75g Looking to start African Tank

[DJRansome]

Keep in mind you don't have haps and peacocks from Malawi. One or both of your Victorian species live in the rocks. Imagine your tank completely filled with rocks to the waterline.

That is hard to achieve...I usually get about 1/2 the height of the tank and still have a stable stack.

The males want a section of sand. If you surround it with rocks on 3 sides, it is sectioned off, he can defend his boundaries and not claim the whole tank, and when hovering over his spot, he can't see the other males because the rocks break his line of sight.

If you pile the rocks up even higher as the back of each "cubicle" then the females have something to hide in a swoop through and lurk beside to get out of sight of the males and lose them in a convoluted chase.

Your artificial rocks are tall enough, but they do not form territories for the males or a maze for the females to evade.

I liked Stephen St. Clair's idea of laying them on their sides...what if you mate the bottom openings? Maybe put some loose rocks inside to break them up?

I'm not sure more of the same will solve your problem because they are big hollow spaces. Can you put dividers inside for the females? And arrange them so they form boundaries between the male territories?

 

[dr exum]

Haps n peacocks utilize the holey rock?

Oh, I have Cichlid sand to buffer ph

Very helpful! They do swim in and out of these structures as well as the synos n plecos live inside.

All very good info, I’ll try mating the plastic rocks tomorrow bottom to bottom, I’d presume it would make more of a reef appearance.

I’d presume I’ll go out tomorrow and see if I can grab some of the caves mentioned above. Or few more holey rocks.

I have 1000’s of pounds of granite in the back yard, I suppose I could get to breaking it, if only had a 18” diamond blade on a chop saw....

I could stack a bunch of these in the back, or replace holey rock with these...

Thanks all!

 

[ryang85]

Depending on the size of your granite boulders you could stack them randomly smashing them to varied sizes would be best but that stuff isn't exactly soft, I spend way too much messing with my rocks to perfect it to my fish's liking. I do a lot of diving so it's interesting to see what's considered a perfect cave to a fish. The fish like randomness and will prefer to hang out on a sandy bottom cave. That's where your males will start piling sand to attract females.


Also all fish will appreciate a main entrance and another exit hole in the back, the less light you can get the better. Youd be surprised how small of a hole the fish like. That's why I find many artificial caves arnt as good as natural ones. Because they are too open


In reality it probably wont make a huge different but as someone who grew up hunting and studying fish in the wild it's fun to apply it to my fish tank. Make the scape look how you want then mess with it to ease the aggression levels of the males.

 

[dr exum]

I’ll probably grab a small boulder and dig through these in the am, luckily I have a spare 75 empty I can test out potential set ups.

Other than that I’m hunting landscape supply yards,

LFS sells rock for $$$$

 

[A201]

Be a good idea to shop the rock yards & landscape companies. I paid 12 cents to 25 cents per pound for honeycombed limestone. The LFS sells it for $4.25 per pound.

 

[dr exum]

I’ve got a bag of this in the garage,

I’d presume it won’t buffer, could use baking soda...

Do folks use this?

 

[DJRansome]

Silica sand is great, but usually unless it is pool filter sand the grain is wrong. You want 20 grain.

Those rocks look great, but may have absorbed garden/lawn chemicals? Landscape supplier is your best bet. Cheap, clean and right sizes.

 

[A201]

A lot of keepers use pool filter sand. I just use small grain natural river gravel. Sand looks nice but it comes with its own set of problems.

 

[ryang85]

If you like black sand (which i very highly recommend for african cichlids) black diamond blasting media is super cheep and looks great. For 40 bucks I filled my 180 gal will 200 lbs of it.

That stuff should work fine though just dump it into a 5 gal bucket and shove a garden hose into it and let all of the floaty/silty float over the edge. Youl know when its cleaned out all of the way since the water will be clear. It will make your aquarium water look much cleaner and keep the filters in better shape. You can pick up all sorts of grain sizes so whatever size you prefer. Try and keep more than 3" depth and the finer the better for anoxic bacteria growth. It will help reduce nitrates.

And with those rocks depending on what you do with your lawn you may or may not be ok. Most over the counter chemicals will break down over a few weeks. If you've been fertilizing in the past month or two or spraying pesticides in the past 4 months I would try to avoid using them. There are ways of cleaning them but it may be more work than a few rocks is worth. I've never cleaned any of my rocks with anything but a garden hose but I also know that there is no chemicals around where I pick them from. But like mentioned if you can find a rock supplier nearby it will remove that danger completely.

 

[dr exum]

I’ve been looking online, I’ll make some calls in the am,

Gonna try to work with what I got before spending a bunch,

The pre fab penn plax or underwater gallery caves both $200 probably to fill a 75...