55 Gallon Tank! Help Me Cichlid God's!

[iairj84]

Thanks for the input guys, have the tank up and running now. I've got sand as a substrate with the older undergravel plates underneath to help distribute the weight of all of the river rock I got. Luckily we have one of California's biggest rivers right in my backyard and I was able to grab a bunch of rocks for my tank. They're all stacked and looking pretty good. I've got 2 older filters running a ton of pillow stuffing to get rid of any haze or cloudiness and it's working great! I will post pic's as soon as the fish come!

The only reason I requested more females than males was because I wouldn't mind doing a little bit of breeding with these guys. The fish stores in the area sell yellow labs like crazy and told me they would buy them off of me for a good price since they sell at $8 each. I figure if it's something I want to do I will be prepared for it and if not then that's ok too. either way I'm not sweating the male/female ratio too much at all.

 

[iairj84]

The fish will be arriving here later this afternoon! I can't wait!!! I'll be sure to take some pictures when they get here too!

 

[iairj84]

Someone wanted to see pictures so here they are! The fish have been really skittish, and for good reason. A two day trip being thrown around in a little bag isn't fun for anyone! They're getting acclimated well to the tank and having fun swimming together and playing around. They're cuties!

Here they are observing the fish in the tank next to them (if they can even see into it) they like to hide in that corner when scared.

Here they are just peeking out to make sure everything's alright

Here's the full tank shot, I need to rearrange the filter hoses and put the background on, maybe add a couple fake plants but it looks really good as is. I love the different colors in the rocks, which are probably hard to see here.

Here's the tank with the smaller 10 gallon shrimp tank below it... These shelving units are really nice and convienent, each shelve holds 1500lbs.

And here's my planted tank, the future home of some blue rams, my fry tank and betta tank are below.


As you can see I have a slight case of MTS

 

[dthoffsett]

Excellent job, the rocks look very natural, though I agree a background will help. Fish look good as well, especially for having been shipped, mine hid for a couple of days. Keep up the good work.

 

[iairj84]

Thanks for the kind words! As you can see I need to clean up the area a little bit

The fish are doing great though! I will hopefully be getting a black background here this weekend.

 

[iairj84]

Well I'm upset with myself right now... Somehow in rearranging my rocks in the back of the tank I lost the filter inlet screen, it fell off when I nudged it with a rock or something. Well anyways I was feeding the labs and I could only count 7, well starting with 8 it had my kind of worried since they generally all stay together for the most part. Well in looking for him I noticed the HOB filter I had in there wasn't pumping any water. But it was still on, So I took out the inlet and noticed a lab in it It was pretty saddening, and now I have to figure out what I'm going to do media wise since I had put all the mature media into that filter and not my new canister filter. It's an easy mistake to make and the fish might've just been sucked up if he had died anyways. I still have the 7 in there, I just have to get some more media to make sure that I keep it cycling and get the new media seeded right... Stupid mistake!

 

[dthoffsett]

I'm so sorry to hear that, but don't feel bad, you aren't the first that has happened to, nor will you be the last.

 

[PufferFishRule]

yea dude dont feel bad i lost 3 of my cichs...damn that red zebra...he killed a orange blotch peacock,Ventusus,and my albino oblique...traded him in though got me a malawi blue dolphin and another ob

 

[iairj84]

Thanks for the support guys. I dug some more media out of one of my other filters and it should be fine for now... I am actually thinking of going with some bristlenose plecs as opposed to the syno's, I will probably get 3 or 4, maybe a few extra for my planted tank. I am thinking of getting 4-5 Pseudotrophis Acei next, I like their blue color and then the snow white socolafis... sound good?

 

[dthoffsett]

Sounds wonderful to me, I have a similar set up with labs and acei, I have m.callainos and a p.crabro as well, but I think the white of the socolofi against the yellow and purple will really stand out.

 

[adambrum]

I had the same happen to me with a holding fish, somehow the eggs hatched in the filter and 3 fry survived !

 

[iairj84]

Wow, that's pretty crazy that the fry survived in the filter, I have had numerous swordtail fry accidentally sucked up the siphon hose but only into the bucket and back in.

The fish are getting better, still a little skiddish but they're still young and I've read it's not uncommon for juvenile labs to be a little shy. It doesn't bother me much at all, they come out when it's feeding time and are just getting used to being around me.

I like the P. Crabro also but none of the fish stores around me stock them and want $10+ to order them.. Not gonna happen when I want 4-5. The Acei are much easier for me to obtain and there's a breeder a few hours away that will basically give them to me. Same thing goes with the bristles. The snow whites will be bought from the store but won't be quite as expensive.

 

[fishfishfish]

you can get both BNs and synos.

 

[adambrum]

watch out for the size of acei and the crabo, both of these get big and the acei really need a 75g tank and prefer to be kept in groups

 

[iairj84]

I have an 80 gallon in the garage that will be set up when it's needed so I'm not too worried about the size of the acei at this point the crabo are out of the question though. They're just too expensive in my area.