Loaches Online Forum

I just finished the final touches of my new 110 gal tank. After combining the two smaller tanks I had, plus buying a bunch more dithers, I ended up with a lot more than I intended, but it seems to be well balanced. The setup is primarily for loaches and catfish, but I have a bunch of other stuff in there as well. I posted some photos of it before, including when it was cycling. I now have all the driftwood and plants in there. Here's a photo:



The plants are all Cryptocoryne spp., which I have had some luck with. The lighting is two 4 foot daylight T8's from Home Depot at <$4/bulb - seems to work just fine and gives a nice light in my opinion. Water is moved around by 2 Korallia and 1 Aquaclear (fitted with filter) powerheads, plus a canister filter. The substrate is mostly Target pool filter sand, which seems to work very well for both plants and fish. Algae were a bit of a problem during cycling, but now that I have all the algae eaters in there (3 Ancistrus sp. BN plecos, 2 Chaetostomasp. rubbernose plecos, 4 Otocinclus sp., and 4 Crossocheilus siamensis (SAEs)) I hardly have to do any algae cleaning at all.

The loaches I have are 5 clown loaches (two 4 inchers and three 1.5-2 inchers), 10 Botia kubotai ("polkadot"), 10 B. striata (zebra loach), and about 10 kuhlis (mix of Pangio kuhli and P. myersi). Then there's some corys, and too many giant danios (I call them the sharks because of their feeding frenzy behaviour at feeding time), black neon tetras, along with a few phantom tetras, all fish I bought for cycling purposes. Finally a few cardinal tetras and about 10 black ruby barbs, that were supposed to have been Puntius pentazona. You add that all up and you'll get too many fish, but try to get anything out of that tank without tearing it apart!!! So I change water a lot!!

Anyway, so far so good! Hope you like it (in spite of the crowding.....)

Stunning

love the setup, it looks very natural with the branches and crypt's BUT my pet hate is those bloody background pics, they do nothing for your setup at all it just makes it look false.
sorry if you don't like what i've said but i just dont like them.
lose it and paint the back plate and it would look superb.

mick

Thats an order

now i'm in trouble.
trust you Andy.

mick

Very nice tank! I still have a photo background on 1 tank too, been on the tank for ~15 years. I don't really see it any more.

Superb!!

Amazing well done

I think it looks great, well done!

Emma

Nice...like that driftwood!

I agree about the photo background, but it is a lovely, lovely tank. Great idea to go with the plants you know do well, too-it'll save you a lot of work and drama.

A really attractive tank.

Thanks all of you. Sorry to disappoint you with the background Mick. You may be right, but I am not changing it now - too much water to deal with. And I have no problem with criticism - I appreciate your honest opinion! Perhaps in my next life I'll join the background-hating crowd!!

Looks real nice. It probably wouldn't hurt to add another filter or 2. Mostly so that ammonia gets processed 2 or 3 times faster, but also for redundancy purposes.

thanks for being so understanding, i've never liked them from the first time my mince pies saw them, they also used to sell a black and a turq blue background that were great for showing your fish and plants of.

mick

Great looking tank....big thumb's up!