My Malawi is going to be set up in a 90 gallon soon. I was planning on putting one of my AC110 on there a fluval 404 and an eheim 2215. I can add my extra 300 gph powerhead and I like to run some air in all my tanks. Would this be too much movement ?
How much water movement for a Malawi setup?
- Thread starter tcarswell
- Start date
You can always remove some if it is too much for them. They might like the current, i watched a video of some malawi in the lake and in one area the fish were in a extremely turbulant area, the fish seemed like it, swimming in the roiling water. Sometimes you can arrange the outflows in a way that provides some quiet areas for rest and the rest can have more current, as long as your fish have areas where they can rest you should be fine. If you are looking to spawn your fish you might have trouble with the extra current(current can make fertilization difficult ), but you should be able to adjust the current in the future if you need to...Got any pics yet ?
The key is the resting spots. I have had smaller mbuna make their way into a sump. They swam in the current. After some time a few died. They did not have a place to rest and they died. So be sure to have enough rest space.
This is their home currently
Their future home a 90
Finishing up the stand today and once its done with all the clear coats ill have some sweet pics up. Thanks for the help guys
PS I got a ton more rocks and caves and a nice piece of artificial wood trunk
Their future home a 90
Finishing up the stand today and once its done with all the clear coats ill have some sweet pics up. Thanks for the help guys
PS I got a ton more rocks and caves and a nice piece of artificial wood trunk
That is going to be real nice. Have you decided on a substrate yet ? I used to use only gravel for many years . Now i use sand and like it much better, the fish seem to like it better too (they like the finer sand compared to chunkier gravel). On one of my tanks i used a mixure of sand and gravel (80 to 90 percent sand and the rest gravel) I just mixed them together , they seem to enjoy picking out the gravel bits from the rest of the sand when they are moving it around. Provide lots of caves, the mbuna really love caves, the more the better. Be sure to place the rocks or what ever you use for the cave material directly on the glass then place the sand in and around them so the digging cichlids wont be crushed by shifting rocks.
Thanks for the advice about leaving the rocks in the substrate I had not thought of that whoops. I will be using gravel to start with since it is live and will help the new tank settle out its bio. (I used an under gravel on it) Then I plan to slowly pull out the gravel and add sand. Thanks again for the tip may have saved me some tears on that one!
Save yourself a step and just start with sand. Your seeded filters will provide enough bacteria and you wont need to cycle.
i agree. YOu can get rid of the undergravel filter that way. I dont like those, i used to use them years ago when i first started and i personally feel that they are just bad bacteria traps. I cant stand them now LOL. I actually find sand is cleaner, debris sits on top and is easily removed compared to gravel that seems to trap the gunk down inside the gravel bed. Sand is easy to vacume once you do it a couple times, just barely run the vacume across the surface and its clean, if you suck up the sand just lightly bang it on a rock and it comes right back out like the gravel does. I have black sand in one tank and white sand in another. THe white sand i actually mixed some fine gravel into and i find the gravel helps to make the debris not noticable , that tank always looks clean even if i fall behind in my maintenance and dont vacume it for a long time. Looks very natural too. The fish do a lot of digging in that tank compared to the one with no gravel, i think its the bits they get to spit out, makes them feel more productive LOL