Is anyone here into fishkeeping?

[foothead]

Hello. I am very much into fishkeeping. I have a 55 gallon tank, and Now, soon a 135 gallon Anyway, I just wanted to see if anyone here is like me.

My 55's stocking
Archie the green terror cichlid
Kaz the electric yellow cichlid
Kranston the bumblebee cichlid
Spazz the Giant Danio (if u have ever seen a danio, u know what I mean )

I plan to put these in the new tank:
1 tiger Oscar
1 Jack dempsey
1 Clown Loach
1 fire eel
1 bichir or dojo loach.

What do you think? that will be a beast of a tank!
It is 6 feet long and weighs over 150 lbs whan empty.
The lady at petsmart thought I was crazy the other day when I bought 17 bags of aquarium gravel. I laid them out and I will need at least 5 more

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Cool. I used to have a 55 gal with a pair of Oscars.

I predict the Jack Dempsey and the Oscar sparring for superiority of the tank with the Clown and DoJo loachs becoming a tasty snack for the Cichlids unless you buy them fully grown.

 

[foothead]

Cool. I used to have a 55 gal with a pair of Oscars.

I predict the Jack Dempsey and the Oscar sparring for superiority of the tank with the Clown and DoJo loachs becoming a tasty snack for the Cichlids unless you buy them fully grown.

Well, Oscars and JD's seem to get along well. I am going to get both when they are very tiny (about 1") I plan to get the loaches bigger, as a local aquarium shop has them, each about 6" that they will give me for free so they won't have to feed them anymore.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Free is good. It'll give them loaches a head start on the two young whipper snappers.

Man, those Cichlids are going to get huge in a 135 gal tank.

 

[foothead]

I'm hoping for the O to get about 14" and the JD to get 10.
The loaches don't make a big difference to me, as they are just so I have more than 2 fishes.

Actually, it is technically overstocked.
The O's bioload is 50g
40 for the JD
40 for the clown loach
20 for the dojo loach

I think I can get away with it because I have a 1200 L/hr canister filter, which will also be driving a 29g wet/dry sump.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

One of my Oscars was an easy 10". That fish sure knew how to displace a load of water. The tank only had a couple of 1"x6" slots across the top behind the hood that were uncovered, but he was able to splash water up the wall at least foot or two.

 

[foothead]

One of my Oscars was an easy 10". That fish sure knew how to displace a load of water. The tank only had a couple of 1"x6" slots across the top behind the hood that were uncovered, but he was able to splash water up the wall at least foot or two.

well, I'm building the stand, so I am going to build a custom hood so that can't happen...and so they can't commit suicide. That happened to me once. Oscars are very cool fish. Mine was trained to eat out of my hand, and he would let me pet him, but Archie killed that one. I think Archie is going to be put in solitary confinement next time he kills one of my fish. The death count is probably about 10 by now...that fish is the devil.

You said you had 2 in a 55?
What were your nitrates usually at? For me, that is the problem, not swimming room, but everyone at O'fish has much bigger tanks if they have 2 O's.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

I really couldn't tell ya what they were at. I rarely tested the water. Just made sure to do regular changes to keep it fresh. It had a nice under gravel system that really moved alot of water using power heads.

That darn Oscar took great pleasure in knocking those power heads of the tops of the riser tubes. That was only after pulling up the plants and rearranging the gravel and some of the rocks to his liking.

 

[foothead]

My GT is the same way. He is not a big fan of my decorating abilities, and always takes it on himself to move EVERYTHING. He even knows how to re-bury the fake plants so they stay in place. He has also smashed my heater, the filter intake (at which point my favorite gourami got sucked up), eaten all my plants, and somehow break my 14" airstone in 1/2.

My favorite story is when my little brother made me buy one of those glow-in-the-darrk plants. Within 2 days, every leaf was gone from that thing. I turned off the lights to see a dim glowing mass floating through the tank. I then realized that Archie had eaten the whole plant, and it was making him glow. It then took me almost 2 weeks to get the glowing poo out of the gravel.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Archie sounds like a real "terror". LOL!