Norfolk very own rift lake...

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Gweeds1980

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Hello, first post so go easy on me :)

I've been keeping fish - fresh and salty - since I was 6... I'm now 38 and don't know half of anything really!

What I have learned, in the main, is that big tanks are easier and more or less, how to keep fish alive :)

Current tank has only been set up since July this year - it had been home to my reef previously but the birth of our 4th child meant that time and money were at a premium. My wife and I (ok, mainly my wife lol) decided the reef needed to go...

Now I have kept softwater fish mainly when I've had freshies... but as the water comes out of the tap with a Gh of 19, I decided rift lake cichlids were the way forward - this tank was all about making maintenance easy.

I am a biologist by training (degree level), but got lured over to the corporate world... so although I have a very keen interest in biology in general and know the basics well, I'm out of step nowadays. However, I do like to experiment and push the boundaries a little... which will become apparent as you read through.

The tank itself is on the 'large' side of normal... 8'3" x 26" x 26"... a corner weir connects to a 200 litre sump via a durso overflow. Down in the sump there is 4 chambers. The first has a filter sock followed by bioballs and biocenosis baskets, second has the intake for the UV, 2 x 300w heaters and the intake for the fluidised reactor which is full of carbon. The third chamber has the ATO and the returns for the UV and reactor. The final chamber has a 12000lph return pump. Also down there is a 80 litre reservoir for the ATO. Above the tank sits glass covers to reduce evaporation and two 4ft led units on timers.

In the tank there is just the return from the sump and two 20,000lph wavemakers for surface agitation and to reduce deadspots.

Decor is yellow limestone and coral sand with a sole plant - an umbrella palm which is a marginal so grows proud of the tank - hopefully this will become something of a feature as it grows.

I'm about halfway stocked with around 80 fish in total - vast majority are mbuna, with a small selection of peacocks also.

Pictures below... feel free to make criticisms, feedback or suggestions - all welcome.

I'll add some more ramblings about the inhabitants and plans later :)
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Right... water chemistry. As mentioned, I am a former (reformed??) reefer... so quite used to messing about with water chemistry.

So, whilst researching before setting this tank up, I came across an article on the actual water parameters of lake Malawi. Admittedly the readings were just a moment in time, rather than averaged over the year - but my guess is they are almost as stable as the ocean, given the volume of water involved. I set about fiddling with all the left over red sea additives from the reef...

I managed to get a 10 litre bucket to these params:
SG 1.001 (one notch up from zero on a calibrated refractometer)
PH 8.2
Alk 16dkh
Gh 21
Mg 5.2ppm
Ca 18.8ppm

As a reference to anyone else wanting to do the same, I used 13.2g reef octopus salt in the 10 litres. So 1.32g per litre. I also used red sea additives as per the manufacturers instructions. I added the reef salt to conditioned tap water, mixed with a small eheim pump for about an hour, tested and then added the red sea additives to get to the desired mg, ca and alk levels. Importantly the temp was 26c when the tests were done. Temp will affect many things, but mainly SG readings.
Gh is a little high, but it comes out of the tap at 19! I could mix with some RODI water, but then would need to redo all the other numbers too, so decided to leave as be.

I then made up enough to fill my ATO reservoir (80 litres) and added it slowly to the aquarium that way, so as not to shock the livestock too much. With no animals using the elements (in comparison to a reef anyway), just keeping the reservoir at the right levels should be enough to keep the tank right.

It takes approximately 3 weeks to empty the ATO reservoir, so it's a great way to make subtle changes to water chemistry if needed.

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Livestock... I started off with a fishless cycle - which much to my surprise only took 2 weeks to reduce 2ppm ammonia to zero in 24 hours - I'm guessing some particularly resilient strain of bacteria hung on from when it was salty. There was only a matter of days between removing the livestock and filling back up with freshwater and the tank never actually dried out.

Anyhoo, I started off stocking with a trio each of yellow labs and c. Afra.

I then realised just how long it was going to take to get up to fully stocked - I'm looking at around 125 mbuna and 25 peacocks finally. So I took a gamble and bought a whole stock from a tank breakdown - around 50 fish in total. These were mostly yellow labs and m. Estherae. There were 4 peacocks in there which hadn't coloured up at all - I subsequently discovered they were 2 male and 2 female strawberry sunburst peacocks. I've since added p. Acei, p. Socolofi and l. Hongi. I've also added a trio of synos - s. Eupterus. On the peacock front, I've only added four OB Peacocks to the strawberry sunbursts.

So far I've had strawberry sunburst fry, yellow lab fry and m. Estherae fry born. It sounds awful, but I'm letting nature take its course at this stage - I may look at setting up fry and grow out tanks later, but they will all need to fit in the cabinet - my wife is not a fan of MTS! (I did have 5 marine tanks at one point - the line was crossed when I hastily set up a frag tank on the kitchen side, only for it to leak saltwater everywhere, resulting in needing a new worktop... oops!).

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Oddities... so there's a few things about this tank which aren't quite run of the mill. First up, the shopping trolley... in my research I kept coming across articles about how we are destroying the rift lakes and it really made me think. There is very little a hobbyist in a sleepy county in England can do to stop this, also I figured I could at least highlight the issues. The shopping trolley is the first addition to the tank to do this. I plan on adding more 'rubbish' to the tank... next on the list is a couple of soda bottles. I would like to add a plastic bag too, but need to figure out a way to do it safely - I'm all ears if anyone has a good idea!

Secondly, the filtration. I mentioned that I wanted to have a low maintenance tank. In the first chamber of the sump, I have biocenosis baskets - these provide anoxic filtration - for anyone not aware of how this works, look it up, but in basic terms it uses cat litter and an iron rich media to remove ammonia from the water and one hit turn it into nitrogen gas, no nitrate is produced at all, thus water changes can be reduced massively. As it stands, the baskets have only been in situ for 3 weeks and it takes around 6 to 8 weeks for them to cycle properly. At the moment nitrate is around 10ppm, I anticipate being able to maintain this level with water changes every couple of months. I will slowly remove the bioballs once the baskets are established and will add a further two baskets later on.

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Final post for the time being - promise!

Worth mentioning, I'm also a mod on a popular reefing forum... so if you guys ever need any help :)

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Hi and welcome to the forum :)

That's either a really big tank or you stole a shopping trolley from the gnomes.

Where did you get the mini shopping trolley from?

2 weeks for the first lot of filter bacteria to develop is average. :)
 
Hi and welcome to the forum :)

That's either a really big tank or you stole a shopping trolley from the gnomes.

Where did you get the mini shopping trolley from?

2 weeks for the first lot of filter bacteria to develop is average. :)
The shopping trolley came from flying tiger.

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Is flying tiger a website or petshop or something else?
Assumed they were fairly well known worldwide, my bad... it's a novelty gift type store, small homewares etc.

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