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2100 Gallons - mainly shelldwellers

42K views 118 replies 45 participants last post by  Ardeus 
#1 ·
It doesn't have glasses yet, but here it is:

 
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#10 ·
my jealousy knows no bounds. i bet you could put a pair of the emperors in there with shell dwellers and have plenty of breeding to make up for lost fish as long as you feed your emperors. that'd be so cool!
 
#11 ·
Thanks guys!

I have two restrictions in choosing species:

- Only small fish;
- Only fish that stay very closely to their territories.

This tank is my atempt at having a tank that's not a cage, and that's the purpose of those two rules. A big fish will make any tank look small and the same goes for a fish that swims from one side of the tank to the other in a few seconds.

So, it will probably come down to:

- Multies (right);
- Ocellatus (left);
- Brevis (left);
- Alto's "Sumbu" (left);
- Buescheri (left);
- Eretmodus (left);
- Gracillis (left);
- Cyprichromis (middle-right);
- Callochromis (middle).

That's it, I think, but I'm still open to suggestions. I don't want to put any particularly frail species in, at least in the first months. In the future, it would be nice to have just a few Benthochromis. A large peacefull fish would help to keep everyone else close to their homes and maybe the cyprichromis would school more.

I have to have in mind that I probably will not be able to remove any species after I put it in.

Another thing is the breeding of certain species. Multies will probably breed like a biblical plague but they stay very close to their territories, so I have no problem with that. This tank was built mainly for them.

Buescheri fry also have a very high survival rate but they are completely bound to the rocks and they have small batches of fry.

The one that worries me is the gracillis. I never had them, I know that they also breed a lot but are less aggressive and smaller than the other species of the brichardi complex, so I am willing to take the risk although I hate hate hate overstocked tanks (I have one).

All other species will have a much lower survival rate, I guess, because their fry leave their parents too early.

The rocks ended up occupying much more space than I expected, but there's a lot of sand going in and it will hide completly some of them, mainly in the left, where I will try to build a dam to contain the sand. The idea is to have the sand at the level of the glasse all around the tank.

In the back, in the middle of the tank, I plan to have vallisnerias. This will be the place to go for the evicted fish.

I hope I can get the glasses in place this weekend. Let's see.
 
#12 ·
sounds and looks to be an amazing tank in the making....keep the pics comin :popcorn: =D>
 
#14 ·
Thanks.

Sarah: I'm planning to have a huge shellbed on the right and scattered shells on the left. I was expecting the Callochromis to just wander in the middle of the tank, in an open sand area. I'm pretty sure the multies will not allow them in their area and I think that the ocellatus will also do the same.
 
#16 ·
I'm thinking about taking your advise and not include the gracilis by now.

I'm not sure about the initial number of cyprichromis, because although I have a dozen of them on mainland at my parents house, they're a species that looks so frail that I don't want to risk to ship them. A friend of mine that lives nearby has them too, and I'm going to ask him to save all the fry and give them to me. I'm planning on having something between 100-200.

Although the tank has a good area, I don't think many fish will succeed in achieving large numbers. I'm counting on the Multies to reach something between 1000 and 2000 and the Buescheri to reach around 100. I don't see any of the other species manage to breed a lot, because all their fry wander away from their parents protection too early.

The gracilis would be one of those species that would succeed in achieving large numbers, and that's a problem, if they're "all over the place" fish. Are they? One thing I don't want at all, is to have a ton of fish swimming right in front of the glass. A ton of fish swimming very close to the rocks, it's sort of fine by me, but not all over the place.
 
#19 ·
I don't have any new pictures, just old ones:

























Multies seem to bennefit from a few layers of heavy shells. I think shark eyes are great for them. Because the shells are heavy, they create a stable set of tunnels and caves and even if a larger fish has a hard time moving them. I'm trying to get around 2000 or 3000 of them.

My idea is to sort them in sizes: small, medium, large and layer them in that order on top of each other.

But depending on the batch of shells, it may happen that there isn't any shell large enough for the males. So, just to be safe I'll be getting around 200 Ferdinanzi shells.

The other fish will be getting Ferdinanzi shells too, around 200, scattered on the left part of the tank.
 
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