Fresh Start with 2 Tanks!

I'm currently serving in Afghanistan, and with the deployment I sadly had to give away all my little monsters

The good news is that I'm getting ready to come home in the next few months and I've got two tanks (and a pocketful of cash) to do whatever I want with!

I've got a standard 55 gallon and a standard 125 gallon tank. Probably looking at redoing the filtration on the 125 gallon completely, as the tank was bought used and the two canister filters weren't in great shape to begin with. I have a friend watching over both (empty tanks) but I'm sure I'll need to do a massive maintenance overhaul on both of them before they are suitable for use. I'm really starting with a blank slate, and I'm curious as to what you guys might suggest.

I'm still fairly new to the hobby, started with a few mollys in a 15g tank (which was then turned into a hospital tank).

My previous stocking was:

55g:
7x Bosemani Rainbowfish
12x Julii Cats
9x Green Tiger Barbs

125g:
2x Tiger Oscars
1x Common Pleco
2x RTBS

Probably not looking to go the oscar route again. I definitely think I was overfeeding them while struggling to keep up with the maintenance they required, cause my work hours were long and unpredictable. I've thought about converting the 125 into a marine tank, but I really don't know.

What do you guys think?

Pole said:

you should try and explore new territory, one of them a palaudarium and one marine sounds cool.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

Click to expand...

Yeah a paludarium is something I've considered for sure. You happen to know any good threads or resources to get started? I'm trying to do as much research as possible, rather than rush into things like I did last time. (Those two Os and the pleco all started in the 55g until I realized how big they were going to get. )

bbortko said:

Thank you for your service.

If oscars are too much work I'd avoid marine setups.

Click to expand...

Yeah, fortunately I'm now working staff and my hours are much more predictable and less extreme. I'm hoping I can devote a lot more time to the hobby now, but your point is definitely taken

Thanks for the ideas guys!

I can definitely afford both of the filters, but my real dilemma is how to make sure I do this right. I'll be the first to admit I sort of rushed both of these tanks when I had them up, and I would say they were both probably 75% complete. This time I want to make sure I do it right, and put together a tank that's actually worthy of housing some beautiful fish.

If I had to choose one, I would obviously go for the 125 gallon. I've thought about using my 55 as a sump, although the idea of losing 55 gallons of fish space kind of made me stray away from it.

Bottom line I guess is would the sump be clearly better than running the fx5? Or are they fairly comparable?