Help With Stocking

[curlyriff]

Hey everyone,

I have just gone and brought another 4ft fish tank it measures in at 48x18x30 inches (LxDxH) and is filtered with power head, trickle filter and spray bar. Now I am not sure what I am going to stock this tank with. I have got a mixed bio community tank in the living room and this new tank is going to likely be in my study where I spend the other half of my time. I have no idea what built in trickle filters are like as I have never seen one in person or what there capacity is like. I haven't even seen the tank yet.

So this is all just to get an idae and some help. I want something different to the above so was thinking maybe cichlids with a very rocks type scape. I also need to get lighting sorted but I don't know what the hood or attachments are like for fitting to the top of tank so this is all rather differnt to my current Rena tank I have.

The guy I have brought this from had it custom built about two years ago so all seems OK with it. Someone suggested with the set-up I could go marine but I wouldn't know where to start so will probably give that a miss hense posting here unless anyone else thinks it would be a good idea.

In my other tank I am doing allot of stem plants and bogwood. With this and the thought of Cichlids, I was thinking Rock 3D Background with lots of Rock Caves and just using Anubias and maybe some mosses all over the tank attached to the back ground and the likes.

I have no idea about Cichlids though so will be yet another new learning curve. Anyone else got any other ideas. I like Shrimp, Crabs & Frogs but not sure how easy any of them would be to do. Frogs all seem to need space out of water and when the filtration is going to be a built in trickle filter I assume this needs to be close to the water.

So yeah please just shout out suggestions etc and any help, adivse or thoughts with this tank would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Adam

 

[karin]

Wow a tall tall tank. Hi Adam. Go check out the "New World Cichlids" section. Couple people have new cameras and lots of cool photos to look through. You may have to make some decisions as cichlids don't often go with shrimp or frogs, don't know about crabs but I do know from here that they are pretty voracious fish eaters. Good luck.

 

[curlyriff]

Cheers for the input Karin,

Probably didn't make myself clear in the above post but I ment if I didn't go for Cichlids then shrimp, craps and frogs would be cool but again don't know enough about them to make a large tank work with them.

Will have a look at the New World Cichlids section to see what they have and get some ideas.

Kind Regards,

Adam

 

[Whitey_144]

Cheers for the input Karin,

Probably didn't make myself clear in the above post but I ment if I didn't go for Cichlids then shrimp, craps and frogs would be cool but again don't know enough about them to make a large tank work with them.

Will have a look at the New World Cichlids section to see what they have and get some ideas.

Kind Regards,

Adam

hi Adam, (cool name btw)

I once upon a time had a marine, amazonian and african tank, personally i think out of the 3 for looks versus ease, i'd say the Amazon wins, e.g. its was the easiest to look after and looked better than the african non planted tank. ...so i advise a planted community tank.

to me it sounds like a massive tank for just shrimps and crabs. and i assume having these with fish would limit what fish you could have.

what are your tap water stats? and tap water stats once been left out for 48hrs? (PH will change a bit between the two). From this you can then check with fish would be more suitable to what your natural water chemistry is. high PH, could do african cichlids, low PH could aim for tetras, angelfish and amazon fish more. i have a high PH and aiming to keep amazon, so its not a strict rule, but is just more ideal in general to keep fish that prefer your water.

in that size tank you could get some lovely shoals of fish!

what substrate will you prefer gravel or sand? because this will change what bottom dwelling fish you might get too.


...jsut saw you already have a community tank. if you want a bit of an oddball you could have african cichlids, when i did this i had a fire eel too...something a little different! (i think it was called fire eel) with ocean rock as the landscape on coral sand

cheers,
adam

 

[curlyriff]

Hey Adam,

Yeah you too mate.

I don't know what my water stats are completely. I don't really check my hardness but I know my PH is 8.0 out the tap and around 7.8 after 48 hours so its pretty high. I know my community tank is pretty soft according to my local MA. But that is also full of Bogwood and PLants so guess that would make a difference.

My tap water I was told is harder than my community but I wasn't there when he did the readings. My GF was and she didnt know what the guy was on about.

So far I think Cichlids with some rare odd balls in would be the best with as you said Ocean Rock and Sand substrat. I want to plant some things so it will just be Anubis and similar for that I think just so I can attach them to give some shade.

My next thing to do now the tank has arrived is to sort out a stand so will go custom built. It will ony be a square box as I am going to place everything internally as I have found out it is pretty much an internal sump so should work pretty well. I am guessing the tank is around 300ltr with about 50ltr sump capacity.

I preffer small pea gravel style like 1-2mm size or so. Similar to what I have in my community really but it depends on fish. I prefer white sand/gravel to show of colours and was thinking of going for grey rock style with some stick on backgrounds like the tanganyika or Malawi Rock style but my tank is not a flat back it is kind of z shaped to accomidate the sump. I was also thinking about using the shape of the background and using the Jewel stone granit tiles and sticking them to the back but I would need to use about 12cm of substrata at the back because my tank works out at 70cm visable height.

My only option might be to build my own 3D background. I have tried looking around at different Cichlids and not sure about what to go with. My GF really wants me to get some Reed fish for the tank since its all enclose. My light unit I am still undecided. It needs to be above the tank as there isn't enough depth to fit lighting between the top and spars so I am just going to use a piece of clear perspec for the lid and get clip on or ceiling hung lights dependant.

But yeah any other suggestions before I start really looking into Cichlids in detail?

Kind Regards,

Adam