Setups for having riverine/rheophilic and still water fish in the same tank?
- Thread starter MultipleTankSyndrome
- Start date
Large peninsula design tank, 6-8' long. The manifold end of the tank with the overflow and return flow will be more turbulent and the far end of the tank will simulate a sort of riverine pool or calm eddy.
The fish will always find what area of the tank they like best of course.
The fish will always find what area of the tank they like best of course.
Not a bad description of my planned tank mentioned at the beginning of the thread, actually. It's a 1.83m long, and aside from the calm bottom, the left end is far calmer than the right because of the mentioned way the Sicce pumps spread their flow out.
Oh I see. You should post more pictures.
I had the thought to create a high flow riverine tank a few years back, initially for my loaches. I put the drains on one end and the returns on the other, trying to simulate a shallow run area of a river with strong laminar flow.
It works great, though I found the lack of dead spots in the tank distressed a lot of my fish, the only place to rest was under the returns. I mitigated this using different nozzles to direct the flow around, eventually I used RFG nozzles in a fowlr format on the same tank with some success.
I liked playing with this tank but am leaning back to a more traditional back-drilled design for my newer builds. This provides a more versatile template and sort of replicates a riverbank pool, which seems to me the place where most fish like to hang in a river.
Pre-picture update (I don't have access to a good camera at the moment):
The plans for that tank have changed some. I'm only going to be using a Sicce XStream 8000 for it, instead of that and the 2 Voyager 4's (which are to be transferred to the 473 liter with my archerfish in it).
That's because the 42x turnover seems to eliminate most dead spots when it comes to fish-in testing, just like
Backfromthedead
's original setup. Using the (theoretically, at least) dead spot-loving kuhli loaches as indicators, they were considerably more active with just 17x turnover compared to 42x, although they may not be at their most active because the tank is not as decorated as I intend it to eventually be.
Now, to be fair, 17x turnover is still quite strong flow. I expect it will be enough for the riverine fish planned for that tank given how this river tank (https://www.loaches.com/articles/my-clown-loach-aquarium) also had 17x turnover and had the riverine fish do well.
And with strong flow comes lots of oxygen. Here's an older picture I took of the agitation I get with the setup:
The plans for that tank have changed some. I'm only going to be using a Sicce XStream 8000 for it, instead of that and the 2 Voyager 4's (which are to be transferred to the 473 liter with my archerfish in it).
That's because the 42x turnover seems to eliminate most dead spots when it comes to fish-in testing, just like
Backfromthedead
's original setup. Using the (theoretically, at least) dead spot-loving kuhli loaches as indicators, they were considerably more active with just 17x turnover compared to 42x, although they may not be at their most active because the tank is not as decorated as I intend it to eventually be.Now, to be fair, 17x turnover is still quite strong flow. I expect it will be enough for the riverine fish planned for that tank given how this river tank (https://www.loaches.com/articles/my-clown-loach-aquarium) also had 17x turnover and had the riverine fish do well.
And with strong flow comes lots of oxygen. Here's an older picture I took of the agitation I get with the setup:
