140 gallon
- Thread starter Cole101
- Start date
It deffinetly isn’t a new tank. The guy before me had two canisters running the tank before fore about two years so the ammonia and water should be fine only the water is 91.4f so a bit to hot for fish thank you for all your help will post a picture of the fish in a couple weeks when I make my trip there.
oh i see. the tank is already up and running then. yeah i would say about 10 degrees lower would be great for your stock. the chocolates might like it a little cooler though im not sure.
This is personal opinion, but there isn't a chance I would take over the established BB in this situation. You are literally getting a grab bag of potential issues doing so. I'd sterilize the tank and all of the filtration and media and get you a clean cycle going. I know it is tough to wait the 5ish weeks for a new cycle to begin, but it might save you loads of heartache in the future from dealing with someone else's problem.
Years ago I had a similarly stocked 125 gallon, here are some things you might want to consider.
My stock was:
1x Oscar
1x JD
1x GT
5x Silver Dollars
3x Raphael Cats
If you know for sure that your main fish will be an Oscar, then you should get the silver dollars. Oscars are notoriously messy eaters, they are like bull dogs drinking water, 50% or less of what they put in their mouth actually stays in their mouth. Silver Dollars will gladly clean up all the little bits the Oscar chews out his gills and it will happen in a matter of seconds. I had standard silver dollars, they grew incredibly fast and were awesome to have in the tank.
Secondly, on the Raphael cats. If you have hidey holes in your tank, you will NEVER see these fish. Seriously, you will put them in at 3" long and will not see them again until the next time you are moving stuff or cleaning substrate and suddenly they are 6" and incredibly fat. They do a really good job of cleaning up the bits that the silver dollars missed.
I have Severums in my 240 now and love them, but they are like any other cichlid though and can be hit or miss. I have two that are awesome fish and don't bother anything, and really only care if they are being fed or not, but I have one that is a total jerk on some days and an angel the next.
Ultimately, good luck in your decision, however, I would STRONGLY recommend you start over with clean materials.
Years ago I had a similarly stocked 125 gallon, here are some things you might want to consider.
My stock was:
1x Oscar
1x JD
1x GT
5x Silver Dollars
3x Raphael Cats
If you know for sure that your main fish will be an Oscar, then you should get the silver dollars. Oscars are notoriously messy eaters, they are like bull dogs drinking water, 50% or less of what they put in their mouth actually stays in their mouth. Silver Dollars will gladly clean up all the little bits the Oscar chews out his gills and it will happen in a matter of seconds. I had standard silver dollars, they grew incredibly fast and were awesome to have in the tank.
Secondly, on the Raphael cats. If you have hidey holes in your tank, you will NEVER see these fish. Seriously, you will put them in at 3" long and will not see them again until the next time you are moving stuff or cleaning substrate and suddenly they are 6" and incredibly fat. They do a really good job of cleaning up the bits that the silver dollars missed.
I have Severums in my 240 now and love them, but they are like any other cichlid though and can be hit or miss. I have two that are awesome fish and don't bother anything, and really only care if they are being fed or not, but I have one that is a total jerk on some days and an angel the next.
Ultimately, good luck in your decision, however, I would STRONGLY recommend you start over with clean materials.
Yea ran into that problem the tank wasn’t well cycled got it up and cycled and we’ll be testing again in a few days. I do have some fish already in there 2 Oscars a gt an 4 sd’s think I’m going to return the gt though because he’s bullying the Oscars so much that there just in a tiny crevice in a piece of driftwood that we have. If they leave they get chased away by the gt. Could I replace the gt and the jd for thatother Oscar or is that to much?
Sorry for highjacking your thread OP! But i'm really curious at how many times you needed to WC your 125 gallon? And what filter did you use? Im looking to get something similiar, but instead 2 Oscars, 5 SD's and i'm still not sure wether to get 2 poly's or some raph. cats.
Np what I did was do a 50% wc since the levels were still a bit to high and each day added about 7% back in from huge jugs of water that had been treated with sea chem prime I have two canisters working at about 1500gph and I believe the brand is called atman? Not sure on the fish side I’d ask someone else about that and good luck!
So this was back in 2011/2012 so I don’t remember too much in-depth info, but I would say I did a good substrate (sand) cleaning and about 75-80% water changes weekly. That typically kept my nitrates around 10-20ppm. However, their feedings were pretty clean, they ate homemade frozen cocktail cubes of peas, bloodworms, spirulina, handful of pellets, krill, etc. I never used food that would fowl up the tank really bad, like the meateater pellets do.
If I recall correctly, I had a Rena XP3, Rena XP2, and an AC110. If I did it today, I’d go FX6 and AC110, which is what my last 125 was filtered with.
