Cold Tank

[finding nemo]

I currently have a tank that contains regular, boring, plain old tropical fish. I always had this dream of making a cold water tank and putting trout in it. Sort of like a North American nature scene (water fall, stream and a small small pond at the bottom).

I have many questions and I can't seem to find any information about it on the internet.

I heard that cooling a tank with dry ice is the best way to do it. But how do you do that? I know you can't put dry ice into the water. Do you duct tape it to the glass? How often does it have to be changed?

If I use regular ice to cool the tank, do I have to use ice that has been filtered?

How do I keep it from getting too cold?

Where can I get real small trout? I would like a species the call "Cut Throats" (Oncorhynchus clarki henshawi Lahontan Cutthroat Trout ). I caught some when fishing in Montana last year.

How would one construct a small stream? I want the stream to connect a waterfall with a large tank. It would be about 20ft. long.

How do you filter a stream?

Help!!!!

 

[shawmutt]

Well, I started to write a post for you, but once again I feel overwhelmed by the project as my evil twin took over the plans. My uncle has a trout farm in Canada, it's basically a huge pond. He just dug into the ground until he hit the water table and made a huge pond. As for an indoor aquarium, a 20 foot aquarium, with 30" width, and 24" depth, would be approx. 897 gallons! You would need a chiller that could handle that volume, because using ice for a tank that big is just not a good idea. For the waterfall, maybe one of those preformed ponds set in a frame above the tank, with the chiller pulling water from one end of the tank via a hose, filtering the water, and then dumping it back into the tank.

As far as obtaining the fish, I had no luck there. I would imagine you would have to do it the old fashioned way--catch them.

Conclusion--This would be a good pond project, but perhaps a little too big for the indoor hobbiest IMO.