Sonn – new fish tank!

[Lintini]

 

My boyfriend wanted me to setup a fish tank for him! He bought a 50 gallon bowfront! He basically turned me loose on what to get, and after many discussions of what type of fish to get, he really liked the african cichlids.

I am not sure how the plants will do once the babies get to full size, but we’re gonna try it.

Black sand, slate rocks, 11 cichlids and 2 featherfin catfish (they are SUPER neat!)

We’re going to try the overstocking method to avoid territory squables so we have some super filtration going on.

I am really proud of myself – we were able to add fish the next day since my water parimeters were so good! We’ve lost 2 tiny inch long baby cichlids……one due to having one of my hairs caught inside himself so he couldn’t eat    oops… never heard of that happening before. It’s been setup for 2 weeks now!

[cainan]

I love your aquascaping! My tank can’t hold a candle to yours!

[Helenor]

That’s just beautiful. I miss having a fish tank of my own…maybe someday I’ll get a 55 gallon and see what I can do.

Are you going to add more plants or are you just going to let the ones you have grow out? And man, I’ve never heard of a fish dying getting hair inside itself!

[Malp_15]

Beautiful!! So jealous

I never heard of the hair thing! Ahh. I always find my hairs in the tanks because I’m constantly “shedding”

[LizzieKnittyBun]

cooooooooooooooool!

What’s that funky statue that looks like Cthulhu?

[Lintini]

Liz, I think it’s a tree trunk lol?

We’re going to see how the cichlids do with live plants, it’s not very common to have live plants since they will want to dig them up but we’ve rooted them down pretty well with some rocks, we shall see.

[LizzieKnittyBun]

IT IS MIGHTY CTHULHU IN HIS HOME IN R’LYEH!

ah, I’m a dork.

[Sonn]

So awesome! Cichlids are one of my favorite setups. I had a fully planted tank with 60 african cichlids (not in a 50 gallon though lol) I made a ‘sand pit’ in the middle and they never bothered my plants babies would at first but I never had a dug up plant or anything like that. I had it planted well before the cichlids got there so they were firmly rooted

Thinking about setting up one of my big tanks again and make sure no kids can get near it LOL.

[KatnipCrzy]

Looks grear. We have a 29 gallon set up as freshwater- and we have a bunch of guppies that are popping out babies. And we have a bristlenose pleco and some amano shrimp in there.
My husband is going to take down his 100 gallon (6 foot long) saltwater tank as he longer wants to do the maint. We are going to sell off all the expensive saltwater equipment like the chiller and lights for the coral- and other special filtration. He wants to set it up as freshwater- but he is not sure what he wants to put in it. Obviously it will have to be some larger fish (not tiny guppies)- so it ought to be interesting. If he ever gets around to selling the livestock and breaking down the tank.

[Sonn]

And overstocking works best with them. In a 55 gallon I would add around 4 more fish it is usually 3.5-4 gallons per african cichlid. But if they seem to have a balance worked out I wouldn’t mess with the numbers. I had a 100 gallon cichlid tank with 30 fish if more than 5 died it was complete chaos in that tank because one male in particular would terrorize the rest of them.

I had a few featherfins they can be hard to care for especially if one decides the whole tank is his/hers or if you have a male and a female they get super mean when breeding size she will lay eggs but I don’t think there has ever been viable eggs in home aquariums. They love plants and rocks/caves so I would supply a healthy amount of both. Mine loved bugs I rarely seen them at first until I started feeding insects then they were out front all the time lol. Their favorite place was in my floating plants I always had like anacharis floating around for them. My oldest one died at 17 years old.

[Author]

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