hey was wondering if anyone else has cichlids in a paludarium type set-up? thinking of totally overhauling my 120g and trying discus for the midwater and keeping my geo surinams for on the bottom. my surinamensis are all still quite small with the largest being about 3in, but if i do the paludarium set up there would only be about 75-80 gallons of water available for the fish so this may be too much of a bio-load for me to keep up with... right now i have all my current fish in about this volume of water since i had a hatchling turtle in there with them and everything was fine, so i would think with less fatty fish in there that it would be alright?? also does anyone have any suggestions for building this type of set-up? i was thinking of doing an acrylic shelf with a small wall to keep in all the soil and make a waterfall feature in one end from the filter input. and holding up the ledge by using some thin PVC tubes throughout the shelf (maybe 6 or so) and cover them in styrofoam and make styrofoam branches/roots coming off of them so make it look kind of like an amazonian root system and hiding the ugly pvc creating all the branches for the under water deco leaving most of the bottom clear for the geos... iv never actually built anything like this though soo any suggestions would be appreciated haha
SAs in Paludarium set-up?
- Thread starter Sarah88
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only thing is to make sure you hide that pvc, Cant stand that crap, the root system sounds cool though
Something you're going to want to buy is Great Stuff Pond and Stone foam.
It is fish safe and doesn't affect water parameters (I have tanks running with it right now). You spray it, it expands and dries, and then you cam carve it into whatever shape you want. Great for filling in gaps too.
It is fish safe and doesn't affect water parameters (I have tanks running with it right now). You spray it, it expands and dries, and then you cam carve it into whatever shape you want. Great for filling in gaps too.
yeah i am definitely going to be using quite a bit of that haha, im thinking i might just avoid the acrylic and just do styrofoam (and great stuff) encasing an eggcrate shelf since i was going to use egg crate for the structure of the walls of the water fall feature anyways, and that seems like it would be less hassle than bonding acrylic and what not
sooo a person in the discus forum thinks that 16in would be alright but not optimal for 6discus and that water level should be at least 20in....any of you guys have any thoughts on this? i definitely want to do the paludarium set up and the more i look at pictures of them and think of ways to carve it up the most realistic way possible the more i cant wait to get started on it so im definitely doing that whether i do the discus or not, if its not going to be ideal for the discus then i will just keep my argentea and put in a large school of serpaes and call it a day and see how big i can get my argentea 