aquarium info help

[B_E_N]

hey i know some ausfishes used to work in the aquarium trade so i was wondering what sorta stuff would i need to set up a fresh or saltwater tank ie, heaters for saltwater, i have a 3foot tank approx, may be bigger and would love some fresh water jack or toga or archers, or a saltwater estuary setup that i could put some small (legal) species in that i come across. only a basic/essential setup is all im after at this stage. ive just purchased a 4 in 1 pump, oxygenater, filter and sprikler but if it has a q.max pump of 400L/h, is that enough??

any info will be greatly appri.

cheers ben

[Poodroo]

G'day Ben, I am one of the guys who worked in the industry for 5-6 years. Specialized in native species and also marine. For starters I wouldn't personally set up a saratoga but if that's what you want to do then go for the Jardini saratoga. I think personally they are much prettier than the leichardti but the beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say. Reason I didn't like them is because of their flighty behaviour. The bigger they get the more powerful and easy to startle they get and there is nothing quite like walking through the house in the middle of the night to get a drink and scaring the big saratoga and having it smash the end out of the tank. They also have very strong back muscles and if severely stressed I have even witnessed one arching its back to the point of breaking its own spine and dying. The business I worked for used to export them to Japan from a quarrantine facility.

A Jack makes a very pleasant aquatic pet and fun to watch. Can be set up in either salt or freshwater so they are very addaptive making them a good fish to keep. Archer fish are also a very good fish to keep and certainly a little more kind to the surroundings IE: they don't rip up plants etc. With archer fish you can set up an exotic tank with over hanging plants and watch them spit water at any moths etc attracted to the lights.
Best aquarium filters for efficiency and sheer water volume would be the canister style filters. Work out the volume of the tank and multiply it by 2 to work out roughly what sort of litres per hour the filter should turn over. Highly recommend Eheim filters as being the best. They use ceramic shafts which don't wear out or corrode making them more durable. They are also better made. Have a lot more info available if you want more. Hope this helps to start with.

Regards,

Poodroo

[kingtin]

Good info from Poodroo for starters.

Also Ben, if you live in sub-tropical or tropical, and are thinking of marine fish keeping, you not only need a heater, but also a cooling system.

kev

[FNQCairns]

They also have very strong back muscles and if severely stressed I have even witnessed one arching its back to the point of breaking its own spine and dying.

Crikey!!!

cheers fnq

[Poodroo]

Oh I forgot another thing I don't like about the saratogas. It is a huge drama when you have to move one that is of decent size. I have actually been involved in setting up some of the display tanks that you see in the RNA Shows affectionately known to us Brisbanites as "The Ekka!" What we used to do to transport a big saratoga is to tranquilize the fish by putting some anaesthetic drops in the water. Had to really know what you were doing because too much of course knocked the fish out permanently. The idea of this was to lessen the chance of damaging the fish because being a flighty fish they do not like the thought of being caught in nets etc. Their usual response is rapid acceleration either through the end of the tank or they go straight up through the lids and onto the floor. One particular year it was time to pack up the display I did at the RNA show but alas we forgot the anaesthetic drops. So we attempted to surround the tank with lots of guys armed with damp towels to catch the saratoga should it become airborne whilst I tried to catch it in the large net. This saratoga was roughly 3ft long. The net went into the water and take of it did. Not sure of how it managed it but it did miss every guy with every towel and proceeded to slither along the floor. It went under the partitions and through to the other side and it was a mad scramble to go and catch it and put it in the styrophome container we were transporting it in. A few less scales than it started with but it survived the journey okay.::)

Poodroo

[Poodroo]

Good info from Poodroo for starters.

Also Ben, if you live in sub-tropical or tropical, and are thinking of marine fish keeping, you not only need a heater, but also a cooling system.

kev

Good advise Kev particularly if coral is being kept. But don't go to a cheeper option in a marine chiller because they do not have stainless tanks in the cheeper versions and they corrode rather fast. Get a reverse cycle one capable of maintaining a stable temperature all year long.

Poodroo

[B_E_N]

well i think i just might stear clear with the whole toga idea but thanks for all the info, ill be starting to look to gather stuff shortly but as im moving house soon i think i will just take it slow for the time being but will prob ask alot more questions as the year goes on, once again thanks

ben

[PinHead]

I used to own an aquarium and pet shop..I avoided the freshwater natives and marine set ups...too many losses in a commercial situation...easiest to keep are the foreign fresh water species.

[cbs]

Good advise Kev particularly if coral is being kept. But don't go to a cheeper option in a marine chiller because they do not have stainless tanks in the cheeper versions and they corrode rather fast. Get a reverse cycle one capable of maintaining a stable temperature all year long.

Poodroo

And here's me thinking that most if not all contained titanium tubes, which do not corrode - including the cheaper ones........



You need to decide exactly what you want to keep, as one size definitely does not fit all. For example, my own tank is a 6x2x2 reef with MH Lighting/chillers/refuge and contains a mix of fish coral (Soft/LPS/SPS - probably 60-70 specimens) and other inverts such as anenomes/shrimp and thousands of other critters, yet I don't have a clue about freshwater fish and won't advise on it.

I could do a simple fish setup with something like a jack in it, but all the examples I've seen bore me to tears. In a few years I hope mine will look like a national geographic photo, and so far so good.

If you do decide on marine, take a look at these

www.masa.asn.au (http://www.masa.asn.au)

www.reefcentral.com (http://www.reefcentral.com)

www.reefkeeping.com (http://www.reefkeeping.com)



cbs

[davez104]

What about small reef fish? Has anyone ever kept them? Have thought about it before, but never done anything. Maybe a few just legal hussar, stripeys etc, maybe a trout, would be pretty cool I reckon. Wonder how hard it would be keeping them alive long enough to get them home.

Dave.

[kingtin]

What about small reef fish? Has anyone ever kept them? Have thought about it before, but never done anything. Maybe a few just legal hussar, stripeys etc, maybe a trout, would be pretty cool I reckon. Wonder how hard it would be keeping them alive long enough to get them home.

Dave.

Dave, your tank would have to be set up well in advance, and matured enough for their to be sufficient nitro bacteria etc.

Getting the fish home wouldn't be a problem I should think, as long as you have a large live bait tank and change the water regularly if you ain't coming home immediately.

Reef fish live in a much more stable environment than shallow water and estuarine fish, and as such, won't tolerate significant changes in salinity, temperature etc.

There are some very pretty estuarine fish that can easily be gathered such as the goby family, scats, monos (butter bream) and these tolerate a much wider range of environment and are therefore less susceptible to change viz easier to keep.

Out of curiosity..............for those of you who have a marine set up. Do you collect your own water (it is so much cleaner in Oz) or do you mix it from commercial solutions?

In the UK it costs an arm and a leg to keep all but native species, as the tropical marine species will not tolerate the shtity natural sea water over there.

kev

[ovakil]

I collect my own water,mostly when I go out on my boat,also collect from wellington point on a high tide

[B_E_N]

yeh some good advice especially the point that i should choose before i get ahead of myself. i would like to attempt a large coral tank but ill leave that for the future and try something a little less complex to start of with. i think im going to go for a native tank. id like to set it up for a jack and have sunken wood structure and sorta tree roots/ like mangrove roots, the big flared out ones that you see on heavily erroded banks, (sorry for my description). but i was wondering if you can buy saltwater jacks at a smaller than legal size or is it only freshwater jacks that can be kept. this is important becuase i dont think a 35cm jack could live in a 4 ft tank. i still would like to set up an estuarine tank first but if i cannot get any smaller jacks to start off with i will go to fresh, on that note how do you think a jack and archer fish would get along, i know once the jack got big enough he would destroy the archers but what if they wer at similar sizes for a while?? has any one had any experience??

[cbs]

What about small reef fish? Has anyone ever kept them? Have thought about it before, but never done anything. Maybe a few just legal hussar, stripeys etc, maybe a trout, would be pretty cool I reckon. Wonder how hard it would be keeping them alive long enough to get them home.

Dave.

I keep small reef fish in my reef (go figure) It can be done pretty easily and relatively cheaply, but I would't keep anything that you might class as bycatch. The best stuff won't normally take a line. You would need to take a swim for it.

As soon as you say "coral" the system changes and can get $$$$