PlanetCatfish.com

Hi,

I'm planning on setting up a rack with 8 aquariums, probably 20 gallons for the cories and 30 to 40 gallons for the plecos. Probably a few hypancistrus.

My question is would you plumb together and use a central sump or just use sponge filters/hmf?

I heard that cories can trigger other groups to spawn with their pheromones.

Thanks for any insight

My strong personal preference is individual filtration. One disease introduced and spread between several connected tanks is very hard to control and very hard to treat.
-Shane

I would second the individual tanks.

I have used central systems often in the past. But I find that fish rarely bred in them and they were best used for growing out juveniles or for holding fish that weren't ready for spawning yet.

For my breeding tanks, I use individual filtration (mostly Poret mattenfilters now). If a group of corys are spawning in one tank all you need to do is scoop some water out of their tank and dump it into the other tank that you are trying to trigger.

Andy

Ok thanks for the advice. I didn't think of just taking some water and dumping it into the other tanks.

I plan on having a central drain line to speed up the water changes.

Cheers

I second the responses. I am anal about diseases and the central system would create an epidemic catastrophe. A central system is just time efficient, that why I would not buy from a large pet chain. Disease central.
Draninage would be fine.
and @Narwhal72 came with an excellent solution to scoop out water and sponge filters of any kind is best in my opinion

I would agree with the responses so far. I'm in the planning stages of building out a small fish room, and will be using poret matten filters for all the tanks.

Having separate filtration also allows you to alter water parameters in individual tanks if you are trying to trigger a spawn with ro/rain water or temperature changes.

Ok perfect. I'm going with individual tanks. Does anyone breed hypans in 20 gallon tanks? 24"x12"x16" high

That tank size sounds great for the smaller hypancistrus species. I used to have a small quarantine tank, 18x10x10 inches, which became the home for my , they have spawned in it three times!

They will have a larger tank in future, they have been in this small tank for 18 months so far and with plenty of caves they seem to be getting on ok.

A couple of thoughts here-

Plecos and corys need area more than volume. Therefore I tend to use 20 and 33 longs. But I am also fond of the 36 x 18 inch footprint. It actually offers 4.5 sq. ft. vs 4 sq. ft. for 33 or 45 longs (or 55s). My primary zebra pleco breeding group of 13 fish has lived in a 30 gal breeder tank since 2006. After these sizes, consider 75 gal for bigger groups.

I concur with using Poret, and Mattens are great filters (I use several). However, the Poret cubes are also excellent and are "portable." (so are the tower Poret filters). I normally have a bio-farm running with anywhere from 4 to 8 various size/ppi Poret cubes kept cycled for emergency use or if I do an event where I am selling. They are much easier to move around than Mattens.

As far as I am concerned the key to being able to push the envelope in stocking smaller plecos is to provide excess cover, the more the better.