It has been decades since I've been in the hobby, but recently I bought a 5 gal setup on a lark on sale at my lfs, threw a male betta and some corys in, then caught MTS.
There was a complete TOP FIN 55 setup in a one day flash sale, so I grabbed it. The 75 HOB wouldn't be enough, I knew, so I added another HOB Emperor and picked up a Sunsun HW-304B on Amazon with media. I also added 250mg of purigen, and some lava rock to the included bioballs, sponges, and noodles....
For substrate I got 50 lbs of sand at my nearest Home Depot and rinsed the s$%t out of it in my tub for hours.
But initially I left the tank substrate-free and started cycling with some existing spiked media. I even let my corys and betta have the tank all to themselves for a day or two!
After the cycling I noticed a "Red Devil" on sale for twenty bucks on craigslist. I contacted the seller and he told me he had raised the 8" devil from store-bought, and it had started bullying other cichlids in his community 125g tank so he had to sell him. The asking price seemed very reasonable, so I went and got him.
There's a picture of my setup in the gallery where one of my two cats is checking out my MD.
Setup and acclimation went off without a hitch, but he did seem MUCH happier after I added the sand. He builds volcanoes and digs out pits all day. I put a pot in there for him to hide, but it was floating, so I tried weighing it down with sand. He'd just scoop the sand up in his mouth and spit it out the front door. Finally I washed and cleaned some old stainless steel ratchet bolts I had laying around, threw them in, and it's been down and weighted ever since.
My background is in zoology and ethology and I've been having lots of fun interacting with him. They're amazingly intelligent animals, as most predators are, and he regularly bullies my cats when the check him out, and he even charges me when I interact with him several times a day.
His owner only ever fed him hikari, so I picked some up, but I also put in about 10 minnows with him. He hid at first! They started schooling in one end of the tank at the top, and I turned out the lights and went to bed.
Next morning no minnows.
I have NO idea what happened to them all!
I can't put anything else in there with him, of course, in a 55, but I'll probably pick up some neon tetras next week as dithers and see how long they last.
I am extremely please to be back in the hobby, and would like, in the next year, to try building my own large acrylic tank. 500 gallons or so, and trying a Dovii. I'm not afraid of getting wet XD
But I'm very happy to be here and have gotten great tips from this forum! Our little guys mean so much to us, and we spoil the s%^t out of them, right?
- JP
There was a complete TOP FIN 55 setup in a one day flash sale, so I grabbed it. The 75 HOB wouldn't be enough, I knew, so I added another HOB Emperor and picked up a Sunsun HW-304B on Amazon with media. I also added 250mg of purigen, and some lava rock to the included bioballs, sponges, and noodles....
For substrate I got 50 lbs of sand at my nearest Home Depot and rinsed the s$%t out of it in my tub for hours.
But initially I left the tank substrate-free and started cycling with some existing spiked media. I even let my corys and betta have the tank all to themselves for a day or two!
After the cycling I noticed a "Red Devil" on sale for twenty bucks on craigslist. I contacted the seller and he told me he had raised the 8" devil from store-bought, and it had started bullying other cichlids in his community 125g tank so he had to sell him. The asking price seemed very reasonable, so I went and got him.
There's a picture of my setup in the gallery where one of my two cats is checking out my MD.
Setup and acclimation went off without a hitch, but he did seem MUCH happier after I added the sand. He builds volcanoes and digs out pits all day. I put a pot in there for him to hide, but it was floating, so I tried weighing it down with sand. He'd just scoop the sand up in his mouth and spit it out the front door. Finally I washed and cleaned some old stainless steel ratchet bolts I had laying around, threw them in, and it's been down and weighted ever since.
My background is in zoology and ethology and I've been having lots of fun interacting with him. They're amazingly intelligent animals, as most predators are, and he regularly bullies my cats when the check him out, and he even charges me when I interact with him several times a day.
His owner only ever fed him hikari, so I picked some up, but I also put in about 10 minnows with him. He hid at first! They started schooling in one end of the tank at the top, and I turned out the lights and went to bed.
Next morning no minnows.
I have NO idea what happened to them all!
I can't put anything else in there with him, of course, in a 55, but I'll probably pick up some neon tetras next week as dithers and see how long they last.
I am extremely please to be back in the hobby, and would like, in the next year, to try building my own large acrylic tank. 500 gallons or so, and trying a Dovii. I'm not afraid of getting wet XD
But I'm very happy to be here and have gotten great tips from this forum! Our little guys mean so much to us, and we spoil the s%^t out of them, right?
- JP
