heres where im at, i finally had a day off and was able to sit down with some friends and get an idea of how this is all gonna work out. ive decided the land portion will "float" using an acrlyic shelf with holes allowing the roots to come down and create a natural hiding place, i know this will be an eye sore at first but hopefully overtime it will be covered with roots and become fairly hidden. and i figured this would help solve the needs of the multicolors as well as help hide the heaters. the land portion will be roughly 30x20x20 if i measured correctly. i want to leave about 80 gallons for the fish and keep most of the footprint. would this be about right? ive spent quite a lot on this thing so far and i only have the tank, 2 heaters, 2 30 gallon filters, (i used the reactors on another tank but i can make more) an air pump and i still have my uvb domes and bulbs, i gave away my 5.0's and bought the 10.0 which is desert so i assume that would be better for the papyrus? another fear i have is growing some crazy form of algae from such a high amount of uvb. i still have to buy substrate not to mention plants, fish, etc. my friends recommend mixing flourite aquarium soil and play sand for the aquatic section. it would save me money to use playsand in this mixture... but would it be ok for the fish? i have a mix of flourite and caribsand in most of my other tanks... but this would take quite a bit of the caribsand.
also, here is my current stocklist please let me know if these fish seem compatible... or if any are Illegal! 4 weeks ago i had no idea there was such a thing as illegal fish...\ the fish with (?)beside them means i only know of them from this list and was unable to find much info on them, so they could very well be saltwater when they are full grown but the list classified all these as freshwater
p.multicolor, Barbus leonensis, Auchenoglanis occidentalis (?),Gobius paganellus (?), Mormyrus kannume, Synodontis caudovittata (?)
i dont know much about any of these fish but they were the most appealing. i plan to get atleast 1 pair of 4 types of the fish i listed above as im sure some will not be compatible... the only must is the multicolor.
