Planning Tanks (for Fun!)

Th out it might be nice to start a thread where we can plan a few tanks stocking out for certain circumstances, just as a fun exercise rather than for real! (Littlefish this isn't an excuse for more tanks!)

I set myself the challenge of a coldwater setup to fit on top of an existing cabinet in my home (67cm by 29.5cm). I envisaged this an an open top braceless aquascape style tank (just 5 bits of glass) so that's a consideration too, but the height was trickier to decide on. In the end I went with 0.6 of the tank length as this is the ratio of dimensions the ADA 60p tank uses (famous high end aquascaping tank) and is close to the golden ratio.  This puts the tank height at a nice rounded 40cm.  Giving 75litres of useable tank.

I wanted to include hillstream loach a small schoaling fish with some colour and a feature fish too if possible.  Given the hillstreams are from Asia I also decided to stick to fish from this area. 

I'm not too clear on good stocking numbers for them after some internet research but wanted to keep numbers low to avoid having to do copious amounts of additional algae growing and feeding for them l. I went with 2 in the end... open to any views on this?

Spent a lot of time looking at schoaling fish... white closes never excited me, zebra danios I love but need a longer tank, there's some great fish but none quite with the colour I wanted... Platies too large... finally settled on glowlight tetra. They don't actually feature in our coldwater category but are good down to 18 degrees so fine for a temperate/unheated tank in a heated home.  They have a nice orange glow and the stripes on the side too. Nice schooling behaviour too bulky the looks of it. Perfect. Want a good number 8 to 10.

Then feature fish... barbs seemed the obvious choice and are from the right area. But they need to be in little groups. Not really enough tank space visually for this I didn't feel... too many midwater fish with the glowlights. I then looking into surface dwellers. Not good with the open top though... then found paradise fish. They are quite happy singly and a decent size for a feature fish. Lots of colour and not too active/interact with the hardscape and plants well.

Hence I've landed on the below... thoughts?

I'd got a 480litre per hour pump which would work with the setup if I attached a spare filter sponge on the intake. I could hide this behind planting. Nice and quiet and no need for a heater of course to all equipment hidden (a must for me). And low energy requirements which is good.

My next job is to do more research into coldwater tolerant hardy plants...

Anyone else playing with the community creator like this... feel free to set me a challenge or yourself one and document it here 

Quote from: Matt on August 21, 2019, 12:22:05 PM

Spent a lot of time looking at schoaling fish... white closes never excited me,

"White closes?" what are those?

Haha - I think that's @Matt's spellchecker gone into overdrive.  I wonder if he means "white clouds" (white cloud mountain minnows)..?  Personally, I like them a lot - especially the golden ones.

Quote from: dwindstr on August 23, 2019, 05:48:39 PM

Quote from: Matt on August 21, 2019, 12:22:05 PM

Spent a lot of time looking at schoaling fish... white closes never excited me,

"White closes?" what are those?

Haha - I think that's @Matt's spellchecker gone into overdrive.  I wonder if he means "white clouds" (white cloud mountain minnows)..?  Personally, I like them a lot - especially the golden ones.

Indeed...that's what I decided, since he was referring to cold water fish.  I also love the WCCM's.  I have the long-finned variety, they have beautiful bright red caudal fins, and golden neon areas around the mouths.  When the fry were born all you could see were bright little pinpoint neon eyes swimming around like fireflies in the tank.  It was very cool.

The golden WCMMs are lovely too.

I've just learnt that they don't predate their young which it quite attractive as I've never yet successfully raised fry... I also learnt that I may have the temperatures wrong for hillstream loaches... I wanted the fish to be able to survive comfortably at 16 degrees as I could realistically see the tank temperature dropping no further for my previous experience with a cold water shrimp tank which got to 15 degrees but wasn't lit and was a much smaller volume of water. The loaches are always said to need significantly cooler water than the average community tank (or at least that's what I had in my mind...). Seriously fish recommends lowest of 20 degrees though which surprises me. I thought they would cope with lower?

Back to the drawing board...

Back to the hillstream loaches. I have sewellia lineolata, and they are a lovely yellow with dark markings. Yes, they enjoy algae which I often grow on wood in a spare tank. I also feed mine on algae wafers, the Bug Bites pleco formula is popular, and you can't go far wrong with the Repashy foods. Cucumber and the usual veggies are always welcomed by all. 

I saw some of the Hong Kong plecs (Beafortia sp.) a while back. They are a similar shape, with slightly different markings, and tend to grow bigger than the S. lineolata.

I'd tend to go for more than two. They are relatively easy to sex, so I'd go for 2 males & 4 females. You wouldn't want to miss out on seeing the males bicker with each other, and show off to the ladies. 

That was the article I followed when I built my first river manifold. 

You should be able to pick out a male and female, which would work well in the tank. They are a feature fish, though I admit that I'm biased (my entire river tank was set up around them).