Just Picked Up My 700L Beaut, Doing Something Different!

[Aviici]

Hello everyone, welcome to the diary of my new 6"6, 700L tank!!
 
After taking a break from the hobby and only keeping a small Fluval Edge for a long period of time, I've decided now's the time to come back and come back with a bang!
 The tank is going to be in the garage, therefore a coldwater tank however - there's a slight twist. I'm going to be keeping purely native British fish.
 
I've seen this done a couple of times before however I've always felt that it's not been done correctly, and I want to create a complete habitat for some of the smaller fish we have in our own rivers and canals.
As a keen angler I'm aware of the vast array of fish we have here and I'd like to keep some that we don't know much about, and make the tank look as natural as possible.
 
I'll upload some photos as I progress, the tank's currently just been put up in the garage.
 
Photos soon to follow and any thoughts or advice are much appreciated!!
 
Thank you

 

[Wills]

Sounds interesting - all I would say is, collecting fish for captivity in the UK is illegal... so you may need to be careful in quite a few respects.
 
Wills

 

[Aviici]

Yes, it all came to light though when I was in my LFS a while back and they had some perch in a tank near the koi ponds, so I enquired and they said they can order in from lake and pond suppliers more or less any cold water fish that tickles my fancy!
There's a variety of online shops that sell Gobies, roach, minnows, sticklebacks, perch and the obvious pond fish.
 
Surprising the amount of fish that are completely banned from import, can't complain though!

 

[Wills]

Ah cool! I've always wondered about how feasable it would be to make a British tank as attractive as say an Amazon or African tank.
 
Wills

 

[Lillefishy]

Sounds interesting - all I would say is, collecting fish for captivity in the UK is illegal... so you may need to be careful in quite a few respects.
 
Wills

It's also illegal to release native fish into the wild without a license.

 

[Munroco]

Sounds like a really interesting project, are you going to collect them yourself?

 

[DrRob]

I love it when the bigger tanks are used to show the smaller fish at their best, particularly natives. Looking forward to this one.

 

[daizeUK]

Sounds interesting, what plans have you got for hardscape?

 

[SeanTrollope]

this is gonna be interesting, can you collect native plants without issues???

 

[Aviici]

I'd be interested to know if you could with plants, we've got a pond with a variety of plants in it, and I guess the tank's probably big enough for most pond plants!
Going to get the substrate this weekend, and maybe an extra filter, I bought the tank second hand and it came with an All Pond Solutions filter that is said to do roughly 1000l/hr which isn't enough. Anyone recommend a filter with a huge turnover of water? 
 
Also gonna look for a nice piece of bogwood!

 

[Munroco]

Not sure why 1000L per hour wouldn't be enough, sounds like a lot to me unless you are thinking of stocking it with trout?

 

[Aviici]

I'm definitely looking at perch, and from my experience with predatory fish like that they need a LOT of filtration! Usually go for about 3 or even 4 times the volume of the aquarium per hour

 

[Aviici]

Update:
 
After a fair bit of research I've decided to completely replace the light unit and entire aquarium hood. Both for insulation purposes and security, don't want any escapees!
Going to build a new hood with hinges, making it more tight-fitting, and fit it with some 46" T5 Arcadia lights, the Plant Pro, and Tropical Pro. Ordered the bulbs, the reflectors and the Hagen Glo started unit! Nice little project to start off, as well as going off to pick up the ingredients for the hardscape!
 
Also been round my local canal and up by the Thames to get some ideas!

 

[Aviici]

Update - Week 1:
 
Picked up some 2-3mm black gravel, which glistens nicely to be my substrate yesterday.
Now just gotta wait for the lighting to arrive and the it's lid construction time!
 

 

[PlumbersMerchant]

Any update mate ? Be interested to see this. Did a bathroom for a bloke up north who had a similar set up, looked great. Are you gonna try have all the outlets pointing the same way to create a river effect (one direction flow) ?