Setting Up A River Tank - Littlefish

I must admit I don't quite believe the external filter option here is realistic. I have always stuck to oversized internal as a better guide if I have an oversized filter be it internal or external. What would that give you @Littlefish ?

That's how stocked I like my tanks to be. It starts to push the "too many fish in a zoo cage" boundary beyond there in my opinion.

Will you have plants in the tank to help prevent nitrate buildup? Otherwise you clearly have more than enough filtration!

@Matt I do have plants in the tank, but not enough to make a difference to the nitrate levels because the water flow doesn't really allow for it. Due to my water quality from the tap (hard & with high nitrates), I'll be using a mix on tap & RO to bring both down a bit and bring my tank water more into the range that the fish are comfortable with. I'll be doing this when I do the big water change before getting the fish, and from then on.

@Sue with an external filter in the CC I have a stock level of 64%. To be honest, with an external filter & river manifold, I'm comfortable with the filtration. The tank is a fair size and is quite open, with lots of sand & rocks for the bottom dwellers, and lots of wood & branches towards the back for fishy hidey holes and to get out of the high flow for a rest if necessary. The river manifold covers the front 3/4 of the tank, so the back part has extra air stones to maintain circulation around the wood at a more sedate pace.

Originally I was going to quarantine fish from different shops in different tanks, but the suggestion from @marquismirage for putting them all in one tank and treating them all at the same time with preventative medication interested me, as it would mean not having to have 4 quarantine tanks running at the same time. I've not bought fish from different shops without separate quarantine before, but it would be great to have them all in the same tank. I've still got quarantine tanks available if anything needs to be removed for stronger or more targeted treatments.

I already have the eSHa 2000, but will get some more, along with the exit, gdex, and ndx to cover the range.
The other meds I had in the cupboard were ones I'd bought from stores before I read about the eSHa products here, so they are no longer needed. I will make the effort to write on the bottles/boxes from now on though.

Is there any particular order you'd suggest using the treatments in? I have plenty of carbon, etc. in the cupboard to help remove meds after treatment & before water change, prior to using another one.

I can't believe how excited I am about this river tank.
Thanks all for the help so far. Please keep posting advice as I'm finding this all really useful.

eSha 2000 is my go to general cure too and can be used with EXIT (mainly for white spot) and gdex (for internal worms) at the same time.

There is an upper limit to how much bacteria any given tank can support.  This is based on the ammonia that the tank receives as we all know already.  The thing about filters and the beneficial bacteria is that the bacteria will grow on any given surface in the tank too. So the filter isn't the only place where bacteria resides.  As a result an overly large filter will only grow a percentage of the overall bacteria to support the aquarium.  Anything extra isn't used except to gather poop in one place (which isn't a bad thing).  You'll run out of swim space for the fishies before you run out of bacteria.

Water changes are far more important than the filtration to keep the water quality good.  The more fishies you have in there the more water volume you need to change to keep things good.  On my big tank I do around 25 l (approx. 6-7%) change per day as it's much easier than doing a 25% in one day and it's probably more than the tank needs.  ThinkFish puts my stocking level at 28% with 17 Silver Tipped Tetras, 17 Super Blue Emperor Tetras, 18 Greenfire Bloodfin Tetras, 5 Apistogramma sp. Tefe, and 2 L397's.  Still I think it looks right as there's enough space for each fish to swim without bumping into other fish constantly.

eSha 2000 is my go to general cure too and can be used with EXIT (mainly for white spot) and gdex (for internal worms) at the same time.

eSHa gdex (active ingredient praziquantel) is for internal cestode tapeworms (and skin and gill flukes), eSHa-ndx (active ingredient levamisole) is for intestinal nematode worms.
If I remember my zoology, cestodes are flat worms and nematodes are round worms, so presumably they need different things to kill them.

It's on Ebay if you have an account there.....

Do any local shops stock it? My go-to shop does; the owner told me they were getting it in after I mentioned battling camallanus worms and when it arrived he phoned me to tell me the active ingredient so I knew for future reference.

When you do track some down, could you look at the info sheet and see if it does actually say on there what's in it because eSHa's website doesn't say 

Hmmm, did the poster on the other forum have an avatar that looks suspiciously like mine?


The chap at the fish shop looked at the leaflet and phoned me to say that ndx contains levamisole, but I haven't actually seen the leaflet I just have his word for it.

Hmmm, did the poster on the other forum have an avatar that looks suspiciously like mine

Hahaha - so they do!  Now that you mention it, and I've re-read the content, it does sound/read like a post of yours. 

Does the med include eSHa-ndx? If it does, could you look at the leaflet and see if it gives the active ingredient. The chap at Aquatic Finatic told me it was levamisole, but I haven't actually seen it with my own eyes 

The eSHa-ndx contains levamisole hydrochloride, and methylis parahydroxybenzoas.
You are correct in saying that it treats roundworms, as opposed to the gdex, which is flatworms.
If you want any more information just let me know.