Advice On A 55G Set Up

[confusion]

I have a 55G community tank that was wiped out on Wednesday - we lost power and my battery powered air pump apparently pumped some goo into the tank. Anyhow, only the plec and 3 adolescent angels survived. I lost a 5 year old angel from the first batch of fry I had even raised

I moved the angels to another tank and decided that I would use this as a chance to get into African cichlids. I have the following questions:

I have a fair amount of driftwood in the tank, which I really like the look of. I know that African's like rock - would it be better to switch to rock, or is copious amounts of drift wood find too?

I have standard gravel in the tank. I am thinking about replacing it with argonite sand. Should I do that before I get any fish?

I am very much drawn to the color - what species of fish can you recommend?

Thanks!

 

[saltwaterfanatic]

I have a 55G community tank that was wiped out on Wednesday - we lost power and my battery powered air pump apparently pumped some goo into the tank. Anyhow, only the plec and 3 adolescent angels survived. I lost a 5 year old angel from the first batch of fry I had even raised

I moved the angels to another tank and decided that I would use this as a chance to get into African cichlids. I have the following questions:

I have a fair amount of driftwood in the tank, which I really like the look of. I know that African's like rock - would it be better to switch to rock, or is copious amounts of drift wood find too?

I have standard gravel in the tank. I am thinking about replacing it with argonite sand. Should I do that before I get any fish?

I am very much drawn to the color - what species of fish can you recommend?

Thanks!

You can keep the driftwood in the tank just make sure you put in some texas holey rock or some limestone rock. And yes i would put in the sand in the tank before the fish.
You could either keep mbuna or peacock cichlids. personally i love mbuna because of their personality but peacocks because of their color. If you got mbuna you should overstock your tank to relife aggression between certain fish. i would get 1 or 5 demansonis a cobalt blue a red zebra and a couple yellow labs.

 

[demasonisrule]

I'd say go out to your back yard, grab some rocks, and take out the driftwood, as it will raise the ph, and mbuna like high ph.

And i'd say get mbuna, they have the most personality, and they have really nice colors.

I'd recommend labidochromis caeruleus, melanchromis johanni, melanchromis auratus, and pseudotropheus acei. As salt said above, you could do demasonis (i like them ), but you have to get either one, or 15+, as they are EXTREMELY aggressive to their own type, so you really have to crowd them to keep aggression down.