Keeping and Swimming With Sharks?

[TheCanuck]

That wouldn't work at all..

 

[kaivalagi]

Sounds like you need to get into Scuba diving and spend your money on diving trips to me...trying to get such a habitat working is best left to marine biologists who look after huge public aquariums...

 

[snyder810]

I
And I also want to know what kind of small schooling fish can I use as a bottom of the ecosystem fish, kind of like the glass shrimp. So that there is more variety of food for the larger fish and there is less pressure on the snails and there is more feeder fish/animals.

i just don't see anything that would captively reproduce at a rate high enough to be self sustaining in population. it's just really hard to judge how much these fish would actually eat. like i said before if you really want to do something like this you NEED to get in contact with some public aquariums for information. heck maybe go visit a few and take the behind the scenes tour offered

 

[kaivalagi]

like i said before if you really want to do something like this you NEED to get in contact with some public aquariums for information. heck maybe go visit a few and take the behind the scenes tour offered

Good call
I really think they would try to convince the OP out of it if they were told what he is trying to do anyway...

 

[FLESHY]

Okay...Im going to throw this out there. I know what 5500g looks like because I have one of my own. Since you only listen to about half of what I say...Im going to make a slightly more reasonalbe stocking list and we can work from there...everything I do can be up to discussion with anyone on here. This is what I would do if I was going to try and make an "ecosystem"



[WRASSE]

x0 Humphead Wrasse - Not ever going to be able to live in an 18' circle. Sorry.


[PLANKTON]

Phytoplankton
Size: Micro

Zooplankton
Size: Micro

[TANG]

x0 Blue Tang
Size: 30cm

x0 Naso Tang
Size: 39cm

x4 Red Sea Sailfin Tang
Size: 39cm

x0 Unicorn Tang
Size: 60-64cm

[ANGEL FISH]

1x Emperor Angelfish - ONE. Maybe. After you get everything else established and the "ecosystem" running.
Size: 38cm

0x Queen Angelfish
Size: 45cm

[GROUPER]

x0 Panther Grouper
Size: 50-70cm

[SHRIMP/SNAIL/CLEANER CREW]

x1000 Glass Shrimp
Size:

x10 Cleaner Shrimp
Size:

[OTHERS]

x0 Longfin Bannerfish
Size: 25cm

x0 Harlequin Tuskfish
Size: 25cm

x0 Potato Cod
Size: 150-200cm

x0 Whitetip Reef Shark
Size: 160-180cm

Now...I would start by getting LR and sand...Let that get some great cultures of algae (micro/macro) and get TONS of inverts in there and make sure they start to breed. In 6 months I would start adding TINY fish...six line wrasses ect...then your school of 4 tangs (they will still probably eat out all the algae) eventually maybe ONE angel. That might actually work. I would do 3 sailfins just to be on the safe side.

 

[iHammer]

Guys, there is no way in hell I would do it if I wasn't sure it would work out, I am not that cruel

 

[Banjardini]

1. Is it safe to swim with Ray/Trigger Fish/Whitetip Shark
2. Are 10-50 cm fish safe from these animals?

Guys, there is no way in hell I would do it if I wasn't sure it would work out, I am not that cruel

.....You don't sound too sure to me, my troll sense are tingling.

 

[Specialk314]

i'm not sure where you guys are getting 5,500g from. the OP said his pool/tank/pond/indoor ocean is 10 meters x 10 meters x 4 meters deep. as one poster already pointed out, thats 105,668g

 

[Fraser]

Need to factor in the fluctuations of a true ocean, new food/nutrients brought in all the time, NOT a fixed system - harder for a group of fish to be wiped out. Shark might not predate on the smaller fish if kept well fed, more likely to have issues with medium predators such as groupers, which from what I have seen eat like no tomorrow. Better off like what Fleshy said and begin with smaller numbers of the somewhat 'easier' smaller fish, let them establish themselves before introducing any decent predators (shark last). Or if you were more inclined towards larger species focus more on sustaining them both foodwise and filtration etc, rather than relying on a self-supporting system - pretty difficult.

 

[FLESHY]

I thought I read somewhere that it was going to be 5,000g. Thanks for the correction specialk.

That being said, I would still stay away from the bigger fish. I also have a very hard time believing that you are going to build a tank that large. The largest tank on this site is 52,000g and that guy basically built another mini house. Even if you have the support of a university this is a massive undertaking.

Start with building the environment...get yourself a couple schools of tangs 10x convicts 10x yellows...and then maybe add five angels and a trigger. But work from the bottom up. Lets start seeing pictures or evidence of some sort that this might actually happen.