List Of Tankbusting Fish Which Grow To 12inches Or More?

[demonmagus]

LR would be mental, how would you get enough though?

 

[CAC]

LR would be mental, how would you get enough though?

On the ammount id guess you would need for a 12 footer it would be about a tonne of LR wouldnt it? For that much it would cost over a grand, so you have to get a huge shipment in through a fish shop I would imagine

 

[J4MES]

I think you should use it as a guppy breeding tank.

lol not really, how about a school of piranhas?

J4MES

 

[andywg]

LR would be mental, how would you get enough though?

On the ammount id guess you would need for a 12 footer it would be about a tonne of LR wouldnt it? For that much it would cost over a grand, so you have to get a huge shipment in through a fish shop I would imagine

LR would become supplemental to a pred tank, with a wet dry taking over most of the filtration. LR is fine for low bioload reefs, but not enough for messy pred tanks.

 

[CAC]

Oh right, so youd just have a huge wet/dry trickle filter, with normal sponges then? It could be cheaper than id have thought then.
Tokis: What size are you actually thinking of going to, if you will actually be doing it? Is it 12x4x4 that your thinking?

 

[nmonks]

If you're really planning on a gigantic tank, my suggestion would be to look at keeping large groups of relatively small tankbusters. If you've ever seen, for example, a school of spotted gar, which are around the 60 cm mark, they're really nice fish. You get to see them behaving more naturally. Likewise things like Sorubim lima or clown loaches, which become totally different animals when kept in appreciable numbers.

While it's nice to jam in jumbo fish, if you scale down the fishes you end up creating a much more authentic habitat, where you can add giant rocks and big plants (like Vallisneria asiatica, for example, which looks amazing in metre-deep tanks) and make something that looks "real".

Cheers, Neale

 

[CAC]

If you're really planning on a gigantic tank, my suggestion would be to look at keeping large groups of relatively small tankbusters. If you've ever seen, for example, a school of spotted gar, which are around the 60 cm mark, they're really nice fish. You get to see them behaving more naturally. Likewise things like Sorubim lima or clown loaches, which become totally different animals when kept in appreciable numbers.

While it's nice to jam in jumbo fish, if you scale down the fishes you end up creating a much more authentic habitat, where you can add giant rocks and big plants (like Vallisneria asiatica, for example, which looks amazing in metre-deep tanks) and make something that looks "real".

Cheers, Neale

Very good idea, I do think however that a couple of other things which get a little bigger, and can be kept singularly then that would add some unusualness to the tank. Also, dont forget that things like peacock bass can be kept in groups, and infact would probably benifit from it.

 

[cane76]

oops

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Thankyou for your input everyone. Well basically, my two options for increasing space enough to do such a project would be to either;
a. Do an extension to the house, or
b. Buy neighbours place if it goes up for sale (i live in a semi-detached house, so if i bought my neighbours place i would make the two properties become one).


I would prefer option b the most, but i wouldn't mind doing an extension to the house either depending on what happens in the future. Our neighbours place has exactly the same layout as ours, which would make planning the project easier. If their place doesn't go up for sale over the next couple of years though, then i would go for the extension on the house option and do that instead.

I was thinking...that i think an indoor pond would be easier to do than a giant glass aquarium. I'm no builder so i'm not sure if it would be posible, but a sunken into the floor indoor pond (instead of an above ground one) would be somthing i would love to do if it was posible to do in the building (i don't see how it couldn't work). The largest room i could do to do an indoor pond in would be a 16ft long by 10ft wide room, i drew two idea's i had- the squares on the grid each represent 1ft square.

(Click image to make it full size)

The maximum length the pond could be is 12ft, and i expect the maximum width i could do the pond is 6ft wide, so i have drawn my two ideas to this scale. I could opt for a narrower or shorter pond (its posible i may have to depending on whats physically posible in the building to do and what isn't), but if i could get away with a 12ft long and 6ft wide indoor pond that would be awesome. I'm not decided on the depth of such a huge pond/aquarium, but i would prefer not to go deeper than 4ft deep.
What do you think of my two ideas? If you have any questions on the design, please ask.
This is really early days though, either an indoor pond or giant aquarium are two ideas that i'm both entertaining as much as each other at the moment, its too early to have my heart set on anything considering that its likely that it'll be at least a couple of years before any work starts on the project.


With the fish that could go in the pond, i appreiciate everyones idea's a lot. I don't think i'd do a saltwater tank or pond though as i have no experience doing salty tanks, i am pretty ignorant when it comes to salt water tanks so i'd prefer to stay in the light with freshwater aquariums where i am standing on a lot more familiar ground .
I'm liking the idea of the tiger shovelnose catfish, if i was able to keep more than one in a tank/pond, how many would you recommend? Also, with the giraffe catfish, would they be ok in groups too or would it be best to have a single specimen or either just the giraffe fish or the TSN's?

Am i right in thinking though, if i had black pacu's they would eat/destroy any plants i'd put in the tank? Are all pacu's like this?
Don't peacock bass have lots of teeth and are very nasty towards other fish?
I like the look of spotted gars too a lot, what is their temperment/personality like in general would you say? I think they are saltwater/brackish fish though?

edit: sp

 

[CAC]

Am i right in thinking though, if i had black pacu's they would eat/destroy any plants i'd put in the tank? Are all pacu's like this?
Don't peacock bass have lots of teeth and are very nasty towards other fish?
I like the look of spotted gars too a lot, what is their temperment/personality like in general would you say? I think they are saltwater/brackish fish though?

Yeah pacus would eat the plants, and I think it is all plants too...Not too sure but I think so.
Peacock bass havent got lots of teeth and arent particularly nasty to other fish (thats the FW dorado your thinking of I would imagine). Ask someone like CFC who has them with other fish that you would be considering, I dont think theyre that bad to oters, allthough I think they have fights between males of their species.
Gars are good top dwelling (in general) fish, and spotted gars will get to about 60cm, 70cm if your lucky. They dont need brackish or saltwater, and theyre normally fine with most fish I think.

With ideas to the pond: I think that a pond thats sunk into the floor is a good idea, which is cheap to do, but people usually only build tropical ponds because its the cheapest, quickest option to house fish that are outgrowing their tanks. The problem with them is that you really can get a feel for the fish at all...And if it were 4 feet deep you couldnt see your cats or rays, maybe their outlines but that would be about it...You have a fishtank set-up at the moment yes? Well try standing on the top and looking down onto it, if your filter outlet is near the top you will more than likely see bugger all (which is where you could need some power heads). You cant really get involved with the fish and the tank in many ways...If you wanted to go with an option with no fully glass tanks then you could make one that is a box thats made from wood (with pond liner inside) and is like the ones you get in fish shops where they hold all their kio etc and you can just look in, but then replace the front piece of wood with a larger thick piece of glass and you can then look in from the front and top.
The other option with that design in mind is to use two of the walls (is the possible or would the pressure be too much?) and put lining on them, then have two sides of glass made for the front and sides, abit like what jack did on that artical, but having it not going to the ceiling. There are quite alot of options so youll have to choose one and stick with it.
I assume this will be going downstairs...

Mike

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

With ideas to the pond: I think that a pond thats sunk into the floor is a good idea, which is cheap to do, but people usually only build tropical ponds because its the cheapest, quickest option to house fish that are outgrowing their tanks. The problem with them is that you really can get a feel for the fish at all...And if it were 4 feet deep you couldnt see your cats or rays, maybe their outlines but that would be about it...You have a fishtank set-up at the moment yes? Well try standing on the top and looking down onto it, if your filter outlet is near the top you will more than likely see bugger all (which is where you could need some power heads). You cant really get involved with the fish and the tank in many ways...If you wanted to go with an option with no fully glass tanks then you could make one that is a box thats made from wood (with pond liner inside) and is like the ones you get in fish shops where they hold all their kio etc and you can just look in, but then replace the front piece of wood with a larger thick piece of glass and you can then look in from the front and top.
The other option with that design in mind is to use two of the walls (is the possible or would the pressure be too much?) and put lining on them, then have two sides of glass made for the front and sides, abit like what jack did on that artical, but having it not going to the ceiling. There are quite alot of options so youll have to choose one and stick with it.
I assume this will be going downstairs...

Mike

Thanks for the info on the fish, yes thats very true about the pond thing, and only being able to see and interact with the fish from the surface of the pond would be one of the major negative sides to the pond idea. On the other hand though, the pond would look very nice either way in the house (same is true for a glass aquarium though).

When i went on a short holiday to Australia last year to catch up on some family, i stopped off at Singapore at the airport halfway through the trip. When we were at the airport, they had this awesome indoor koi pond there, it must have been about 20ft long and 12ft wide, and the pond was full of 1-3ft long koi. I think if i went for large tankbusting fish of similar sizes i would still be able to see them well if the pond was only 2ft deep. It wouldn't be the same as seeing the fish in a glass aquarium, but it would still have positive aspects to it either way.

What are all the negative and positive sides to having an indoor sunken pond or an aquarium that you can think of? Ones i can think of with the aquarium are;

Glass aquarium positive aspects;
a. Can interact with fish more easily
b. Looks awesome/aesthetically very pleasing
c. Easier to keep an eye on fishes health if you can see them from all sides and not just from above
d. Easier to see bottom dwelling fish like rays maybe?

Glass aquarium negative aspects
a. Its the most expensive option
b. Getting hold of larger enough and thick enough glass panels for making the aquarium could be difficult
c. The weight of a giant aquarium would be many tonnes, depending on what the house could hold, it may have to be down-sized depending on what people like builders say is posible and safe or not etc
d. Stuff like an algae problems the tank may suffer would be blatently obvious
e. If the tank was to keep its length, it may need to be made narrower to leave a decent amount of space to walk around it (unless it was put right up against a wall).

Indoor aquarium positive aspects;
a. Aesthetically its very pleasing
b. Its the cheaper option
c. Would probably be easier to aim for the largest dimensions i want if i had an indoor pond instead of a tank.
d. It would look better being shallower, while the tank would look better being deeper. Having a shallower pond would be easier to keep clean.
e. Stuff like algae problems the pond may suffer wouldn't be so obvious/ugly.
f. Would probably be quicker to make than a glass aquarium?

Indoor aquarium negative aspects;
a. Its more difficult to interact with the fish when you can only see them from above
b. Keeping an eye on the fishes health would become more difficult as you would only be able to view them from above.
c. It would be more difficult to see bottom dwelling fish like rays maybe?


Can anyone think of anymore negative or positive sides to having either the glass aquarium or an indoor pond?

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The other option with that design in mind is to use two of the walls (is the possible or would the pressure be too much?) and put lining on them, then have two sides of glass made for the front and sides, abit like what jack did on that artical, but having it not going to the ceiling. There are quite alot of options so youll have to choose one and stick with it.
I assume this will be going downstairs...

Mike

Actually that is another idea i'm interested in. I've seen above ground koi ponds which have a glass panel on one side, allowing you to see the fish inside from not just above the pond but also from the side too. I think i may have some pics of such ponds in some of my old koi magazines, i will see if i can find them later...

 

[CAC]

Yes you could have a pond thats 2 foot deep, but the problem then is that you have huge fish like aros on the surrface and huge fish at the bottom like rays which are in pretty close proximity...Now it seems to me like your set on getting one big ass cat, am I right? So if thats what your wanting then I would get the pond, have it shallow, maybe 1.5feet deep or 2 feet deep and have a couple of these big cats you want, and stick with them because I personally cannot see the point of keeping lovely peacock bass' or other smaller mid or bottom dwelling fish etc in a pond where you cant see their proper body shape and colours, and watch them feeding properly etc. Whereas big cats and and aros and other surrface dwellers you can...
Oh and one thing about that Koi pond you were saying about. Remember, that was 20ft x 12ft and probably in a larger sapce, so viewing angles would be very differant in a smaller pond in a smaller space (i.e you cant walk back as far to view it...)

Mike

 

[OohFeeshy]

TBH, I don't think it's that important to see them from the side- you do that every day. Koi are only usually seen from the top.

 

[CAC]

Thats true, but I feel that you dont really get a feel for them, for any fish, unless you looking at it from the side, or down onto it a a large angle, so you can see the majority of the fish, it just wouldnt be my choice