Hi All - this is going to be a long post, but I hope you will read it. 
I bought a house with 200 gallon fish tank in the wall. It has a Sump on each side and a wet/dry area and sponge filtration in the sump area. After much research I decided on cichlids and a banded leoparious tank. (not enough research because I thought you could keep african cichlids with africans.
I've made some mistakes stocking, but will be correcting those in the near future. I have some Mbunas with mostly Hap/Peacocks. Has anyone had success with leaving stocking mistakes? Most of the fish are fairly small the only medium size fish are the yellow lab hybrid and 6 Medium Peacocks. I have 6 yellow labs, a yellow lab hybrid, 2 red top Afras, 2 bumblebees and 1 electric blue Johanni. The rest of my tank consists of 2 Banded Leos, 1 Chocolate Pleco, the rest of my tank is 19 assorted Peacocks and Haps and 2 Frontosas. There are around 8 tetras, 2 loaches, and some red fish the previous owner left in the tank. I started adding cichlids 4 weeks ago and no tetra death.... wierd.
Everyone is behaving now, but I know as fish mature that can change. It is basiclly impossible to remove fish from the tank because of the small crawl space behind it. You are forced to bend over, but not enough space to sit down, and are looking at the tank from above and someone has to shout which way the fish are going..... There are also 4 glass peices to remove which is too tall to just set inside the crawl space so someone has to be outside the tank to hand the glass to. ALSO - if something breaks I am going to have to start taking the stand apart to get to the pump - they never made an access point - great previous home owners.....
Another questions s that I don't know how much I can stock because I don't know how much flow is going through the pump. I also do not know how many gallons the wet/dry area is. Where do I start trying to figure this out?
I bought a house with 200 gallon fish tank in the wall. It has a Sump on each side and a wet/dry area and sponge filtration in the sump area. After much research I decided on cichlids and a banded leoparious tank. (not enough research because I thought you could keep african cichlids with africans.
I've made some mistakes stocking, but will be correcting those in the near future. I have some Mbunas with mostly Hap/Peacocks. Has anyone had success with leaving stocking mistakes? Most of the fish are fairly small the only medium size fish are the yellow lab hybrid and 6 Medium Peacocks. I have 6 yellow labs, a yellow lab hybrid, 2 red top Afras, 2 bumblebees and 1 electric blue Johanni. The rest of my tank consists of 2 Banded Leos, 1 Chocolate Pleco, the rest of my tank is 19 assorted Peacocks and Haps and 2 Frontosas. There are around 8 tetras, 2 loaches, and some red fish the previous owner left in the tank. I started adding cichlids 4 weeks ago and no tetra death.... wierd.
Everyone is behaving now, but I know as fish mature that can change. It is basiclly impossible to remove fish from the tank because of the small crawl space behind it. You are forced to bend over, but not enough space to sit down, and are looking at the tank from above and someone has to shout which way the fish are going..... There are also 4 glass peices to remove which is too tall to just set inside the crawl space so someone has to be outside the tank to hand the glass to. ALSO - if something breaks I am going to have to start taking the stand apart to get to the pump - they never made an access point - great previous home owners.....
Another questions s that I don't know how much I can stock because I don't know how much flow is going through the pump. I also do not know how many gallons the wet/dry area is. Where do I start trying to figure this out?
I figured the tetras were a lost cause when I started adding cichlids. Too hard to catch and not worth a lot on trade in, but 4 weeks and still going strong! I will try AGAIN to remove the tetras if the cichlids get more agressive. 
