How important is height for tangs in a tank?

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to consolidate my tanks, and got a few ideas floating around, one of which is to use one of those preformed pond liners as a top-down tank in-line with another.

Now horizontal swimming distance it'll definitely be an upgrade, as it's something like 6.5' x 5' and if you take a diagonal even larger.

However it's one of those pond liners that has a step, and the water height (assuming I stay 1" from the top) will go from 8" to 16", so almost frag tank sized in height over a majority of it. So will this stress the fish out at all? I know there will be less stress from the lack of glass to spoke them (or begging for food as the case is now) but I'm just curious about the vertical stress that could be put on these fish (Yellow Tang, Tomini Tang, 2x barred Rabbitfish)

 

[Anonymous]

While the height of the tank isn't as important, you obviously can get to a point where it's too shallow, regardless of other dimensions. Having said that, 16" should be fine for the fish you're talking about.

 

[Anonymous]

But recall at 16" it will limit the swimming space tremendously, as most of the pond's surface is at 8" depth.

Similar to this in concept

 

[blackcloudmedia]

Im not sure if you saw the kiddie pool project I did, but you can find some pretty deep, and large ponds/pools if you look around hard enough. Like farm suppliers or pinch a penny (may be a southeast chain). That being said the fish that I put into my kiddie pool have about 8 inches of vertical swimming room and about 5 feet of horizontal. I set up the flow to be in a circular path. Ive never seen clownfish so active as the ones in the pool. THey dont just dart around and stare in to space like the ones in my 75 gal reef. These swim around constantly as if playing. All of the other fish in the pool act the same way. I think the key to it was the circular flow, I noticed my clowns in my 75 gal like to play in the stream of the powerhead. Perhaps tangs will take to your high surface area pond the same way. Just be aware though I top off the kiddie pool with about 3 gallons a day in FLoridas WET climate. Hate to see how much topping off you'd have to do in a dry climate.

 

[Anonymous]

Well the deal is I already have the 100g pond liner in my garage from my pond years back. Now I also have a 300g rubbermaid container that is more than deep enough, however not ready for a tank project with that yet... the way the economy is going I'm going to most likely use it to collect any sort of rainwater/RO "waste" water to water my backyard with instead.

 

[blackcloudmedia]

lol!! HAHA I see your point. You could open up a rainwater business. My "economy crash moneymaking plan" is to sell oranges and limes from the trees in my yard. My way of contributing to the general prevention of scurvy. But seriously I'd use the 300 gall rubbermaid. Think of the fun you could have.

 

[Anonymous]

Think of the size of the water changes I'd then be forced to make!

25% water change takes on a whole new level! As it stands I do about 30g with my 100+50sump. But don't think I haven't thought about it, also thought of sticking in a window to see from the side, but the engineering required increases many orders of magnitude.

 

[Len]

My tang goes side to side a lot more then it goes up and down (and it mostly goes up for feeding time ).

 

[pcardone]

My LFS has shallow display tanks. 8-10 inches deep and they keep some very large tangs in them. The fish seem very happy to me, and swim very fast. In and around the corrals I would just worry about them getting out or critters getting in.