Building My 15,000 Gallon Mini Mega Tank

[warman98]

You are one of the keenest hobbyists with some amazing fish.

There are some conventions in England you might be able to attend.

How big is your Pac Man Catfish?

haha one day, I'll have an aquarium like yours and we'll sit down with some beers, looking at the fish reminding ourselves of this day haha

I have actually studied where the aquarium will be and how I'll do it. When I turn 16 I will sell some stuff, gets some sponsors, work in the summer and after school to save up for the tank, so not long haha

Their is some stuff here in Portugal but mainly Aquascaping and Cichlids but I try to attend everything. I'm aware of the conventions because I have a subscription for "Pratical FishKeeping" but I'm not sure I would go. This is because I have a friend who lives in the Amazon which was a Portuguese guy that loved fish so much that went to live there. He organizes trips to the Amazon and has great boats for such things. His company is called "Santarém Discus" and already won several International Discus awards.
I would also go to Aquarama in Singapure, my cousin "filiportela" (forum name), went there in 2007 and he said its awesome! Too bad he doesn't do forums anymore, he's probably the person I know that knows more about fish.

My Pacman is doing great he's not shy anymore he's about 35cm (donno in inches). If you want, I'll post a vid tonight for you.

Thanks for the compliment, means a lot from someone like you!

Keep it up, I'll be around this topic for at lest the next 58 pages to go.

 

[aldiaz33]

Arapaimag-

Have you ever had an ich outbreak any any of your monster tanks?

 

[arapaimag]

No I never have.

I did think I had ich in the big tank in 1995 but it turned out I did not.

I also have never had ich in the 810g ever either.

Did you read the recent article on Practical Fish Keeping website about plecos that reduced the amount of ich in fish tanks?

 

[warman98]

No I haven't must come with my new issue Still I'll check it out! Thanks

 

[arapaimag]

Here is a link and info sent to me from Brian M

interesting experiment done to find out effect of keeping a pleco with ich infested tilapia..

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co...._says_‘maybe’...&utm_content=html

results with pleco were 63% less parasites than the control (without pleco)..

pleco eats biofilm off substrate.. part of the ich life cycle is a cyst phase that settles on the substrate biofilm, so theory is that pleco is either eating or disrupting these cysts..

not a cure, but sounds like pleco's have more benefits than had been known previously..

 

[aldiaz33]

Very interesting read. Thanks for the link.

I'm curious, what would you do if you did have an outbreak in your 50K gallon tank?

I would imagine that heating to 86F would be extremely expensive. Salt is pretty cheap (50lbs bag = $7), but raising temps that much would probably be brutal on your utility bill.

I'm sure you quarantine before adding anything to the big tanks, but I had some loaches in a QT tank for 3 weeks at 82F with no signs of ich. I added them to my main tank after the 3 week QT and bam, Ich starts showing up all over them. I'm kicking myself for now quarantining for the whole month.

 

[arapaimag]

Heating the tank would be possible. The Rinnai tankless hot water heater can do the job.

One trick I do when moving loaches is always raising the temp of the tank they are going in to at least 3 degrees warmer than the tank they are in. This works for me.

Once in the new tank the temps can slowly be lowered.

 

[aldiaz33]

Hopefully you never have to put the Rinnai to the task, but good to hear it can get the job done.

Thanks for the tip on the loaches (I went about it backwards, from 82F in the quarantine tank to 78F in the display tank, so maybe that's why I had issues). I'll definitely use your trick if I add to my shoal.

 

[arapaimag]

I actually use the Rinnai to heat the big tank (52,000) all the time. I added 300 feet of pex tubing to the existing heat exchanger to be more efficient and faster.

I was just mentioning that if I had to bring the temp up to 90-93 degrees it could handle it. The small tank 15k I use an oil hot water heater which also is capable of getting it to 90 degrees plus.

 

[warman98]

Great article thanks!