So after taking down the salt water tank Andrea and I decided that it was time to go with something simpler and fresh water. Something where we could have our "pet" fish with minimal extra work (a large FW tank fits in better with our cleaning schedule). So we took the empty 70 gallon and cleaned her up and go to thinking about an oscar or two.
The 70 gallon will only be a temporary home for them until I finish my degree in a couple of months, but we wanted it to look nice anyways. The tank itself gets two 50% water changes a week. The same as our malawi tanks.
We decided on fake plants since we decided that live would most likely become a salad
Then proceeded to attach them to egg crating via thread and silicone. We figured we would try to prevent the oscars from pulling them up if possible
We used a bag of silica play sand for the substrate and filled the tank
And then waited for it to clear
Now that the tank is done it is cycling with a firehead cichlid in it while the oscars and co go through QT in a 25 gallon holding tank.
**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**
We went out and purchased 3 little oscars, no more than 2 inches each. We are hoping that with time we might have a pair out of them. There are two Albinos: Flareon and Whitey and one black named Umbreon (He has a crocked mouth but we love him anyways). While in QT the tank gets a 50% water change daily.
With the motley crew we also have some friends as well:
Mr. Ed
The Eyes
The 70 gallon will only be a temporary home for them until I finish my degree in a couple of months, but we wanted it to look nice anyways. The tank itself gets two 50% water changes a week. The same as our malawi tanks.
We decided on fake plants since we decided that live would most likely become a salad
Then proceeded to attach them to egg crating via thread and silicone. We figured we would try to prevent the oscars from pulling them up if possible
We used a bag of silica play sand for the substrate and filled the tank
And then waited for it to clear
Now that the tank is done it is cycling with a firehead cichlid in it while the oscars and co go through QT in a 25 gallon holding tank.
**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**
We went out and purchased 3 little oscars, no more than 2 inches each. We are hoping that with time we might have a pair out of them. There are two Albinos: Flareon and Whitey and one black named Umbreon (He has a crocked mouth but we love him anyways). While in QT the tank gets a 50% water change daily.
With the motley crew we also have some friends as well:
Mr. Ed
The Eyes
good looking tank in the mean time though 
though i prefer a more natural substrate but thats all personal preference lol how many clown loaches are in there? they really should be in a good size school to do well and get pretty big as well (though they are extremely slow growers)
i look foward to seeing the growth on these guys 
but yeah i was actually talking about the blue gravel but just realized thats the quarantine tank and you have sand in the other one, the play sand is probably going to be a PITA though since its soo fine grained but yeah i actually like the look of the sand, the flourite and black sands look good as well but i just cant justify paying that price for them, with the white sand i the big bags of pool filter sand from home depot for like 8 bucks for a 50lb bag, IMO a necessity when doing larger tanks (i had natural colored gravel in my 120g for the longest time but since making the switch to sand i would never go back haha)