Acceptable Current in Tropical Tanks?

[Dan White]

One other question comes to mind for my resurrected 55 gallon tank. It used
to house marine fish, and there is a pretty good sized pump circulating
water. The filter is located at the back left part of the tank, and
discharges to the right. This creates a kind of circular flow pattern. It
is reasonably gentle, but there definitely is some current. I'm not sure
whether tropical fish care or not. I just started up the tank, and put
several black tetras and one little bottom feeder in for now. The tetras
seem to prefer aligning themselves into the current. Is there any problem
with a current in a tropical tank? Again, it isn't like a tornado in there,
more like a very gently flowing stream.

thanks,
dwhite

[NetMax]

"Dan White" > wrote in message
et...
> One other question comes to mind for my resurrected 55 gallon tank. It
used
> to house marine fish, and there is a pretty good sized pump circulating
> water. The filter is located at the back left part of the tank, and
> discharges to the right. This creates a kind of circular flow pattern.
It
> is reasonably gentle, but there definitely is some current. I'm not
sure
> whether tropical fish care or not. I just started up the tank, and put
> several black tetras and one little bottom feeder in for now. The
tetras
> seem to prefer aligning themselves into the current. Is there any
problem
> with a current in a tropical tank? Again, it isn't like a tornado in
there,
> more like a very gently flowing stream.
>
> thanks,
> dwhite


I think tropical fish come from too wide a range of environments to be
able to generalize their preference in water turbulence. The usual
method is to provide a range of conditions and then note where the fish
migrate to, and then possibly arrange so more of the tank has those
conditions they seem to favour. You can extrapolate a lot from their
body shape to start with. Longer cylindrical fish (ie: Zebras, Silvertip
tetras, Scissortail rasboras) are built for speed, so they suffer a
constant current less than their shorter neighbours (ie: Neon tetras,
Tiger barbs, GlowLight tetras) and taller flat fish (ie: Black tetras,
Phantom tetras, Lemon tetras, Angelfish, etc). hth
--
www.NetMax.tk

[Dick]

On Fri, 06 Aug 2004 04:57:34 GMT, "Dan White"
> wrote:

>One other question comes to mind for my resurrected 55 gallon tank. It used
>to house marine fish, and there is a pretty good sized pump circulating
>water. The filter is located at the back left part of the tank, and
>discharges to the right. This creates a kind of circular flow pattern. It
>is reasonably gentle, but there definitely is some current. I'm not sure
>whether tropical fish care or not. I just started up the tank, and put
>several black tetras and one little bottom feeder in for now. The tetras
>seem to prefer aligning themselves into the current. Is there any problem
>with a current in a tropical tank? Again, it isn't like a tornado in there,
>more like a very gently flowing stream.
>
>thanks,
>dwhite
>
My 75 gallon has two Marinland 330 filters plus I aireate quite
heavily. The fish have to work harder to get the floating food
flakes, but some just wait for the flakes to settle. I sure don't see
any evidence of fish avoiding the fast moving water and some even
linger in the bubbles.