u/cofficianado

Hi everyone, this is my indoor Terracotta Pond setup. It started off as an experiment as I wanted to explore how I could use terracotta containers for aquascaping. Always wanted to have a bit of nature in my office so I ended up designing this. Learnt a lot about small setups along the way as I am more used to larger outdoor pond setups. Yet to add some floating plants to it to bring out the movement of the water because of the small waterfall and also to further filter the water. Hope you enjoy it and try it out yourselves...

Hi everyone, I've created this indoor Terracotta pond over the past few weeks. I have let the water cycle for almost 4 weeks now before I added the fish yesterday. I currently have - 1 Betta, 4 Silvertip tetras(I'm not sure if I've identified these correctly,the aquarium shop owner didn't know the names either), 4 Ember tetras, 2 small size Siamese algae eaters. The fish seem to be very active and there are plenty of hiding spaces that I have designed into the setup that the fish can get into. There's plenty of plantation, a small 300LPH pump that runs 12 hrs a day and circulates the water through gravel and sponge for filtration, and the terracotta is excellent for beneficial bacteria growth and to also bring down the temperature of the water through transpirational cooling in the summers. This "pond" is 24 inches in diameter, 5 inches deep, holds around 50-60 litres water (I use RO treated 10 TDS borewell water that has never been chlorinated) and receives indirect sunlight from a window that's 4 ft away. Knowing all this, do you think the fish load is too much for this setup? I have kept only the tiny fish varieties knowing that it's a small setup, but I have other similar ponds that I can transfer some of the fish into if y'all think this is too many fish.