TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

All posts regarding the care and breeding of these catfishes from South America.
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EJA0000
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

Unfortunately the TSN did not eat today. I do not think it had anything to do with vitamins or minerals. I left the piece in the water for 2 hrs in front of his nose but he didn't even checked it out. He has been eating three days in a row and yesterday a bigger piece. If he would have been healthy he would certainly have taken this piece today. Lets see what the next days will bring.
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by Bas Pels »

If only it was Spanish - it is Brasilian Portugese - which I don't understand. Portugese is related to Spanish, but the pronuncatoin is way different.

With regard to trout pellets, you could try them, but these might be too rich. After all what a farmer wants is to get the fish to fatten fast, without any care for health risks wuld the animal have survived the slaughter period. We feed our fishes with the intention to enjoy them for years - we want to keep them healthy for years, not months.

Trout pellets do not smell very much. Sturgeon pellet smells more, which migh imply it has more taste for the fishes. They are, however, very fat :(
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

One of the warnings I find on he internet is that TSN often die because of that.

I checked sturgeon and trout pellets and they most often have approx 19-22% oil/fat On a biological one it mentioned approx 11% raw fat.
For Hikari Masivore, which is specific for e.g. red tail catfish that is not less then 5% crude fat. Mazuri aquatic carnivore blend not less then 9% crude fat.
No idea how to compare crude fat figures with oil/fat and or raw fat.

In relation to trout I can imagine but why would there be a lot of fat in sturgeon pellets? Enough people have sturgeons in their pond and the last thing they want is to let it grow fast. On a UK sturgeon site it mentions that it should be prevented for a sturgeon to get fat.

In relation to vitamins and minerals to add to fish diet I also found in addition to the mentions Sera product JBL Atvitol. It does not only contain minerals and vitamins but also amino acids. Cost for 50 ml is between 7,14 and 10 Euros.

Been checking what people with red tail catfish use. Rarely pellets and to often hotdogs! In case of pellets they use Hikari Massivore. Somehow this stuff is twice the price in Europe in comparison to the US. 350 gr cost approx 35 Euro's. Sometimes for young animals Hikari sinking carnivore pellets are used. To get him healthy I don't mind but for the long run it's to expensive. Sturgeon or trout pellets cost approx. 35 Euro's for 10 kg!

Will do some more research coming week.....
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

Update:

Yesterday I fed the caimans. One of them ate nearly all so I tried if the other one wanted a rat pinky today. He was not interested. Was already some time ago since I tried feeding a baby rat to the TSN. I know and I agree it should mainly eat fish!
He came straight away, checked it extended but never took it in his mouth. So I took the rat puppy out eventually.

Afterwards I tossed a piece of fish with reptile minerals and vitamin supplements inside. A syringe didn't work with the supplements I have. They don't dissolve in water and the syringe I have blocks directly. So I made a little hole with a pin that I turned around inside. Then I filled it with the powder and washed of the outside. The TSN took it straight away.

Happy that it ate that quickly again. I also haven't seen him scratching his head anymore and his head looks also possibly a bit better. It's improving but we are not there yet.
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by Bas Pels »

looks like you might have fund a recipe that works :up:
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

Summary of loose things mentioned earlier in this topic.

What will I /want to feed my TSN:

1) Whole frozen fresh water fish but fed in pieces. The fish are too big to be fed at once. I buy these fish in 10kg for approx. 23 Euro’s. Which is mega cheap. This is through a large trading company that also supplies all kind of carnivore food towards zoo’s.

2) I also have unpeeled and raw gamba’s. which cost approx. 15 Euro’s a kg. I only give him one (1) every week.

3) I will buy JBL Advitol. A mineral, vitamin and amino acid supplement specifically for fish . Below a link to the product. The site also indicates the analysis. Looking at the analysis possibly fish do not need the brought mineral range that e.g. reptiles do. I will use this supplement on all (the above mentioned) food that is not enriched by its self with vitamins.

https://www.jbl.de/?lang=en&mod=product ... il&id=2315

4) In addition to the above I still want to try to feed it once a week a form of pellet. Maybe making this approx. 15 - 20% of his total diet. Most pellet food I found was too expensive. Especially when he will have a buddy in a larger tank and they become bigger as well. Pellets also makes it easier during a holiday. So checking different brands of sturgeon pellets I ended up again at JBL Pondsterlet. This contains 12% crude fat. This is on the high side but I will only use it in addition to create variety in its diet. I also will keep the TSN when fully recovered from his current state on a diet to ensure that I will not overfeed it. If someone has serious thoughts not to feed it sturgeon pellets I like to hear your reasoning! Below the link to the product. It cost 11,99 for 600 gram = 1 liter.

https://www.jbl.de/?lang=en&mod=product ... il&id=2599

Water Test Kit:

To be able to buy it all in the same store I have chosen to buy the JBL Combi set + NH4 water test kit. I checked for independent product reviews that compared different test kit on how accurate they are but couldn’t find any to my surprise. In case someone knows that this test kit is not a proper one please let me know before I buy it!

https://www.jbl.de/?lang=en&mod=product ... il&id=5941

I also checked the API Freshwater Master kit but these are not available in Europe. Ordering through sites like ebay ends up in indicating no shipment to the Netherlands or an additional shipping fee of 40,95 dollars!
Shipping something from China to the Netherlands with Aliexpress is often free but things I try to order from the US somehow always have outrages shipping rates.
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

Way to busy especially the coming days so in between I quickly went to the shop to buy the goods.
Been slowing down with water changes since there was improvement. So approx. 60 hrs ago since the last time I have been changing water.

I first measured the water again with a 6 in 1 JBL test strip. Below the values:
CL2: 0 mg/l
PH: 6,6
KH: 7
GH: 6
NO2: 0 mg/l
NO3: < 50 mg/l

Afterwards I tested with the JBL combiset + NH4 the following:
PH: Between 6,5 and 7.0
KH: 6
NH4: 0,05mg/l
No3: 15mg/l
NO2: 0,3 mg/l (This surprises me! Perhaps because I have been changing to much water lately and quite suddenly I dropped the frequency from every day to not exchanging it for 60 hrs. I will keep track of the values in the upcoming period).


The sturgeon food of JBL was only available in large quantities. Their own brand contained 17% crude fat. So too high. However they gave me a small sample to see if he would eat it. If he starts eating it I will buy a bucket of sturgeon food but then with a lower amount of crude fat.

I also bought the JBL Atvitol. The instructions mentions only: “ 2-4 drops daily on the food” or 2 drops per 20 liters of water”. It’s hard to understand for me. 2-4 drops on the food? Normally vitamins go per weight of the food of the animal. It makes a big difference if I use 2-4 drops for a single guppy of for a TSN.

Anyway, within the piece of fish I pressed some sturgeon food so he could get used to the taste and 2 drops of Atvitol simply on the outside. The TSN ate it straight away. No idea if he’d spit out the sturgeon pellets. The orange of the previous pellets tested was easy to see when spit out. The black sturgeon pellets I will never see.

Attached two pictures made with my phone today. Not the best pictures but I'm sure he looks way better then a week ago.
WP_20170517_21_40_14_Pro.jpg
WP_20170517_21_40_19_Pro.jpg
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by Lycosid »

NH4: 0,05mg/l
That's...not wonderful.

I finally look up the TSN diet data I had kicking around. A study mostly on larger species did some stomach contents analysis on, amongst others, TSNs and found entirely fish, mostly characins and cichlids. So there's some wild food data for you.

Of course, this is wild food data from a limited data set, on individuals of unknown health, and so what it says about fish health is far less clear. Then again, what we know about optimal diets for fish health as opposed to, say, optimal diets for human health is little to nothing anyway.
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

Sorry for the people that do not like a lot of reading. For the ones that maybe can use the lessons learned out of this I write it as complete as possible. Hopefully this allows also others to provide advice.

Status:
The TSN is doing better but still not as he should. I reckon that there was an “escalated start-up”. Stress and an irritated head. His head looks now quite well. No scratches. But I do think there are still some small pits to be seen. To my knowledge, this often takes some time to get rid of.
But in the basis I think there is still something not right. He is not as active as he should. He is not lying at the bottom but he is not swimming enough around. He is eating but sometimes it takes up to 10 minutes before he takes the food. Other times he takes it immediately. The time spam is too short to draw conclusions. But it looks like the better moments are having a relation to the water changes I do. So I reckon, I have to find out if this is true or not. Meaning I will focus mainly for a solution on monitoring the water quality closely and keep up a high rate of water exchanges. I had a high water change ratio when I figured out he was ill but reduced it when he was getting better.

Filter / feeding complication:
In addition to the above I discovered a complication with feeding / filter that possibly has effected the TSN.

I only have a relatively small closed filter. I bought it as a 2000 l/hr filter but it only does 1200 L/hr. It’s a Chinese pump and claiming the supplier is senseless. For a 500 liter tank 1200 L/hr is on the small side and considering the residents of the tank a more extended filtration would be highly desirable. But because the tank was only for the first two years and space is limited in my living room, I decided at start to only use an loose external filter. With my current knowledge I would have done it differently but I’m not going to change it anymore until building the next tank.

Today I added flow by using a “current\wave maker”. This to blow all dirt of the bottom into the water so the filter can pick it up. I noticed that there where fish particles coming from the bottom.
IMGP2520.JPG
Afterwards I cleaned the filter. The filter was not as dirty as I expected but it did contain a lot of fish scales and small fish particles that had fungus on them! Never had this before. This can be caused by two (2) things that changed.
1) I have been feeding my caimans lately more. This because I have been examining their behavior under different feeding circumstances. A week ago I gave them fish. One of them was kind of “playing” with his fish before he swallowed it. Likely more loose parts of fish than normal ended up in the water.

2) The TSN is not directly eating his pieces of fish. I also feed him on a more regular base until he is 100% healthy again. So scales and small pieces can end up in the water.

The amount of particles with fungus where not enormous but possibly enough to have affect the health of the TSN. But it remains guessing what the impact could have been. Unfortunately I forgot to make pictures of the particles with fungus in the filter. The ones on the picture I picked out the water had coincidently(?) no fungus on them.

Water values:
The water values I measure hardly fluctuate. So quite identical to the ones earlier mentioned. In my rush I forgot to measure the water this morning before I started to work on the tank. I will measure the water tomorrow evening when I will again exchange some water.

Lycosid: I’m in the assumption that a NH4 of 0,05 mg/l is actually excellent for fish? According to the set NH4 up to 0,15 mg/l is acceptable and above 0,2 it is advised to change water. Is there something I’m missing/misunderstanding?


Sturgeon / catfish food:
After I had put some sturgeon pellets in the pieces of fish, which was eaten by him I tossed a lose piece of sturgeon food into the water. It took it straight away with big force! I was really surprised. So I tossed a Tetra Cichlid pellet in. He checked it out but never took it. Then I tossed another sturgeon pellet into the tank. He took it again straight away. He clearly like the smelly sturgeon food with a crude fat that is way too high.

So I bought a bag of sturgeon pellets at a shop with a lot of knowledge of cold water pond fish. They also have their own brand of fish food and supply 1,5 kg sturgeon food for 7,45 Euro that has a crude fat percentage of 12%. So in the lower range for sturgeon but too high for a TSN.

I asked why the amount of fat was so high in sturgeon food in comparison to fish food for catfish while their natural food sources do not much differ. He said it is exactly the same food. I can order the exact same pellets in a catfish bag! He explained that sturgeons always have to keep swimming and due to that burn a lot of energy. If a food for sturgeon is used with a low crude fat percentage you either have to feed them a lot more which results in more water pollution or they will starve. I reckon the latest is probably a bit exaggerated but I guess I understand what he was trying to say. The reason he is selling sturgeon food with a lower fat percentage (12%) in contrary to a more normal figure of 17%-22% was that koi will always eat some sturgeon food as well if they share a pond and this makes it just a little less bad for the koi. People often feed their fish more than they should. So the 12% works from a practical point of view well.

Why the 12% crude fat food for sturgeon was identical as for coldwater catfish was that you should not feed them that often in comparison to sturgeon and the 12% is also a balance between winter and summer time. I‘m still digesting this latest part of the answer myself. I would reckon that if temperatures get lower European catfish lower their activity and their metabolism. But maybe this is not the case or not for the pre winter / autumn and pre summer/spring periods. Anyway he mentioned that beside the crude fat percentage the analyses was perfect also for tropical catfish. He emphasized not to use koi food that has the right amount of crude fat of 3%-5% but an analyses that differs significantly.

At home I noticed that his food smelled more like dog food then the sturgeon pellets I had from the other store. The other ones had a more particular and stronger smell but the negative 17% crude fat. The new pellets I have are 6mm in diameter. The last days he didn’t eat that well so I have to wait till he is eating well again to test these pellets. They sink and I do not have other fish to clean the food up if he doesn’t eat it.

Note: I will only use these pellets as an addition to fish and “large shrimps” and not his main source of food!

The gamba bag was empty so I bought this time a box of two (2) kg of large shrimps, raw, unpeeled and even with head. See picture. It cost me 28 Euro’s. They are size 6-8.
IMGP2524.JPG
IMGP2525.JPG
IMGP2526.JPG

Unfortunately the TSN was continuously hiding today so No “recent” picture. But as soon as he is out in the open I will make one. The one below was made earlier this week!
IMGP2500.JPG
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by Viktor Jarikov »

mg/l = ppm

0.05 ppm of NH3/NH4 would read as zero ppm on the API kit I use and suggested. The first non-zero reading is 0.25 ppm on the reference chart, then 0.5, 1, and so on.
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

Small update:
IMGP2651.JPG
Have been changing water regular this week I still do not see signs of improvement or even changes at all.

He is eating but in my opinion clearly not as he should. His body mass is more than just good and it looks he is gaining even more weight instead of losing weight. Probably because he is not active at all. He is mainly hiding. When the caimans hang for a long time at one place he is hanging there too but he doesn’t directly follow them in case they move. His behavior does not show a happy catfish.

All scratches on his head are gone but there is still clear viable pitting below his eyes and above the top corner of his gills.

I do notice that sometimes he is breathing a bit more heavily. But definitely nothing excessive.

Aldo most parameters of the water do not change and are extremely stable, in the “pollution” area it seems again things are difficult to keep in balance.

NH4 remains 0,05 mg/l perfect
NO2 = 0 mg/l perfect

NO3 before water changing between 50 and 100mg/l and after changing the water between 25 and 50 mg/l. But within 1,5 days it's back at 50 -100 mg/l. Looking at the past, some periods it was very good and easy to keep between 25 and 50 mg/l with some water changes. Other periods it was also hard to keep it below the 100 mg/l. From the past I know that if I do not change water for like 1,5 wks it goes even towards the 150 – 200 mg/l. Putting plant in the pond would help but I do not have sufficient light to let them thrive. After a couple of weeks they slowly die. So only a small amount of java fern is in the tank. It survives but that’s all.

In the past guppies did fine in the tank. And for quite some time I had the Acanthicus Adonis and Corydoras Aenues which seem to do perfectly fine.
Considering the above, measuring no fully out of line values and that the TSN is not responding on the water changes makes me rethink again. But I have no clue where to look for solutions!
IMGP2708.JPG
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

Oh,... forgot to mention. I have no idea how big he is right now but he is still visibly and significantly growing!
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by Bas Pels »

Reading the above, I would try to enhance the lighting. Your electricity cost more or less the same as I pay, 2 watts for 12 hours a day would cost around 1 euro a year.

That is, apart from the aquiring costs, a 10 watt LED lamp costs 5 euros a year in electricity (a year is ~9000 hrs, and electricity = 22 ct a kwh. 4500 * 0,010 * 0,22 = 5 ). But it would enhance plantgrowth, and thus your water, significantly
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

A few LED’s compared to the other costs are not even on my mind.

It’s more or less a “design” and “purpose” issue that light and plants are difficult.

There is quite some (heat) lightning in the enclosure. But the issue is that the land area is above a big part of the water. Water surface is approx. 1,44 m2 and the land area above the water is approx. 1,1m2. Doing the math shows that the actual open water area is way too small to add light from above.
Due to the height differences in the land platforms and depth lines used you do not notice this straight away when you look at the enclosure. You can perfectly overlook the whole water surface and enough light spreads to have a decent tempered light in the water. The caimans can also enter the water from different points.

The principle behind all land area above the water is to provide your animals with maximum space in the square meters used for the enclosure. Building compact means also less overall energy cost. This species of caimans when still young naturally hide during the daytime e.g. under riverbanks and appreciate this concept really a lot.

The other issue is that as soon as one of the caimans “flies” through the water or hides in the water plants, these plants damage severe, they get loose, etc. Mainly in big natural ponds you see plants doing well in combinations with crocodilians. But even then these plants are often very robust floating plants, duckweed or reed type of plants. For this type of caimans tempered light is even mandatory.

People with big Cichlids have more or less a similar problems and counter act this like I do now by exchanging a lot of water.

This is just a grow up tank. In the next tank, still a grow up tank, much more space will be available and I want at least one spot directly above the water for some water plants. But the amount of plants will still not be enough to consume the full amount of NO3.
The filtration system for the next enclosure is still in concept, but to better filter the water I’m thinking to use the plants on the land area to gain some aquaponic support to compensate for the lack of water plants. But this does not help me now. If it would clearly help this fish I could buy a large cement bucket D= 80cm, fill it with gravel and plants, and place it outside the enclosure in between the pump filtration hose. However this does require to fully reorganize the living room! Arround December I must have a new enclosure which means then again reorganizing the living room.

Another option is to buy a small swimming pool (2000ltr?) and new filter to temporary house the TSN alone. However before the bacteria culture is good enough not to get nitrate issues it can take up to 6 weeks. And...I need this space to build the new enclosure.

I also still would not know what exactly is causing the problem. So it could possibly still pop up in the next enclosure as well.
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by Viktor Jarikov »

EJA0000 wrote: 14 May 2017, 16:26 Sorry no idea why the youtube video's don't work but clicking the link works for me.
To embed a video click on "youtube" button, then paste the video URL and delete all the generic stuff before the last portion, which is unique to the video. Leave only the portion after the = sign.
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

Pfffff……..

In situations where you do not see improvement in your pet you tend to spend money on things that are probably not going to solve the issue. But then at least you can say to yourself that you tried.

So to make myself feel better I ordered a brand new freshwater protein skimmer including a water pump. Crap cost me 290 Euro in total! Of course I only bought it because I want to use it also for my next enclosure. It all has a capacity that is for my current enclosure to much so hopefully I can make it work.

Tornado-II-for_E.jpg
Tornado-II-for_E.jpg (83.1 KiB) Viewed 4688 times

The system will add significant flow, improve filtration and adds massive amounts of air to the water. Hopefully this will help my TSN to feel better. Of course I have no found arguments to say that this is a solution. But I believe it will certainly make some improvements. And I can only hope that it is sufficient to get some improvement in the health of my TSN.

The protein skimmer is a Tornado II including air pump, bio carrier filter media and flow meter. With a total price of 198 Euro’s. Normal price without the mentioned extra’s is 199 – 249 Euro’s. For a second hand they ask approx 125 Euro.

There are better, but also more expensive, protein skimmers for koi ponds but they are actually way too large for my purpose and some advised that, aldo the tornado is more sensitive, if set properly, I would probably have better results with this one. It also is more energy efficient because it has no venturi.
The results with the Tornado II for koi ponds are diverse. Therefore some consider them poor and others excellent. But the same counts for very expensive ones.

Product description internet:
The Tornado II Protein Skimmer is the New improved version of the popular Tornado protein skimmer. No more pressure loss on the inlet due to the absence of a venturi. Water goes straight into the filter. Air is blown into the 4mm air inlet through a supplied flowmeter to ensure a continuous flow of 0,5 l/m (30 l/h). This pressure ensures the separation of the produced foam through the foam outlet pipe.
The Tornado II Protein Skimmer is a combination of three different filter systems. The Tornado II Protein Skimmer filter operates biological, mechanical and chemical.
The Tornado II Protein Skimmer principle operates as follows: The surface of an air bubble attracts dissolved substances out of the water. Because of the adhesion of the bubbles these substances, like chemicals, waste particles, colourants and algae, are concentrated. By means of an air pump, air is mixed with water.
By forcing this mixture through the bio rings to a lower part, there is a long contact between air and water. This changes the surface tension of the water continuously and creates a thick foam. This foam will be separated from the cleared water by a perforated cone and exits through the foam outlet. Dissolved substances like; phosphates, ammonia, humus acids, colourants, proteins and a number of heavy metals, are filtered out of the water and separated together with the foam.
The extraction of dissolved substances is not possible with normal filters and can only be done if chemicals are added.
The Tornado II Protein Skimmer filter has various advantages:
• Stabilizes pH
• Removes colourants
• Increases dissolved oxygen
• Not dependant on bacteria, works as soon as the pump is running.
• Total height 74cm, Ø16cm. Water inlet Ø25mm
• water outlet Ø40 mm,
• foam outlet Ø25mm.
• Pump capacity max. 5m³/h.


On the internet I read that the pump capacity should be at least 1500 l/hr for the Tornado II and as indicated above max. 5000 l/hr.

Pump:

Lately I have been checking different brands, prices and efficiency of pumps. The efficiency is difficult because often they do not meet what they promise and some build up more pressure and others gain more flow.

I felt most confident with the Aquaforte DM series looking at energy efficiency, quality and price.
aquaforte-dm-serie.jpg
Below an overview that I made of this series:
Untitled.jpg

As with most pump series from any brand you see that they become less energy efficient as they become larger. The overview show my calculations that indicate that the biggest is roughly 32% less energy efficient compared to the smallest one. Probably there are reasons why you can’t look at it in this way but to the best of my knowledge I try to interpret the figures and come to these conclusions. Don't consider it scientific.

My preference would have been the 6500. But this one is just one size too big for the Tornado so I didn’t take that change and bought the 3500. Not the 5000 because it looks like it is 11% less efficient. So I also decided that within my filtration system I will use this pump only to feed the skimmer. So considering it runs 24/7 every Watt in absolute figures will count. And the smallest is still big enough for the Tornado.

I have no ideas how to make this equipment fit on my current tank but I will do my best to figure something out. Hopefully I will have the equipment around Wednesday.
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

This is a bad weekend for my bank account!

I ordered additional to th eabove protein skimmer and pump a "TMC Pro Clear Ultima 30 watt". Also this could help the TSN a little bit by improving the water quality.
uvc-pro-clear-ultima-tmc-30-watt.jpg
Also this I ordered with in mind my next enclosure. Also for this tank it’s capacity is like the protein skimmer too big. But that is mainly a temporary energy consumption issue.

I have thought about taking an Ozone generator and reactor instead of UVC. However these systems are very expensive and require huge installations. The last requires probably some explanation.
Aldo ozone is instable it’s half time still takes quite some time. This results that if you have a reactor of e.g. two meters long it still only has an efficiency of approx. 10% regarding oxidation (not power/electricity). Meaning that the other 90% is dangerous rest ozone that you have to blowout through a carbon filter. So most small reactors that you can buy are even less effective then the two meter long DIY ones.

Aldo I do believe a good Ozon installation is better I think that for my use an UVC is the better choose. UVC is more compact, much cheaper, less complex, etc.

The opinions on the internet differ but it seem another advantage is that UVC can improve your REDOX balance and an Ozone generator can not.

With the TMC Pro Clear Ultima 30 watt I can go with my enclosure to a level 2 sterilization of the water.

Below link tells something about different UV lamps and indicates that the TMC Pro clear ultima is one of the better ones. Possibly there are differences in the ones supplied to the US and the ones for Europe.

http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com ... ml#vecton4

Unfortunately this order has a longer delivery time than the protein skimmer and pump but likely it is all in next weekend.
EJA0000
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by EJA0000 »

Forgot to mention:

I paid 133,- Euro's for it. Prices for UV sterilizers go from approx 50 Euro's to very expensive.
Apparently a lot of the cheap ones perform very poor and are only usable as clarifier and not as a sterilizer. It took me more than a day of checking out the internet to determine which one was the best for me. I have been reading quite a lot about them and it still feels I know very little on the subject. Hopefully it has been enough to ensure I bought something that will work well. So before you buy one, my advice would be to do some research first.

Also know that this thing is not small. They are bigger than you probably would expect!
Viktor Jarikov
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Re: TSN (Pseudoplatystoma Fasciatum) advice needed and sharing my experience

Post by Viktor Jarikov »

Lots of interesting info to chew on. Thanks for sharing.

IDK about sterilizing, never used one for that purpose, but have a 40 watt clarifier that kept our 10,000 gal koi pond clear of microscopic algae aka pea soup. Paid $400 for it about 7 years ago.
Thebiggerthebetter
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