"Kevin Livingston" wrote in message
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"NetMax" wrote in message
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"Kevin Livingston" wrote in message
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Shortened for ease of reading:

"NetMax" wrote in message
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Too much complication IMHO

complication, yes, but my motivation is a pet peeve close to my
heart. As important as a HOB filter is, what aquariums *really* need
is an HOB hatchery which would randomly release creatures into the
water to be eaten by the fish. The problem is that my fish are bored.
Their tank-mates have been selected with some scientific rigour.
Their environment was researched, and they are generally in the
biggest aquarium that I can afford them. They are happy, healthy and
bored.

Along with boredom, their food supply is a little too artificial,
double feedings of dry processed foods with the occasional frozen
treat when their caretaker remembers to do it. Their digestive system
would be a lot happier with a more irregular diet scattered throughout
the day, plus the thrill of finding a live creature swimming around,
and then the chase, the catch, the satisfaction of beating your
tank-mates, the swallow... and then if fish could smile ).

From Oscars to Neon tetras, fish like to spend most of their time in
the pursuit of a meal. This is what they were hard-wired in nature to
do. Eat, sleep, spawn, roam and avoid being eaten. In the confined
controlled space of an aquarium, they eat (boring), sleep (boring),
spawn (ok, though their choices of mates are always very limited),
roam (to the end of the tank and back), and stay alive (usually no
predators are in with them). Boring.

So while the design of a hatchery would certainly be a complication, I
would like to include it for the sake of their mental health ;~).


HOB hatchery? I wonder how that would work?

I let you know as soon as I invent it ;~) (or someone else beats me to
it). Basically you would sprinkle in some eggs (perhaps mysis shrimp, or
some nemotodia) into a box hanging on the back of the tank, and they
would hatch, and begin reproducing. You would need to feed them, or if
they had access to the organic matter in the filters, that might work, or
else some plants, or regular feedings with flake food. The hatchery
would be connected to the tank through a grill large enough for them to
get into the tank, small enough to keep your fish out. Ideally this
grill is located near your filter return, so you would have a vortex
action slowly & continuously drawing a bit of water out.

I'm thinking/working on a larger scale unit to test some ideas. Probably
start with Mollies in an algae scrubber tank plumbed into my main tank,
to see how much of a continuous food chain I can get going. Fish poop,
poop dissolves and feeds floating plants and algae in high light area,
Mollies eat algae and drop fry, fry feed fish, fish poop.

Once operational, I'll look into scaling it downwards towards a
sea-monkey type set-up, continuously dropping live 'something' into the
tank. Depending on the fish, this could be done in a variety of ways.
Imagine an ant colony with openings under the water (lots of fish like to
eat ants). The trick is to find a critter whose escape would not cause
us trouble, and that it could establish a sustainable colony.

Some hobbyists have come close with a nemotodia colony growing in their
HOB filter (looks like tubifex worms), but that was scaled wrong to be
enough benefit for the fish.
--
www.NetMax.tk