New setup for Severums. Asking for advice and ideas

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djm761

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 23, 2011
45
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Greenfield WI
Asking for advice, new setup for Severums.

If you've read my introduction (Here we go again, and It's all about the Severums) then you know why I'm starting this thread, My wife Marilyn and I have never had large cichlids or a large tank before, we will be purchasing a 150 gallon tank and the severums will be the center of attention. I will be posting my ideas on this thread as we go but will also be looking for advice or better ideas, and if the members here have any thoughts or concerns I hope they will post them, I want to avoid making any wrong or unnecessary purchases and do this the right the first time.

So lets start at the beginning these are the tank dimensions 72 x 18 x 29 I was thinking 150 pounds of medium course gravel,
The question is would 150 pounds be enough and what would be better gravel or sand, course or fine.

Filtration: Using my 90 gal as an example, I,m running 2 Fluval 405 canisters with no carbon and a Aqueon 55 cartridge filter with bags of carbon only.
My question here is would 2 405's be enough or should I upgrade to the FX5's.

Any thoughts, concerns or better ideas, please post, Thanks in advance Dave.
 
I have 2 eheims on my 125 i would get playground sand because its cheap. The gravel would be too messy for my liking. The 405s should be pretty good if anything test it out and if you need more filtration just add.
 
I have a pair of sevs in my 90. I decided to go with sand because I think it looks nice and the sevs seem to like it. It's cool to watch them sifting after a feeding. For filtration I currently have a 20 gallon sump but I will be switching to an eheim 2217 soon.
 
I agree with using a finer type of substrate - my severums on coarse sand (or really fine gravel? ) sift all day, and it's really neat to watch. They'll also somewhat rearrange the tank, which is again neat to watch (maybe more of a pain if you're trying to grow plants though). I've got severums on gravel too, and they ignore the bottom entirely.
 
Our new 150 gallon tank arrived Wednesday
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it's been full of water since Thursday but I will be draining it tomorrow to re level, and then do the final setup, I will be using bio from the other three tanks for the cycling. and hope to add fish Monday or Tuesday. My question here is does anyone think it would hurt to put a pair of Yellow Labs in with the Severums, I have a pair in my hospital tank because they wouldn't leave the cory cats alone in the 90 gallon .
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Finally the 150 is up and running. To start we used 200 pounds of pool filter sand white in color, two FX5 fluval canisters hooked in series, the first canister is filled with Eheim mechanical medium and is then fed into the second canister for polishing , we also have a Aqueon 75 used as a carbon bank. for cycling purposes I pulled one tray from each Fluval 405 on other tanks 3 total that filled the top tray of the first FX5, I also pulled one used cartridge from the 45 and the 90 gallon tanks for use in the Aqueon 75, I also added 20 gallons of water from the other tanks, I think the tank should be fully cycled for the number of fish in it, we have 4 small severums 2 small firemouths 2 large angels and a feather fin. we are thinking of adding a pair of silver dollars today. does anyone think adding two more fish would be a problem ???????????????
 
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