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So I'm putting in a 300-400 gallon indoor catfish pond and I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for what to use on the bottom. I was thinking something light colored to make the fish stand out more, and I'd prefer sand rather than gravel. My only concern is sand getting into the pump. Any ideas? Or other options I havent thought about?
Thanks,
Juice

What sort of Cats are you planning to put in there. If they weren't going to live on the bottom, like Shovelnoses, then you could use pebbles and stones. Or you could leave it bare, and just have ornaments, but it doesn't look so nice.
So what catfish are you adding, and can we have some pics later please?

I'll be adding at least one TSN Pseudoplatystoma tigrinum, one Marble cat Leiarius longibarbis , as well as some gobies (marbled sleeper goby, and a jade) and a clown knife.

and yes pics will be up as soon as I stop spending money on my fish and go buy a new USB cable for my camera.
Juice

Well if they don't feed off the bottom then the substrate is not so important. They are all huge fish fish so take that into account. You could have sand with patches of gravel and a few rocks - that would look nice and quite natural.

How big do the gobies get?

The Marbled Sleeper Gobys get to 23 inches. The Jade Sleeper Gobys get to two feet. I don't know if these lengths are correct. It is just from Googling the species.

Yeah those sizes are right loachy. and the sleeper likes to hide under the sand, burrowing into it and sending it flying in the tank he's in now. I'm thinking that I will make something like a stand-pipe for the pump, moving the intake about a foot off the bottom. The pump is external, so it will be PVC plumbed out of the pond itself. Any filtration suggestions? I will prob do a mod. bucket filter, but don't want to take up a ton of space in the pond for the filter itself. Any ideas to throw around would be very useful, before I go and do anything i cant undo
Thanks,
Juice

joe.juice13 wrote:I will prob do a mod. bucket filter, but don't want to take up a ton of space in the pond for the filter itself.

Well, if the pump is external, then I don't see why the filter shouldn't be too. My only advice on filters is to get the biggest and best that you can afford.

One of the LFS's around here suspends a 5g bucket above the feeder goldfish ponds as a filter. It has holes drilled in the bottom and is filled with bio balls. water is pumped into the top, it then runs through the boi balls, and then rains down on the pond. The pond stay's filtered and aerated this way - pretty nifty. I imagine some variation of this might be nice for you. Cheap, too.

Sounds pretty clever. It wouldn't really work for a tank, but a pond, yes.