2.6 Gallon, Reversed All-in-One, Live-in Culture for Indostomus paradoxus

[memorywrangler]

While my Indostomus paradoxus are in quarantine, I have cooked up a crazy scheme to house them and provide them with a constant supply of live food (as they require) at the same time. 

The Plan

I'm going to use a 2.6 Gallon Fluval Spec AIO and try to culture scuds and/or daphnia and/or moina in the tank at the same time.

The tanks is well established with a healthy (indeed, probably indestructable) scud infestation... I mean "colony", and I have been having pretty good luck culturing daphnia and moina in small tanks and tanks intended for other purposes.  So, it seems feasible to culture their food in the I. paradoxus' tank.

The Tank

Here's the initial inhabitants:

1. Some anubias
2. Some Neocaradinia shrimp
3. One big amano strimp (The shrimp were tanks previous residents).
4. Some Salvivia minima.
5. 3 I. paradoxus (I ordered 5, one died in transit and lost another 😞).

It needs

1. Some more hides
2. I'll going to swap the salvinia for some frog bit for the roots and the structure they will provide.

Reverse-Flow All-in-One

The maybe-clever, maybe dumb part of the plan is that I'm running the AOI filter in the back of the tank in reverse with a air-driven lift tube I built.  Usually, the pump/lift tube pull water out of the "sump" and into the tank, so that water is drawn in from the surface into the sump the weir at upper-left in the photo.  This results in a strong sucking flow out of the main tank near the surface and a lot of flow from the outlet of the pump/lift tube.

That flow would be no good for the moina/daphnia: 1) they'd all end up stuck in the filter sponge and/or chewed up by the pump (although the air lift wouldn't have this problem) 2) the surface skimming will pull out the powdered food I intend to feed them.

So, instead the lift tube is pumping water into the sump and the inlet is buried in the gravel.  This should keep the moina/daphnia out of the sump, and the flow out of the weir at the water's surface is extremely gentle.

The Future

2.6 Gallons is on the tiny side, but I. paradoxus are quite small (mine are about 1 in).  I have an empty 5-gallon Fluval Spec AOI with about twice the usable "floor space".  If things go well, I'll move it all over there and get a couple more fish.

[Guppysnail]

This sounds like a genius idea 🤞🏻

Definetly keep us posted please.  Good luck!

[Woowala]

I think this is a good idea too, similar to a hang on back refugium on a reef tank.  If you can get some moss or subwassertang going in the filter part, you'd have a nice safe zone for live food that would supply the fish with added food throughout the day.