoming unfit, aggressive, and even prone to bacterial infections without the flowing areas in their tank being strong enough to get enough exercise and to take their energy out in, which made me cautious about the flow in the fast area of the tank possibly being too slow. So just to be on the safe side, I have 2 Voyagers for this tank instead of 1.

Now, I'll still be following the advice given on Page 5, as the area with wide, slow flow from the XStream 8000 hasn't gotten any smaller. Nor have the no-flow areas for the fish to rest, both are still very much present and available for any fish to rest in should they choose to (and I expect they will often choose to).
But now, the high-flow area from the Voyagers is twice as intense as it would have been with the original plans. With any luck, that will allow any fish that chooses to swim against it to get the proper amount of exercise to remain fit, healthy, and peaceful before returning to the slow-or-no-flow areas.

An extra Sicce Voyager also has some addition to the flow and turnover calculations I made on Page 10. They are 6000 liters each (not 8000, that was a mistake), so they add an extra 4000 l/hr for 20000 l/hr of flow and a total of 25298 l/hr turnover with the filters.
Updated figures accounting for this are a bit more than 42 times/hour turnover in flow, 53-54 times/hour overall turnover, a bit more than 2.4 times as much flow as Martin Thoene, and almost twice as much overall turnover as Martin Thoene.

Finally, running 2 Sicce Voyagers instead of 1 along with the XStream produces an amount of surface agitation I'm very happy with. As soon as I can 'loan' the extension cord from my existing tanks (that should be today when cleaning the tanks), I'll take a photo of it.

Scary news:

I found some grey patches in the sand that are almost certainly anaerobic hydrogen sulfide pockets. ??
That's a big no bueno, although I'm not surprised given how long the tank sat with water but no movement or oxygenation. Sand will be stirred up and pumps ran for about a week in advance to turn it to sulfate before the fish go in.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Reporting back about the hydrogen sulfide. Giving the sand a good stir and running the pumps yesterday appears to have gotten rid of quite a bit of the gray areas in the sand. And that was only for about 30-40 seconds.
So it doesn't look like it takes all that long for hydrogen sulfide to be neutralized to sulfate. Phew!

Thanks for the consolation by the way P phreeflow . It's just what I needed to hear.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Some questions/plans for potential feeding:

-Recently, it came to me that replacing the larger yoyos with smaller zebras and Burmese could open up room for a red tail shark like I originally planned, solving the problem on Page 2 about there not being room. But now I have a feeding related worry.
Is there any way to prevent this 50/50 omnivore from eating too much protein in a tank full of carnivorous/insectivorous fish, or is it likely enough to cause trouble that I should skip the red tail shark? Redshark1's red tail shark was kept with his protein-loving clown loaches and got obese, but to my knowledge he didn't take any precautions to stop that, which is why I'm both worried and wondering.

-Martin Thoene's similarly stocked tank consumed a huge amount of food! ?
For reference, I'm pretty sure these tubs are around 1kg, yet they were still finished in about a month even with other foods fed!

My fish eat too much food. It gets expensive. A big flat of Bloodworm costs me about $24 after the tax has gone on it. They can eat that in no time unless I ration it, but that means feeding other foods which are also expensive. My Clowns LOVE Hikari Sinking Carnivour Pellets which I buy in bulk. Again, they polish off a $20+ tub of those in around a month, even fed with other foods.

Fish-food economics - Page 2 - Loaches Online Forum

Making the homemade frozen food isn't really an option for me (let's just say I tried it before and it didn't go well with the cousin). So I guess I'm going to have to watch those costs!
On the other hand though, it will be quite fun to feed such big amounts of food! In the existing 473 liter the future big fish are still young, and in the 110 liter the huge amount of fish is a huge amount of small fish, so I can't (yet) get the enjoyment of feeding big amounts from either tank like I will be able to from this tank.

-The feeding regiment for this tank will consist of good quality flake, discus granules, bloodworms, brine shrimp, Mysis shrimp, krill, mussels, earthworms, and possibly frozen mosquitoes/mosquito larvae. This is comparable to or greater in variety than what Martin Thoene fed his tank.

They are fed, sinking catfish pellets, Hikari Sinking Carnivour Pellets, Hikari Algae Wafers, good quality flake, Hikari Frozen Bloodworm, chopped up Salad Shrimp and occasional cucumber slices.

I think I will feed the frozen foods for a good majority of these feedings, based on the advice I got here: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/too-much-frozen-food.744474/page-2#post-8391282

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Another Odessa barb casualty, unsurprising as it is. It's OK as phreeflow said, but still unfortunate.?

The 10 remaining Odessas appear fat and healthy, though. One of them is even starting to get some color on its pelvic fins, and as soon as I get a good shot I will put it here.
Can't wait to see them grow up into their adult colors!

Anyone have any thoughts on the feeding by the way?

 

[Ogertron3000]

Some questions/plans for potential feeding:

-Recently, it came to me that replacing the larger yoyos with smaller zebras and Burmese could open up room for a red tail shark like I originally planned, solving the problem on Page 2 about there not being room. But now I have a feeding related worry.
Is there any way to prevent this 50/50 omnivore from eating too much protein in a tank full of carnivorous/insectivorous fish, or is it likely enough to cause trouble that I should skip the red tail shark? Redshark1's red tail shark was kept with his protein-loving clown loaches and got obese, but to my knowledge he didn't take any precautions to stop that, which is why I'm both worried and wondering.

-Martin Thoene's similarly stocked tank consumed a huge amount of food! ?
For reference, I'm pretty sure these tubs are around 1kg, yet they were still finished in about a month even with other foods fed!

Fish-food economics - Page 2 - Loaches Online Forum

Making the homemade frozen food isn't really an option for me (let's just say I tried it before and it didn't go well with the cousin). So I guess I'm going to have to watch those costs!
On the other hand though, it will be quite fun to feed such big amounts of food! In the existing 473 liter the future big fish are still young, and in the 110 liter the huge amount of fish is a huge amount of small fish, so I can't (yet) get the enjoyment of feeding big amounts from either tank like I will be able to from this tank.

-The feeding regiment for this tank will consist of good quality flake, discus granules, bloodworms, brine shrimp, Mysis shrimp, krill, mussels, earthworms, and possibly frozen mosquitoes/mosquito larvae. This is comparable to or greater in variety than what Martin Thoene fed his tank.


I think I will feed the frozen foods for a good majority of these feedings, based on the advice I got here: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/too-much-frozen-food.744474/page-2#post-8391282

mid you get a red tail shark I would be more worried about aggression than feeding, they can be nasty/territorial once they put on some size.
I got given one from my LFS that I didn’t really want, now he’s bigger he is giving my acaras so much trouble I think it’s time to rehouse him.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

My guess is that I'm unlikely to have an issue with aggression. They tend to leave loaches alone (reported on Seriously Fish+Loaches Online), and the tank is a good size, plus it will be added dead last so it can't see the tank as its own.

Just very concerned about what happened to Redshark, as it's far from the only case where omnivorous fish ate too much protein and became plump.

 

[Ogertron3000]

My guess is that I'm unlikely to have an issue with aggression. They tend to leave loaches alone (reported on Seriously Fish+Loaches Online), and the tank is a good size, plus it will be added dead last so it can't see the tank as its own.

Just very concerned about what happened to Redshark, as it's far from the only case where omnivorous fish ate too much protein and became plump.

I just got back from taking my 12cm fat and bulky red tail shark to his new home in a display tank at a LFS. Sad to see him go but he was out of control and aggressive as hell.
Give it a try in your tank but I think you might have the same issue as it’s their nature to be territorial once they reach a decent size. I also have had them in other tanks and they seem to get more uptight at fish with similar body shapes so clown loaches might cop it hard.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Thanks for the photo Ogertron. Little nitpick, but there will be no clown loaches in this tank, actually zebra, Burmese, and black+striped kuhlis.
As for aggression, red tail sharks do (or perhaps used to) exist alongside Botia in the wild, where they'd presumably see that the carnivorous mollusc+insect+crustacean-hunting Botia are not competition to their omnivorous grazing. I don't doubt that the Botia could cop it hard in theory, but my guess is the diet difference and resulting lack of cimpetition may be why Seriously Fish reports they are usually Botia-friendly.

Anyway, red tail shark or not, I have some updates on feeding this tank. They consist of new foods and a guesstimate of just how much food (frozen) I will have to feed at a feeding.

New foods will be calamari and mealworms. Calamari was inspired by having some and wondering whether the loaches I already have would like it (spoiler alert: they did). Since they did, I assume all the other loaches I will get (plus the sharks and barbs) would too.
Mealworms inspired by reading about Kelly_Aquatics 's mealworm farm, I read it was producing around 1000 a week. If the one I make produces a similar amount, that will really help offset food costs for so many fish (plus they ought to enjoy mealworms as part of a varied diet anyway).

Guesstimate of food amount is as follows.
So I documented that my 6 clown loaches of 9-12cm (or in other words, the same size as zebra/Burmese loaches) can eat at least 2 cubes of frozen food between them. And the 24 black kuhli loaches waiting in the 110 liter for this tank can eat at least 1 cube, possibly more.

Extrapolating this to the fish for this tank yields the following:

Loaches:

18x 50/50 mix of zebra and Burmese loaches = 6+ cubes of frozen food.
48x 50/50 mix of black and striped kuhli loaches = 2+ cubes of frozen food.

Sharks:

9x roseline sharks = 4+ cubes of frozen food (based on being same size as clown loaches, but more voracious eaters).

Barbs:

9-10x Odessa barbs = 1-ish cube of frozen food (guesstimate based on how many small pieces of frozen food they eat now as babies).

So that's 13+ cubes of frozen food per feeding! For me this is a lot, the most I have ever had to feed was 3.
It's going to take some getting used to, that's for sure!

Edit: Together with the previously mentioned bloodworms, mussels, mysis shrimp, brine shrimp, and krill (the earthworms are not really available sadly), this is enough types of live/frozen food to feed 1 on each day of the week. That's what I think I'll do.