Would My Archers Like A Wavemaker?

[Dave Legacy]

I'm currently laying out plans for my 200G archer tank and I was thinking about wavemakers today. Would archers be interested in having some water movement like a wavemaker? I've never actually seen archerfish habitat in person so I don't know if they get any waves or not but I would imagine they'd get a little ripple or something now and then.

I'm just trying to figure out if it's something they might like or not. Maybe it would just erode all of my sand mounds that I'll be growing my red mangroves on.

 

[fishfishfish]

i have been tellin people to do archers forever.are you doing a low level and suction cup plants

 

[Dave Legacy]

Currently I have (4)T. Jaculatrix @ 2.5" in a 40Gal Breeder with 10" of water with a huge driftwood stump, sand substrate, and synthetic hairgrass. For feeding I usually just drop live crickets in the water and let them pick them up but I find they are much happier if mentally stimulated so I actually have a branch that I wedge between the tank and the canopy and place crickets on it for feeding time. Usually the crickets just take a dive and never get a chance to be shot down. Getting them wet and sticking them to the glass is most effective way to do it.

They have been in this tank for about 3-4 months now and I decided to upgrade. Now they will be in a 200Gal Glass Aquarium(84x24x24in) filled with 12" of 1.010 Brackish water with 2 mounds of sand. On and around the mounds I will have a bunch of live Red Mangrove Saplings. I hope to allow the mangroves to sprout a few branches and leaves so that I can use the trees for feeding.

To add to the realism I have moonlighting that is run off a lunar controller. It dims and brightens through the 29.5 Lunar Cycle. I don't see it being realistic for me to control the tide levels in the tank, but I though at the very least maybe a wavemaker might be something they would like. All the swamps I have seen have had very still moving water, so they might be very distressed by even water movement every 2-3 minutes or so.

 

[fishfishfish]

i would not get a wave maker.it offsets there shot when they r near surface

 

[CFC]

A tidal system is possible by using a large sump below the main tank fed by a drip system and set up with a timer controled return pump, water slowly drips into the sump continualy for 12 hours then the pump kicks in and sends all the water back up. Just insure the drip feed is set at a level so that if the pump ever fails it cannot syphon all the water out of the tank.

As for wave makers i cant see them being especially impressed with one but ive often considered setting up powerheads on timers at oposit ends of the tank to mimick tidal flow, one or two small powerheads push the water one way for 12 hours and then they two or three more powerfull powerheads at the other end of the tank switch on and push the water the other way for an hour or so, it would work really nicely with a tidal system as well.
The only reason i havent done it is because my mrs doesnt like seeing loads of equipment in the tank and the brackish tank is her baby really, i just do all the maintainance.

 

[Dave Legacy]

A tidal system is possible by using a large sump below the main tank fed by a drip system and set up with a timer controled return pump, water slowly drips into the sump continualy for 12 hours then the pump kicks in and sends all the water back up. Just insure the drip feed is set at a level so that if the pump ever fails it cannot syphon all the water out of the tank.

That sounds like a very do-able project for me. But my question is... how do I get the water to stop dripping out of the tank when the return pump fires up and starts returning the water? Maybe if the drip was constant and the return pump output was twice the water volume that the drip was then I could see it being functional. What did you have in mind?

 

[nmonks]

This would be my feeling, too. By all means, add things to the tank for your own fun, but I don't think the fish care either way. Being quite deep bodied, I don't think they'd like it if the water depth changed radically, but having some variation in the direction of current might at least give them some exercise. But really, this sort of thing is icing on the cake.

The archerfish habitat is forest, be it freshwater river inland or a mangrove in brackish water. While I've only seen a few small mangroves in the US, the impression I got was that there was a lot of wood and plenty of shade. Watching archers in aquaria suggests a similar preference: adults, especially, like to lurk in corners under a favoured branch. So I think the more wood you can put in, especially stuff hanging down into the water rather than on the bottom, the better.

Cheers,

Neale

As for wave makers i cant see them being especially impressed...

 

[CFC]

A tidal system is possible by using a large sump below the main tank fed by a drip system and set up with a timer controled return pump, water slowly drips into the sump continualy for 12 hours then the pump kicks in and sends all the water back up. Just insure the drip feed is set at a level so that if the pump ever fails it cannot syphon all the water out of the tank.

That sounds like a very do-able project for me. But my question is... how do I get the water to stop dripping out of the tank when the return pump fires up and starts returning the water? Maybe if the drip was constant and the return pump output was twice the water volume that the drip was then I could see it being functional. What did you have in mind?

I would use a pump that returns all the water from the sump in one hour, so say 100 gallons of water has dripped down into the sump over 12 hours id use a 100gph pump in the sump. This is more or less how most tidal rivers that i know of work, the tide flows out all day until reaching low water and then when the tide turns it very rapidly comes back up to high water and starts the cycle again. For the drip i would use a length of airline siliconed into a corner of the tank and fitted with a flow valve at the sump end so you can adjust how fast the syphon drains, just like you would when using the drip method to acclimatise a newly purchased fish to differing water parameters. You wouldnt need to stop the airline syphoning as the minimal ammount of water being dripped out is very little compared to the 100gph of the pump.