Loaches Online Forum

It is finally clean and all of my wiring issues are fixed. I took some pictures, I hope everyone likes them.

Looks really nice Chris , those Rasboras look good are you adding any more as dithers

Very nice. I would love to have the space to have a tank that size, There's only one place we could fit it in the house but we would have to move a radiator which is a little beyond my DIY skills ;-)

What sort of flow rate are you pushing?
I can see a very large intake sponge and an interesting spray bar construction at the other end, I'd love to see the details on your design.

I got lucky and purchased the tank used, it is drilled and "had" glass corner baffels. I removed the baffels and re sealed the tank. There are two holes in each corner one is bulkheaded with one inch pipe and the other with half inch. Looking at the tank from the front as I have taken the pictures, water flows from right to left. The intake sponge is covering a 1 inch intake manifold that has 46 5/8" inch holes milled in it. Water is sucked through the intake and directly into a 30 gpm mag drive pump. Water is returned through the distrubution manifold. The long slot is 1/8" x 16" long and it still needs some work. My inital pump flowed 65 gpm but it was very loud and the first time I turned it on it piled all of the gravel to the other side of the tank, uprooted all of the plants, moved all of the driftwood. It was a disaster that set me back from moving fish for two days while the tank cleared up. I will be adding a 1/4hp chiller to the tank as I am having high temp problems. The chiller will be connected to the 1/2 bulkheads and have a Kent air eductor on the discharge.

Components
150 gallon tank 72x20x24
Fluval 405
Fluval 305
2 Marineland Bio wheel 350
2 Coralife 36" lunar aqualight total 384 watts
glass canopys
dual light timer, 6700 comes on for one hour before 10k, for 10 hours 10k turns off lunars come on 6700 times off one hour after for night light
Little giant 1" mag drive pump 30-35 gpm
owner built inlet and outlet manifolds
2200 gph directional flow
700 gph cascading flow
whisper 60 air pump
three rena 6" ceramic air stones

Coming soon
1/4hp chiller and temp control
900 gph mag drive pump
kent venturi "air eductor" for the chilled water inlet
redesign on intake manifold

Duff

There are 6 danio choprae in there as well. I am waiting for 18 more.

I made a mistake

The outlet maniflod is the one that needs some work i will either have to raise it up or switch to round holes.

Those rasboras have grown 2 inches in 6 months. If they get any bigger I will be flycasting across the basement.

Can anyone ID the loach in the center of the first picture???

I also just noticed in picture 2 there is a Dahli ring

Looking great!!

Those numbers are sure to make a lot of hillstream loaches very happy. It certainly looks like you have done a lot of work to give them a habitat they will enjoy.

I would guess that it is the lights that are heating up the system the most, did i read it correctly that you have 384 watts off those? It might be worth putting a fan in just to blow cool air around the tubes. It could drop the temperature quite a bit just shifting that warm air away from the top of the tank.

Top stuff :-)

Could your loach in pic #1 be Homaloptera confuzona ?

chris! Awesome setup man!

The loach in the first pic is most probably Homaloptera confuzona.

A fan will definitely be a good idea. My tanks were way warm this Summer, but I could knock over 10 degrees F off them with a cheap fan.
It does cause horrendous evapouration though.

Martin.

Great looking tank!!

This is getting spooky Shari

Martin.

There are 7 confuzona in the tank, If you look closely there is a Homalopetra shaped loach in the background that has very ovoid shaped markings over the crest of its back, with goldish rings around the ovals.
They were contaminants in with Tweediei.

It looks as if it could be Homaloptera yunnanensis.
http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=2949
Its often found in shipments with H. smithi, tweediei and zollingeri.

Very nice tank indeed!