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Suggestions for a New 225 Gallon Community Tank

Started by Guest_Logperchy_* , Sep 15 2008 09:45 PM

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15 replies to this topic

#1 Guest_Logperchy_*

Guests

Posted 15 September 2008 - 09:45 PM

Hello, I'm new to this forum, and I'm hoping you guys can help me out. I am a grad student who has been given the opportunity to set up a display aquarium in a university building. As of right now the aquarium is a blank slate. We would really like to set up a community tank with several different species of smaller fish (in the past the university has just had boring gamefish...catfish, bass, etc.) I want it to be the best possible representation of fish diversity in our area, especially for people who have no idea that some of these cool little fish exist.

Our tank is 225 gallons, 72" long x 18" wide x 48" deep. We would like to have some darters (E. spectabile, zonale, radiosum, etc.), a couple species of shiners, maybe dace, stonerollers, topminnows, silversides, a couple of madtoms. I want a nice balance of fish occupying different levels. Most of our seining will be in E. Oklahoma (obtaining the fish is not a problem, I catch all of the above routinely during my fieldwork). Anybody have ideas about which species co-exist peacefully, which ones do best in captivity, feeding, etc.?

Does anyone have experience setting up this sort of tank? We are trying to determine what kind of equipment (pumps, filters, etc.) to buy and what the overall layout should be. Substrate, rocks, etc. We don't really have a lot of experience doing this, but we're all pretty excited about it. I know this is a bit vague...basically right now the project is a blank slate as I said before, and any guidance we could get (especially about equipment) would be most helpful.

Thanks

D. Lynch

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#2 Guest_blakemarkwell_*

Guests

Posted 15 September 2008 - 10:00 PM

Well, you have definitely come to the right place, there are several forum members that have setups similar to what are are trying the achieve. The majority of all the the fish listed can be maintained together. The more fish you have in there, the better, this will alleviate the tension and aggression. I am no expert on this, but I can send you in the right direction and some other members can wrap it up. However, I must first direct you to a member that has big community tanks and that is Todd Crail (farmertodd) his website dealing with his aquariums are in the link that follows Farmer Todd's Website. Also, he wrote a excellent entry in American Currents awhile ago that he still provides via PDF and you can find that on the link I provided, you scroll about half way down the page, under the topic title "State of the Farmertodd art" click the System Design for the.... link for the PDF, read through that and you should be well on your way.

Thanks,

Blake

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#3 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 15 September 2008 - 10:01 PM

There are lots of people here that can help you... not sure if I am one, but I will give it a shot... as far as I know spectabile and zonale will both do well in an aquarium... shiners over that are great and topminnows mixed in also works quite well... stonerollers don't always do as well, but may work in a tank as lartge as the one you are working with... they are great fish, but sometimes don't seem to convert as well to prepared foods... probably just need more greenery in their diets... silversides are known for being hard to keep alive... madtoms are fun, but very secretive, you may not ever really see them, so may not be great for a display tank...

As far as tank equipment, your main goal is to create as much current as possible without introducing heat into the aquarium...so powerheads are usually the trick, but large canister filters can also be useful.

Sort of a generic answer to your generic question, but keep asking and maybe some others will just in here.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

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#4 Guest_Newt_*

Guests

Posted 15 September 2008 - 10:07 PM

Welcome, Logperchy!

There are a ton of options open to you. Your tank would be great for a stream tank. This sort of tank can be set up in various ways, but the main thing is that the filter intakes are at one end of the tank and the outflows at the other. This can be done with canister filters or a sump, or it can be done as an intank fixture with a PVC pipe manifold and some powerheads.

The majority of minnows, topminnows, madtoms, and darters get along reasonably well if provided with lots of space and cover; darters can be territorial with their own or similar species, but their territories are fairly small. Creek chubs tend to eat tankmates. Silversides are notoriously fragile.

Substrate collected from the streams should be fine. Some minerals like limestone, dolomite, calcite, gypsum, marble, and certain sandstones will raise the pH and hardness of your water if it is starting out soft. Do you want to keep plants?

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#5 Guest_Logperchy_*

Guests

Posted 15 September 2008 - 11:22 PM

We are leaning towards not having live plants for now if we can avoid it (we might add things later on).

So we would be better off gathering material for substrate from the places where we seine as opposed to buying gravel from an aquarium store? Another question...should we keep snails in the tank to eat detritus or do some of the bottom-dwelling fish take care of that?

The department is going to give us some money to buy equipment and if anyone has any specific pumps or filters that they could recommend based on experience I would appreciate it.

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#6 Guest_smilingfrog_*

Guests

Posted 16 September 2008 - 12:56 AM

So we would be better off gathering material for substrate from the places where we seine as opposed to buying gravel from an aquarium store? Another question...should we keep snails in the tank to eat detritus or do some of the bottom-dwelling fish take care of that?

The department is going to give us some money to buy equipment and if anyone has any specific pumps or filters that they could recommend based on experience I would appreciate it.

I would say substrate from your seining locations would be better for a few reasons. It will: immediately cycle your tank, have lot's of little inverts that your fish can eat, and allow you to spend a little more of that department money on good quality filters, powerheads, etc...
Snails, at least the smaller ones, will probably be eaten by your darters. They really wouldn't be necessary in your tank but are part of the natural system and if you can get some larger ones that the darters won't eat they can be interesting too.
I don't have experience with a stream tank, but if you go that route, I would think that the bottom dwelling fishes, like madtoms and stonerollers would stir up detritis into the current where it would be sucked into the filter. A few crayfish might help to do this too.
Sounds like a great opportunity to set up a really interesting aquarium.
Good luck and keep us posted.

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#7 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

Guests

Posted 16 September 2008 - 09:26 AM

For filtration I would go with an Ocean Clear canister (or maybe two), and a 1600 gph pump. I have always used Little Giant pumps, but Iwaki is good too. You don't actually need that much flow for the filtration, but you can divert some of it to create extra current where you want it. The Ocean Clear system is modular so you can add another canister or different types of canisters, if you need to.

The other option would be to get a couple of the big Fluvals or something like that.

All this really depends on your budget. If money is tight then buy as much water pump as you can afford and go DIY with the rest.

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#8 Guest_blakemarkwell_*

Guests

Posted 16 September 2008 - 09:45 AM

Live plants are always a good idea though with a big tank like this. If you are going to have a large number of fish, then you are going to have a large bio-load, hence a lot of nutrients when feeding, plants and sand are always good "filters" at soaking that stuff up.

Blake

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#9 Guest_mikez_*

Guests

Posted 16 September 2008 - 02:17 PM

I agree with what everyone else said. I particually agree with Irate Morman's filtration suggestion. And yes, hate to admit it, but as a guy who's made his living directly or indirectly building, selling, using and maintaining [American made] water treatment equipment of all kinds, the Iwakis really are an excellent choice. They move lots of water, run 24/7 forever with zero maintenence and are virtually silent. I liked the idea of diverting some flow to create more current too.

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#10 Guest_Logperchy_*

Guests

Posted 16 September 2008 - 05:08 PM

If we do go the live plants route, what kinds of plants should we try to establish? Is it preferable to collect them from the wild or buy them somewhere?

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#11 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 16 September 2008 - 09:45 PM

Snails, at least the smaller ones, will probably be eaten by your darters. They really wouldn't be necessary in your tank but are part of the natural system and if you can get some larger ones that the darters won't eat they can be interesting too.
I don't have experience with a stream tank, but if you go that route, I would think that the bottom dwelling fishes, like madtoms and stonerollers would stir up detritis into the current where it would be sucked into the filter. A few crayfish might help to do this too.

Unfortuately it seems that growing darters usually grow farter than growing snails... that is, darters eventually eat all the snails in most of my tanks... but adding more is always pretty easy, good for the tank and good for the darters...so I keep doing it...

On the other hand, I would strongly recommend against crayfish... they hunt at night... most of your fish sleep at night... they will get big and eat your fish... some folks might tell you different about some crayfish... but I will just quietly disagree... they are scavengers and hungry all the time, so eventually they will eat your fish.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

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#12 Guest_schambers_*

Guests

Posted 16 September 2008 - 10:14 PM

On the other hand, I would strongly recommend against crayfish... they hunt at night... most of your fish sleep at night... they will get big and eat your fish... some folks might tell you different about some crayfish... but I will just quietly disagree... they are scavengers and hungry all the time, so eventually they will eat your fish.

I kept crayfish with my natives for several months and thought everything was okay, but then fish began disappearing. One day I caught a crayfish in the act of killing a fish. I was amazed at how large a fish it was able to grab and kill. They are efficient predators as well as scavengers.

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#13 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

Guests

Posted 16 September 2008 - 11:01 PM

Live pants - I collect all my own, but there is a caveat - they are almost exclusively emergent. I'd like for Laura to chime in on this, but for submerged plants I think you're gonna have to go with store-bought.

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#14 Guest_scottefontay_*

Guests

Posted 17 September 2008 - 08:10 AM

Plant: for starters I would recommend just getting some java moss established on some wood and rocks. It does best in low light and cool water, which seems like what you are going for. Very easy and will take up nutrients. It looks very similar to some native aquatic mosses but is generally easier to care for. As Irate eluded to, take a look around your collection sites and see what types of plants are growing there, collect when possible.