New Tank Questions

[Tokka]

Hi fellow Loachaholics,

I’ve been looking at this site for a few months now, and (unfortunately for my wallet) it’s inspired me to do a bit more for my clown loaches by giving them a 6ft tank. I’ve got 8 clowns in a 4ft tank (240L) currently, I’ve only had them 3 months, so they’re no bigger than about 3” or so, they all seem healthy, mischievous, little pigs when the food goes in, and they love to destroy my plants. I know some of you will say that I shouldn’t have so many clowns in such a small tank, I guess I’m yet another person who has been slightly misguided and having read articles and posts on this site has now starting seeing the light. I’d like to think given the clowns size and age that the tank is suitable for the moment, however, this leads perfectly onto my first question.

My clowns spend most of their time greyed out, they have moments when you can see the beautiful orange/gold shine but sadly at the moment it looks a bit gloomy, initially I thought it might be them still trying to sort out their hierarchy, but given it’s been so long now I’m looking beyond that. I feed them well, bloodworm, flake, granule, courgette, broccoli and melon (thanks for that tip!) I have the water parameters checked fortnightly at the LFS and I always get glowing statistics back, so I’d like to think the water condition isn’t the problem. They have a couple of hiding places, should I provide more, and also my substrate is a black gravel would this be causing a potential issue like camouflaging to the surroundings?

The other question is just regarding a 6ft tank. Can anyone recommend companies to make them, my LFS suggest Seabray who I have to admit do look pretty good albeit a tad expensive. I was looking at making it a river tank following the feature on this site, using a swimming pool filter sand for the substrate, I could do with some advice regarding powerheads, ie make/model/and number of them, the tank will be holding somewhere between 650-800L, and finally this may seem a dumb question, but is it better to have 2 external filters or just the one all powerful filter? Obviously with regard to fault tolerance 2 is better, could one say have 2 filters capable of dealing with 400L each or should one be looking even larger than that? Again any suggestions on make/model would be appreciated, I’ve used Eheims in the past and do like them, so I was looking at either the Professional 3 model or a high end Professional 2 model.

Finally, stocking the tank. It’s my goal to have a lovely clown tank, but having seen some zebra and polka dot loach pictures I’m quite smitten with those chaps too. Would they all get along swimmingly, pun intended. Numbers would be 6 of each of the zebra and polka dot with hopefully around 15 clowns, would that be ok bearing in mind I’d need to get some dither fish too?

Thanks in advance for reading this and any answers given, apologies for the mass of questions, but I’d rather get everything right in advance this time and the best way of doing that is asking the experts in that particular field, which in my opinion is you guys.

[starsplitter7]

Hello, and welcome! Sounds like you have a good start. You don't have 10 clowns in a 10 gallon. Just think what you can put in your current tank when you upgrade to the 6'.

I am going to leave the answers to the professionals, but I have a couple more questions for you that may help.

How many hidey holes do you have? What are they? What kind of decor do you have? Bogwood, Rocks, Caves (Made out of what material?), . . .?

Do you have any dither fish right now? What are they? How many?

Do your fish sleep together in the hiding places? Can they all fit together? My clowns all sleep together in resin tree stump with some upside down Catfish and a few Cories.

I have black gravel, and I will upgrade to sand in the future. I am a relatively new fish keeper and I didn't know about pool filter sand. My clowns are bright orange against the black gravel when they are out (eating, at night playing, . . .), but they have lots of dither fish to offer a sense of security.

Good luck! Welcome, glad you finally posted. Tanja.

[Emma Turner]

Hi and welcome to Loaches Online.

At our store, we sell Seashell tanks, which are very similar in look and quality to the Seabray tanks. Seabray have been manufacturing custom built tanks for many years. These sort of custom built tanks are really excellent for loaches as you can choose the dimensions you want and give them a nice big 'footprint' to explore. One thing to bear in mind, is that if you wish the tank to be 24" wide or wider, it should be built with a double base.

With regards to filtration, I would go with two good quality externals. This way you can alternate the maintenance so they are cleaned in rotation, and you also have a certain amount of backup if one should fail. I would recommend 2 of the Eheim Pro II 2028s which are rated for 600 litres each. You have to bear in mind that when manufacturers of these filters list a rating on the box, this is the maximum volume that filter could handle and that would be for a very lightly stocked tank with fish that aren't overly 'messy'.

There are quite a few different powerheads to choose from, but whichever you choose will need to have something to prevent the fish from being drawn in to the motor. The Aquaclears from Hagen are good and take a Quickfilter attachment cage underneath (bought separately) that not only prevents fish from being drawn in, but also takes a fine filter media to help 'polish' the water. The Maxijets are also very good and are less bulky, but the protective cage underneath is small and can clog quickly. However, the Maxijets are ideal for using with a river tank manifold as they have a stepped fitting underneath which means they can be slotted into a variety of different sized pipework. At the top end, there is the Tunze Turbelle Stream powerheads, which draw water in from all around them and are extremely powerful. There is a protective cage all around it, but small fish could meet a very miserable end, so these really are only suitable for tanks with medium-large sized fish.

Stocking the tank is personal choice, and if it were me, I would stick to clowns and get an XL shoal going. However, plenty of people do keep clowns together very successfully with both the B. kubotai and B. striata that you mention. If you were to go with other species, I think I would choose between the two, so that you have a big group of clowns and a big group of something else. The more species you have, the more you have to compromise on group size for the others.

I hope that this helps,

Emma

[chefkeith]

Some of my clowns grey out and darken up in a matter of seconds depending on the lighting they are in. I have an 8 ft tank; if I only light up half of the tank, some of the clowns on the side of the light will be greyed out, but once they swim to the dark side of the tank, some of them darken up in about 20 seconds. Then once they swim back to the light side, they grey out again. Not all my clowns do this though, mostly just the older ones.

Other times they grey out and darken up depending on their mood and activity.

[helen nightingale]

i just bought a new seashell tank , and i am very pleased with it. it seems to be very well made. it was VERY heavy. the stand was heavier than my old tank was, and the new tank even heavier than that. dont forget to have as many strong men as you can get when you install the tank

i agree with Emma, go for 2 externals, the bigger the better. i like eheims, so i havent tried the other brands of externals.

if you only have a few hiding places, add more. they will help the loaches feel at home

dont worry about asking any "dumb" questions, we all have things we dont know about, we learn best by asking. dont worry either about getting a kicking for having clowns in that size tank. so many people get bad advice, and sadly some people dont take well to finding out that they may have accidently got something wrong. you are doing the right thing by finding out the best way to rectify what sonds like what was really someone else's mistake. well done to you

[Tokka]

Thank you all for your input, I can now start looking at costing it up and wondering how on earth I can afford it!