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Round indoor pond project queries.

Hey everyone,

I hope all is well. And I hate that same saying but it kind of stuck over the last 2 years. I wish all of you the stars in the sky and your health and resistance.

The last couple of days I was messing with my fish tubs as I decided to move my home office from the sitting room to the fish room. In order to do that I had to downsize tub wise. I initially wanted to completely remove my kuhli loach tub because I thought they're gone/dead but upon messing with it they appeared out from the sand and the wood so I was stopped in my tracks 🙂 . Therefore, there was change of plans and my weather loach tub had to join the other cold loach tub.

So this post is to tell the entire story that just dawned at me while observing the weather loach in the transition from her old to her new tub....The catching was easy, she, my weather loach, is very friendly, loves feeling my fingers, had never been netted, job done, she got tossed to another tank...While I was cleaning up her tub, I noticed some massive shrimp, as in fully grown ones that only get to that point either out of no predation or great food/conditions. I was proud of my weather loach, not a predator .At some point while cleaning I notice one snail, only one snail on the wall. I thought nothing about it apart from tossing it to a live tub.

Following the above events, today I check on the weather loach in her new tub, which by the way is twice as large/long compared to her previous solo one. It was a beneficial move for her. And what do I see? She's killing snails, big ones.. She sucked on it while the snail was scavenging and shook her head with it in the water until she killed it/ate it.....Hence I only found the one snail in her previous tub and many shrimp. I suppose she's got a specific taste....
 
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A short video of the weather loach below munching on food while I was changing the water, featuring a blue/purple shrimp, which got moved at the same time. The shrimp is a progeny of my very first bunch of 5 red/red rili shrimp I got many years ago. I get weird colours like that from time to time.

 
I think it's a male. I moved just the one net of shrimp into this tub , so maybe there's just 4-5 shrimp max but there's definitely an adult female I saw around. The less the number of shrimp, the better the chances they'd cross with each other I think. Let's hope for babies 🙂 I might as well have a look at my other tanks with shrimp for some interesting females to add on.
 
Hey everyone.

I've been so busy lately with good and bad in life, can't help it. It just happens.

Fish like always became a 2nd fiddle.

Today I managed to spend some time for myself while changing the water in all tanks to see who's alive and what's the situation.
I remembered today it's been about 6 years since I setup the pond and all the other plastic tubs. For those catching up late, I had become allergic to glass tanks after several floods 🙂

The situation looks good. The fish look healthy, active and vibrant. I really think the types of setups I have are the healthiest I have had and now tested for years, which is simply emergent plants in pots with hanging lights, natural light even better, a thin layer of sand and plenty of filtration, water changes, and quality food.

In detail: clown loaches look a bit fat, bellies on some providing that there're days I forget to feed but I remembered that October is their breeding season so it might be because of that. I must remember to observe them around mid October, because although clowns do not breed in captivity, they do exhibit the behaviour and I've seen it before around this time of year.
They're all in really good health and there are some really big ones in there now after 10 years, although I purchased some of them a bit later of various sizes.
My work desk is in that fish room and I get plenty of splashes from the clown loaches when I get up, to remind me to feed them. I've gone into the routine from morning to evening feeding, and when I finish work and lean around for some other reason and I get my face washed to remind me it's feeding time 🙂 They are so bold and very aggressive eaters.

The denison barbs, such lovely fish and I am so glad I got them to accompany the clown loaches. They're restless but they really give the clowns the confidence as they swim just above them. They get on great together. The barbs have grown really big and beautiful and colourful, and I never had one sick one from day one when I got them as babies, same as the clowns really. They are now 6 years old. May they live long and happy lives.

Harlequin rasboras- still tons of them in there but I can't tell if any have died because I think I got 30-40 -ish of them, can't remember. They also get on great with the rest of the fish and are not afraid to mix with the clowns around feeding time. The clowns never bothered them. The harlequins have half the tank for themselves out the back. It's amazing that the smallest of fish have gotten the biggest space because even the denisons like hanging at the front with the clowns where the food comes 🙂 So harlequins are queens of half the tank 🙂

Now to the sad news. I could not see any SAEs today, not one. I think they may have withered and died. They didn't do great from the start because they're not aggressive eaters and are timid. Every other fish can bully them, even the harlequins. I am really sad but I expected that. Plus I think they would do better in a cooler tank. I did think to put them into the weather loach tank but catching from the pond is impossible.

Back to the good news. My weather loach is doing great since the transition to the bigger tub. And she's eaten all snails 🙂 That tank had so many snails getting all chunky that I fed the clown loaches with them at some point. I never knew/read that weather loaches have a taste for snails 🙂 At the same time she doesn't seem to be touching the shrimp. There are large healthy shrimp in there although I moved very few from her old tub. This tub never had shrimp before for test purposes and because I hate accidentally flushing shrimp down the drain but shrimp are a great addition to the ecosystem. .They save my job from cleaning the sand and the sponges on the intakes 🙂 Great scavengers and they keep the balance right.

And other bits and pieces from my other tub and only glass tank. I saw my cold water loaches, including some in the weather loach tank and also my glass tank which were exclusively setup for them. I don't know how many are alive but I've had them for quite a few years in planted tanks! and they're living. I think I transitioned the glass tank to cold water loaches around 2017 and it's when I put them in post quarantining and treating one very sick baby clown loach which I had purchased to apply my medical skills, and who is now unrecognisable, healthy and big. So some of the cold weather loaches are still here in 2022. They're tougher than I thought and I got a bit of slack for putting them in setups like that but it's working good enough.

The bushy nose pleco, or shell I say the bully, who I had raised from a little fry, is still intimidating the biggest of clowns 🙂

And last, but not least, I still have kuhli loaches after 10 years from purchasing them. They live in a tub with just shrimp for a good few years now.

That was a lot of text with no pictures or videos and I know for myself, text on a fish forum is boring. Apologies. It's probably just for my own record 🙂 I'll try to get some pictures and videos up.

All the best to everyone.
 
Hufsa said:
makes me angry when they are recommended as "a snail treatment"
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We recently had to move our clown loach tank and a few things surprised me, the first was I'd fogotten how big their gill spines were, the second was how powerful a foot long clown loach is and the third was the amount of mts living very happily in the substrate. So they might like eating snails for a time but there comes a point when they really can't be bothered.





I've always loved this setup though because it treats the fish how they should be treated. It's nice to see a proper group in a proper sized spaced.
 
mort said:
We recently had to move our clown loach tank and a few things surprised me, the first was I'd fogotten how big their gill spines were, the second was how powerful a foot long clown loach is and the third was the amount of mts living very happily in the substrate. So they might like eating snails for a time but there comes a point when they really can't be bothered.





I've always loved this setup though because it treats the fish how they should be treated. It's nice to see a proper group in a proper sized spaced.
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Any pictures of this set up? Foot long clown loach are a rare thing due to people not keeping them under proper conditions unfortunately.
 
Conort2 said:
Any pictures of this set up? Foot long clown loach are a rare thing due to people not keeping them under proper conditions unfortunately.
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I've never really got any good ones because the room isn't wide enough to get more than a bit of the tank in and without the scale, they just look like chunky clowns. I'll see what I can do though.
We had 11, 10 bought by my parents and 1 we inherited from my friend who's dad bought him them when we got them. They were bought in 1992 and now we are only down to 6 with them slowly dieing off after they reached 25 (didn't lose one until then). Only a few reached that 12" in size and there was a Russian doll type look to the group, down to about 7". When they got a chance to climb the hierarchy they did put on grow spurts. There's a botia striata in there with them that my brother got in 1997, which is the youngest fish in the tank.
 
Conort2 said:
Must be great to actually keep something for it’s intended life span.
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It is and it sounds nice but they are also a massive tie. If people knew their potential size and age when they bought them I doubt that many would get them now. I started the maintence on them with my dad when i was 6 and took over completely at 7-8, so its not hard to keep them. All we have ever done is a decent regular water change (and our water is liquid rock) and fed them.
It may sound a bit horrible but I have often looked at their tank and thought what I could do with it if there weren't there (not so much the clowns as they are fun but there is also a 14" silver shark, who's a bit agro, and a silver dollar, who means no plants) as I'm not really into big fish and apart from the clowns the other fish were rescues my dad made in the early to mid 90's, apart from a Platydoras costatus that me and my brother clubbed together for when I was six in 92, it was £3.75 and the first fish I ever bought (which is quite nice).

I think having them as the focal point, in a large group, as sciencefiction has done, is the way to go. I think they become more endearing as that age that way.
 
My water is also very hard, PH 7.4 and problem with kettles, white residue even on fish tanks, etc..
Hufsa said:
I love this setup, such a dream for the fish 🥰
Ive always had a fondness for loaches, makes me angry when they are recommended as "a snail treatment" for any size tank
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Thanks. I can't imagine my tank without the clown loaches. They're the focal point really and probably my favourite ever fish. However, snails wise, I found out my weather loach is quite the snail eater too. She got moved a few months ago and there are now no snails left in what was quite a snail infested tank with the original residents being hillstream loaches. There were so many snails, they bunched up when I put food in the tank and probably not doing a favour to the hillstream loaches at the time. Now there are none with the weather loach patrolling 🙂 I saw how she eats them, bites them and shakes them violently in the water to get them out of the shell. At the same time, shrimp are doing just fine. She doesn't seem to be eating them at all and I've had one of the largest shrimp in her tub.
mort said:
It is and it sounds nice but they are also a massive tie. If people knew their potential size and age when they bought them I doubt that many would get them now.
Click to expand...

You know, I think what one should also know is that they're also long lived fish and it will take years of dedication, throughout all ups and downs in one's personal life. I've had mine for 10 years now and if you've read this thread, it wasn't always a plain sailing with either my fish or my life but we made it so far.

I am uploading a video, couldn't really take a proper one as my phone refused to co-operate going under water although it's supposed to be water proof for a period. So the video is from the surface, a bit too far 80 cm to the fish. However, I saw SAEs in the tank this evening so they're not dead as I had thought 🙂


 
Uploading a third one I got up close just to give scale of size of some of the loaches. At the very start of the video one can see at least 3 of the large ones together. Sorry about the flashes, the camera was being blinded by the tank lights. I can also see my 3 stripe loach, with the large dot, who was the really sick loach I had bought from a shop to test my vet skills on. He is doing well and annoying the ladies 😉

 
I have been comparing and my videos are getting poorer, my phone I use to take them is getting upgraded 😀
Having said that, I think it's because I have just one artificial light, where before I had two. I know the plants are actually using natural light and the fish don't like it too bright so I haven't bothered buying a new light when the last got bust. I just wanted to note for the viewers but I am now tempted to add one back so I can see the fish better as it's really blurry taking the videos with one light. The fish look so much more vibrant when I look at them.
 
My light unit I had over the clowns had gradually lost leds over the last decade or so, to a point where only about a quarter of them were still working. I must admit that the dimmer it got, the more the fish seemed to like it. I had to recently move the tank and popped a temporary aquaray strip light in the middle of the 6ft span and even though it's dim, it adds a nice shimmer and shadows, they love it. I added some plants to see if they would survive (so popped them under the only light there was) and the denser they have grown, blocking more light, the happier the fish seem to be. I do admittedly have mostly catfish and the loaches left with just a solitary silver dollar and a silver shark. I do plan to add a decent size group of rosy barbs or similar for movement so will up the light then but apart from that I still get to see really happy, playful and vibrant clown loaches, even if it is hard to show them off to others.
 
Hey Everyone,
I hope all is well.

One of the best plant lights I ever bought -a floodlight, got bust this week, just stopped working. I had seen it flashing a few times a week ago and then darkness this week. It actually lasted longer than most aquarium specific lights I had bought, about 9 years now I think. So I upgraded from a 30W to a 50W. It is not used over the pond but the plants over the pond catch quite a bit of it due to the wide angle so why not upgrading 🙂 . It has proven to get underwater aquatic plants creep out and grow out of the water. It is a really good cheap alternatives to grow aquatic plants. The upgrade cost me 40 quid 🙂 Can't beat it. The only downside is that I now really want to hang one of those on the ceiling for the pond although the old palm is not only reaching the ceiling, it is bending at it 🙂

Fish are fine guys. The pond is stable, fish are thriving and nothing ever changes in it to the point that I forget to post as fish wise there are no dramatic events. Thanks God. I haven't added new fish to it in years. The last time should be recorded somewhere in the past.
The same actually applies to my small plastic ponds. It is all good. Let it continue.

All the best.
 
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