Well let’s start saying I'm new here but not to the aquarium world. I have a 75gal that I was going to use for a saltwater tank but after I started buying equipment and looking at what all it envolved I decided it was going to cost way too much. I also purchased a 55gal to move my cichlids to during that process. Now that the wife and I have decided against the saltwater idea we are going back to cichlids in the 75gal, I'm going to run a few things by everyone here to see what else to do. Let’s start with filtration, I will be using 2 fluval 405 canisters but instead of doing the same media in both filters I will have one type of media in one and biomax in the other. That will be about 450gph of water flow. Does this sound like it would be good or should I stick with equal mixes of media in both filters?
As far as power heads I purchased 2 large Hydor Koralias for the salt tank and have been using one of them in the 55gal and the cichlids love it, so I was looking at using both of them in the 75gal, I don't remember the exact amount of flow they produce but they were the biggest ones I believe. All I remember is when I was reading up on saltwater it was recommended to have big flow numbers. I was also looking around on one of these forums and looked at where a guy made an under gravel spray bar that had sprayed into the rockwork, I was also thinking about doing something like that in the 75gal being that I am about to tear it all back down again.
After we decided not to do salt we just put some small tropical fish in there, such as neons, swordtails, and such. I will be relocating them to a 29gal possibly. As far as lighting goes I purchased a PC hood and broke it down and did a custom setup on the canopy. So I believe lighting is covered, don't remember what type of lights one is white and the other is blue, it also had blue LEDs in the setup. It was made for saltwater but it really makes the little tropicals pop, so I think it would be great for cichlids. I am going to use black sand for the floor about 2-3". I also built a PVC frame to place live rock on and was thinking about using it to lay out my rock work. I don’t have pictures of everything at the moment due to being deployed to Iraq. I will go home for my leave in September so I will try and get pictures up then.
Well that’s all I can think of right now so if you have any Ideas or comments let me know. Sorry about the long first post.
Thanks in advance
Mark
As far as power heads I purchased 2 large Hydor Koralias for the salt tank and have been using one of them in the 55gal and the cichlids love it, so I was looking at using both of them in the 75gal, I don't remember the exact amount of flow they produce but they were the biggest ones I believe. All I remember is when I was reading up on saltwater it was recommended to have big flow numbers. I was also looking around on one of these forums and looked at where a guy made an under gravel spray bar that had sprayed into the rockwork, I was also thinking about doing something like that in the 75gal being that I am about to tear it all back down again.
After we decided not to do salt we just put some small tropical fish in there, such as neons, swordtails, and such. I will be relocating them to a 29gal possibly. As far as lighting goes I purchased a PC hood and broke it down and did a custom setup on the canopy. So I believe lighting is covered, don't remember what type of lights one is white and the other is blue, it also had blue LEDs in the setup. It was made for saltwater but it really makes the little tropicals pop, so I think it would be great for cichlids. I am going to use black sand for the floor about 2-3". I also built a PVC frame to place live rock on and was thinking about using it to lay out my rock work. I don’t have pictures of everything at the moment due to being deployed to Iraq. I will go home for my leave in September so I will try and get pictures up then.
Well that’s all I can think of right now so if you have any Ideas or comments let me know. Sorry about the long first post.
Thanks in advance
Mark
