RE: NANFA-- That whole sandbed thing.

Nick Zarlinga (njz_at_clevelandmetroparks.com)
Sun, 2 Feb 2003 16:33:00 -0500

As with any predator/prey relationship, I would expect you would need a
very large sandbed full of inverts to supplement just one sucker.
Otherwise the sucker/s will clean out all the prey and the prey won't be
able to reproduce.

Then you use a refugium.

I've thought of doing something similar with a
livebearer as prey and a larger predator fish. But you would need a large
tank with lots of room for prey and comparatively little space for the
predator. Not that it's impossible, just not suited to a 50 gallon tank...
unless the predators are quite small and few.

It works in 1500 gal + tanks. You don't have any this size? >;-)

Nick Zarlinga
Aquarium Biologist
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
216.661.6500 ext 4485

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanfa_at_aquaria.net On Behalf
Of Mark
Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 4:31 PM
To: nanfa_at_aquaria.net
Subject: RE: NANFA-- That whole sandbed thing.

At 12:25 PM -0500 2/2/03, Nick Zarlinga wrote:
>I thought the purpose of the flourite was to provide nutrients to the roots
>of the plants? With your set up, where will the nutrients come from if the
>roots are below the flourite into the sand?

Why not mix the flourite inot the sand?

>I also am
>interested in getting some "live sand" from a stream and seeing what kind
of
>creepy crawlies a system can support. Then I would be curious to see how
>well fishes such as hog suckers do.

As with any predator/prey relationship, I would expect you would need a
very large sandbed full of inverts to supplement just one sucker.
Otherwise the sucker/s will clean out all the prey and the prey won't be
able to reproduce. I've thought of doing something similar with a
livebearer as prey and a larger predator fish. But you would need a large
tank with lots of room for prey and comparatively little space for the
predator. Not that it's impossible, just not suited to a 50 gallon tank...
unless the predators are quite small and few.

Mark
Ohio
USA

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