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Hello everyone.
I am setting up a L333/ancistrus breeding colony in a 280 litre tank, and am going to have a high turnover generated by powerheads (around 2000lph, this sound good?). I am also want to include some mid water species to liven things up a little, can anybody reccomend a characin or two that would be comfortable with this kind of flow 24 hours a day?

Conrad

Hatchetfishes of the genus Thoracocharax come to mind, as do members of the Parodontidae (Parodon, Saccodon), although the latter may spend more time on the bottom than in mid-water. You might also consider Hemiodus/Hemiodopsis (not strictly current-loving species, but these are rather fast swimmers that should cope).

As an aside, 2000 liters per hour in a 280 liter tank is not particularly strong current. It is hard to have so strong current that normal fish (ie not fancy goldfish) are stressed by it.
8x turnover is mild, you could keep guppies with that kind of current (not an exaggeration; I've kept wildtype mollies and guppies in considerably stronger current).

In saltwater circles the present thinking is to aim for a turnover of 40x aquarium volume per hour, using low-pressure pumps like Tunze Nanostream. They use hardly any electricity, they're fairly cheap, and they've got a "softer" beam than traditional high-pressure powerheads. That sounds like extreme circulation to most freshwater aquarists, but I'm guessing that in a few years that'll be the standard set-up for loricarid breeding tanks too.

Thankyou for the suggestions of fish silurus, I'll have a chat with my LFS and see what he can get hold of, your suggestions look good.

Mike thanks for that, I suspected I might be erring on the side of caution, I'll look in to another low pressure circulation system as you suggest. I also feel this style of setup will become the norm in many Loricariid breeding tanks.

Cheers, conrad

I use filter systems that recirculate 10 tank volumes of water per hour with Discus so I too, think your initial target is conservative.
Virtually all SA Characins thrive in this flow.
Silver Hatchets are a very good choice, imo, but you have the whole pallet of Tetras to choose from.

how about danios? I know they're not characins, but they're similar and they seem to thrive in current.

I had some (leopard and zebra) in a tank with 18x turnover and they did great. (and even the 18x rate wasn't that impressive. I have angels in there now and they're fine).

Thanks guys, I'm upping the flow to around the 20x mark for now, with a possible raise later on.
I think i'm going to go for a group of around ten Thoracocharax hatchets, (if I can find them) and as for the Characins, I think i'll go for a large group of whatever takes my fancy, maybe Boehlkea fredcochui - I've seen some very nice ones recently.

Thanks for the advice guys, Conrad

Loracidlover wrote:Boehlkea fredcochui

Excellent choice. They're very strong swimmers, and quite nice-looking to boot. They're slightly nippy, but that shouldn't be a problem as you'll not be keeping them with slow & long-finned fish. Another choice in the same style could be Mimagoniates sp. if you can find them - those are among my favorite tetras, look great, and are extremely strong swimmers, but unfortunately normally impossible to identify to species.

But frankly I think pretty much any characin will handle the current just fine.

Hello all,
I purchased 22-23 (i think) Boehlkea fredcochui yesterday, here are a few pictures of them in the tank.
(Without the highturnover as of yet, still waiting on delivery of powerheads)







and here are a couple of others of the tank and a two of its inhabitants.







I get the L333's next week, very exciting!

Cheers, Conrad

wow those species are BEAUTIFUL

these guys were saying that there's some shrimp that would do well in a high flow rate tank as well...

Genetrally speaking, most bleuish (and silvery) fish will come from fast moving bodies of water - just because they are blue - and in South America the same goes (Yellow - red is more suitable for turbid waters). Further, most fish from such waters are low bodies, but this is not a general rule

However, fast moving water has a speed of 4 feet a second, I once read. Once I calculated the waterspeed through the hoses of my Eheim Pro II. It was 4 feet a second.

Put differntly, no tank will ever contain fast moving water

I definitely agree that it's maybe impossible to make water too fast for fish in the daytime, but I ran into trouble with high current and sleeping fish. I had some danios that generally like to sleep at the surface of the tank, but they were constantly tossed about by the current. I think I was running about 2400gph on a 50g tank with all the various pumps and filters combined. The fish did fine during the day but eventually appeared ragged as they had no opportunity to rest.

So maybe installing at least one slack-water area would be best for tanks with dithers?