OneWay's Thread

[OneWay]

Trickle filter

I started with a 3 gallon water bottle

cut off the bottom

If you recognize this you know where i work it is from a pipette tip box, I am using it as a filter grating.

Just to hold the bio balls in

fill with bioballs, more coming monday



Drill holes in the bottom


it snaps in nicely above the handle

cut foam to fit.

In use, i may have to notch it for overflow once i get both over flows going. we will see.

[OneWay]

Old Sump
My wild jungle of a sump for the old 75

snails galore and one shrimp

baby giant danios,, little bastards just appeared these are pushing 2 weeks old.


once the main tank is a bit more established I will move over the shrimp and baby danios, but for now they are in my old sump growing.

[OneWay]

The tank is running very well. I have lost one baby Kub who made a jump for it in the middle of the night, but other than that they are doing great.

I also added 1 more additional trickle filter to the system to up my bioball capacity to ~6 gallons. This should palce the biofiltration at about 300 gallons if i recall correctly.


I have slowly increased my stock of loaches. The larger clowns are still pretty timid in this huge tank. So I added some more loaches/dithers to where I think my final numbers will be.

Loches:
17 clowns
2 yo yo's (hard to find atm)
5 Kubs
5 Darios
6 Striata

Dither:
7 giant danios (replacing these)
5 Rainbowfish

Non Essentials:
1 red tailed sharks (wife picked it out and named him "Blue")
2 synodontis catfish (eater of small danios, see below)
2 clown plecos

The sump has ~20 near 2" baby danios now and with several smaller broods increasing in size. I have had another brood appear 2 days ago, but I think the older ones prey or stress them out since their survival rate is MUCH lower than the older ones. I have counted ~10, but they are tiny and hide out in the plants.

I did place 6 baby danios at roughly 1.5" into the main tank,, they lasted several nights, but they all dissapeared. I m thinking the synodontis cleared them out as they swept the tank in the dark.

I will post more pictures tonight for all of you to enjoy at work

[BotiaMaximus]

One Way - Love the trickle filter! I have used a similar yet less impressive version on a water pre-filtering and aging setup to get water ready to go into my tanks. I think you will want to add your overflow notches you mentioned for safety. Event though you aren't running any really fine media you just never know what might happen. I ran finer media and used my overflow as the indicator that I needed to change or clean the media.

Great DIY stuff you have going on though!

[chefkeith]

Everything looks great. Love the background especially. I haven't seen one done that way before. The trickle filter is very cool also.

[OneWay]

NEW

Update video of the tank - I just filmed the loaches reaction to me watching them. They are very friendly and come out when i get near the tank glass. They go even more crazy when i feed them. I originally narrated the filming, but thought i sounded pretty stupid at the end when i started to run out of things to say.

After watching the video the size of the tank makes the loaches look tiny compared to their actual size. Several of the clowns are 5" and the largest Kubotias/Darios are 4", but they do not look that large at all.


:30 - 1:00 I try to show some of the back wall and java ferns.

1:40 you will see 2 noses of my 2 largest clowns both ~7", they are the only shy ones. However from the cave they can see and get food off the current so i guess they feel they are still part of the action.

VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7W7p24r-40


well let me know what you think, thanks


OneWay

[OneWay]

NEW
Ok here are some other updates i have promised


first off is my double trickle filter here it is:
Front view of sump

Side view





The other thing I have had to deal with is my Tap water has a Ph of
greater than 9, my test kit does not go any higher. With the Ph so high my
RO unit only dents the Ph. So after a bit of Google work I decided
to filter the water through peat moss.


Peat Moss Filter
I have a bucket filled with peat moss, hole stoppered
with filter floss in the bottom, and let gravity do the rest.


Water with powerhead and heater,, look at all those tannins!!!!


Nope not beer, that is the water after it is filtered.


The Ph coming out of the filter is less than Ph 6.0 once again my Test kit
bottoms out at 6.0. It is very soft and and with a very low Ph.

Together with tap RO water I get my Ph to 6.8-7.0 a lot easier than before
So far the carbon has been doing a fine job of keep the tannins to a
minimum, although i do not mind it and the loaches love it.


Just wanted to post this here in case anyone else might find it useful

OneWay

[chefkeith]

Music = 10
Choreography = 10
Loachy Dance = 10
Background = 10
Trickle Filter = 10
Peat Moss Filter = 10
Pitcher of Beer =10

[OneWay]

I have some photos to share as it would possible that the Kubotia's
i purchased at Pet Smart a while back are not what they were listed as.
I suspect they are actually Histrionica. The several in question are as big
or even bigger than my Kubotia's and their markings have not developed
into the Kubotias.

I took some photos and these are what i got ,, sometimes the loaches
were cooperative,, but most the time they were being difficult.


You can see part of a Dario, Clown, and all of a little Striata. This is what i think is the Histrionica.

A closer shot of him. I have about 4 more of these guys, with markings similar the largest being ~4", but they were camera shy.

Another close up

One of my smaller Kubotias that has filled in with markings.

Just one of my YoYo's

This picture blew me way,, what a diva.. so i left it large so if anyone wants it a desktop image you have big enough

One of my other Kubotias in front of a clown cave , a Striata, and some tails.


Front shot of one of the question marks,, being difficult again

[plaalye]

Lovely fish! I'm thinking rostrata, but I'm usually wrong on these

[LoachOrgy]

nice looking fish!

[OneWay]

Lovely fish! I'm thinking rostrata, but I'm usually wrong on these

Thank you for the kind replies.

I was looking at pictures of both rostrata and histrionica, i went back and forth a little bit on them.. but thought hist was closer. It could be that the older ones are histrionica and the younger ones rostrata,, i would not be surprised on bit.

I will keep trying to get good pictures and post them when the loaches are behaving.

[OneWay]

Question: Do loaches like sweet corn?

So i have used corn as bait for some pictures and a video (processing as we speak). You can see the fish in question below in the mix of loaches.

You can see my big Dario and my fatty fat fatterson Striata, ,enjoy

[OneWay]

Answer: YES

[OneWay]

video of the loaches


There are quite a few clown loaches in there, but they are being shy as all get out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frmBVPdPLpk