Long story short, I'm selling my house while the market is good and moving somewhere where land is cheap and designing and building a new home. It's going to be fairly small, but between downsizing, the cheaper area, and doing much of the construction labor myself, I'll be able to have no mortgage, which means more money for fish!
Building my own house also gives me the unique opportunity to design a built in tank as a feature of the home. For example, a double window tank that can be viewed from the living room and the master bedroom.
I'd like to get away from having a bunch of small tanks and go with one big one. I'm currently considering doing a tank that is 11' wide, 7' deep, and 5' high, with an 8'x4' window on both 11' sides. That's roughly 2800 gallons. This is all in the planing phases so it can easily be changed.
At this point, I'm thinking of what I might want to do with such a tank. I know some people have giant tanks and put tiny little fish in them, but that seems like a waste to me (no offense). I'm also not a fan of species tanks, since It think a good variety is what makes a tank interesting.
I'm also not sure, having never kept any tank over 75 gallons, if some of the "rules" don't apply anymore or as much if you have a very large tank. For example, generally, you wouldn’t mix peacocks and mbuna in a 75G tank, but could they get along when there's a ton of space?
I'm OK with breaking "purity" rules as long as the stocking will work without any major issues. eg, There are some South American fish that can mix fine with certain Africans, but it has to be species specific stocking.
Cheddar’s restaurant often does some bizarre stocking that seems to work. (Does anyone know what the fish are in this first picture?)
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=i...A&biw=1920&bih=898&dpr=1#imgrc=mw8ddX73Bcj8RM:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=i...A&biw=1920&bih=898&dpr=1#imgrc=iUXTplwqDkoJgM:
So the question is, if this will be my only tank, what would be a good and interesting use of the space, that couldn't be done with an ordinary sized tank?
My first though is to do discus, plus some other large and/or colorful and interesting things in there as well. Most of the recommended tank mates for discus though are small things like cory cats and rummy nose.
With a giant tank though, are there any large and/or colorful things that can get along with discus? Clown loaches? Eels? Turtles, like RES? Small mouth American predators like Blue gill or warmouth? I don't know if haps would be too agressive. They are mild compared to Mbuna, but Discus aren't that aggressive.
Does anyone have suggestions of what other large or feature fish would work well with a large discus setup? Or is there something else exciting that could be done if I ditched the discus plans?
Of course anything has to be safe and healthy and legal to obtain and own in the United States.
Building my own house also gives me the unique opportunity to design a built in tank as a feature of the home. For example, a double window tank that can be viewed from the living room and the master bedroom.
I'd like to get away from having a bunch of small tanks and go with one big one. I'm currently considering doing a tank that is 11' wide, 7' deep, and 5' high, with an 8'x4' window on both 11' sides. That's roughly 2800 gallons. This is all in the planing phases so it can easily be changed.
At this point, I'm thinking of what I might want to do with such a tank. I know some people have giant tanks and put tiny little fish in them, but that seems like a waste to me (no offense). I'm also not a fan of species tanks, since It think a good variety is what makes a tank interesting.
I'm also not sure, having never kept any tank over 75 gallons, if some of the "rules" don't apply anymore or as much if you have a very large tank. For example, generally, you wouldn’t mix peacocks and mbuna in a 75G tank, but could they get along when there's a ton of space?
I'm OK with breaking "purity" rules as long as the stocking will work without any major issues. eg, There are some South American fish that can mix fine with certain Africans, but it has to be species specific stocking.
Cheddar’s restaurant often does some bizarre stocking that seems to work. (Does anyone know what the fish are in this first picture?)
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=i...A&biw=1920&bih=898&dpr=1#imgrc=mw8ddX73Bcj8RM:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=i...A&biw=1920&bih=898&dpr=1#imgrc=iUXTplwqDkoJgM:
So the question is, if this will be my only tank, what would be a good and interesting use of the space, that couldn't be done with an ordinary sized tank?
My first though is to do discus, plus some other large and/or colorful and interesting things in there as well. Most of the recommended tank mates for discus though are small things like cory cats and rummy nose.
With a giant tank though, are there any large and/or colorful things that can get along with discus? Clown loaches? Eels? Turtles, like RES? Small mouth American predators like Blue gill or warmouth? I don't know if haps would be too agressive. They are mild compared to Mbuna, but Discus aren't that aggressive.
Does anyone have suggestions of what other large or feature fish would work well with a large discus setup? Or is there something else exciting that could be done if I ditched the discus plans?
Of course anything has to be safe and healthy and legal to obtain and own in the United States.
