Stock me up

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
A

AR15

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jun 24, 2010
13
0
0
Pennsylvania
First off I’d like to say hello as this is my first post on the forum. I’ll give you a little background on myself and then I’d ask that you offer some opinions on a stocking list for me. Not necessarily what I want but what you would do yourself if you were setting up a new aquarium. Sorry if this is a little long but I’d like to provide as much info up front to hopefully make this a little easier for everyone.

As for me…..I have a total of a month and a half aquarium experience :) Unless you count when I was a kid I guess and begged my mom for a 10 gal aquarium. I’d stock it and they would die. Stock it again and they would die. That lasted a few months and my mom finally said no more and I’ve never looked back at aquariums before now. No wonder the bad experience though because there was no information provided on water changes vs. just topping it off, never heard of cycling, no idea on what fish would go together, etc. Set up for failure from the beginning!

So this time around I’ve done a lot of research but have a lot to learn. I picked up a 55gal completely stocked and found I like it so I browsed Craiglist and picked up a 110 gal Oceanic so I could build one from scratch with fish that I will find interesting for the long haul. I'll also be asking question on tank setup but will hit the correct section for that.

I want to take my time with this and get the most stable environment as possible from the first stocking. There is a wealth of information on this site but not much that I can find on stocking a 110. The 125 has an extra foot on me so with my reading the surface area may come into play vs. what I may have been be able to do with a 125.

Figured the best way to help ensure this would be to ask the experts what they would do themselves. I will take any opinions very seriously and who knows….Maybe one of you will hit the nail on the head.

My setup came with the tank (obviously), a Fluval FX5, a ton of gravel, quite a bit of slate rock and a piece of driftwood that I rather like. I didn’t trust the heaters he had in there as they looked pretty beat up and had gravel stuck all over them as they were hidden under the bed. Anyway….I picked up two Marineland Stealth submersible heaters with a 75 gal capacity each figuring that would cover me.

The single stipulation in this stocking list is that I want to use a Green Terror as my primary centerpiece.

One other possible concern is I may either need to look at trading in a Rainbow shark out of my 55 or it may need moved into the 110. It’s only around 3” at the moment and never really shows aggression towards any of the fish until feeding time but I have a feeling that’s going to get worse as it gets bigger. The other two reasons I have for this trade or move is that I think the tank may be overstocked when the fish are full grown and I have read multiple times not to attempt stocking a Rainbow with Bala Sharks. As it is now though here is the community I got with the 55. I’m almost done with this post so please bear with me. Figured I might as well give you that list while I’m at it as you may have other ideas.

2 Bala Sharks (7”), 3 Silver Dollars (4-5”), 1 Rainbow Shark (3”), 5 cory cats, 2 dwarf gourami. Rainbow doesn’t mess with anything but the dwarf gourami’s and only during feeding but if that keeps up it’s going to cause havoc in the community down the road. So there it is……I look forward to you opinions. Set yourself (me) up with your perfect 110 Cichlid tank :) Thanks
 
ok so i would move the balas to the larger tank once set up since IMO they get too large for a 55g and if the rainbow is causing trouble then you could move him over there as well. as for stock for the 110, GTs are great fish hardest trick is finding a healthy one since they are prone to parasitic and bacterial infections, for GTs it is really imperative that they be quarantined first in a smaller tank (since it will be cheaper to treat a smaller tank than a larger one) as for additional stock that is more commonly available you could add a couple severums (just have them be larger than the GT) or could do an oscar but then you could only really have the oscar and GT with dithers or what not. IME jack dempseys and GTs dont get along once older so i wouldnt try that one. not sure what else to suggest but i think you could get away with adding 2 other semi-aggressive cichlids that stay 10in or under
 
Thank you for your thoughts. I was hoping to just upgrade my 55 to a 75 as the bala's got a bit bigger rather than putting them in the 110 but if you still think that is too small I will need to rethink. The problem with putting them in the 110 for me is that I can't say I'm a big fan of them. They remind me a river chub I might catch in a local stream and for some reason that turns me off of them. However....I got them with the tank and if need be I'll add them. As for the Oscar....It was actually a 3 way tossup for me on either an Oscar, JD, or the GT as my primary. GT won out but narrowly so I suppose I'm even a bit flexible on that. Just seem to like the look of the GT and all of the videos I checked out on youtube it seemed the JD were always hiding out or backing into cover during the filming. Maybe that's not their true personality but that's what I got from the video's.
 
yeah some JDs are very skittish but not all, but you will have better luck finding a good personality GT than a JD while its almost guaranteed with and Oscar. looks wise i def prefer a nice male GT but nothing beats the personality of an oscar so thats just up to your personal preference of what you would rather have. as for the bala sharks a 75g would be fine for them but if you dont like them i would just try and find a new home for them. i started out by taking in some fish i didnt necessarily want or were different from what i originally wanted but was always kind of unhappy with it so now ive rehomed some fish and have it back to more what i was originally wanting and i find im a lot more content with my stock. you could also put a different nice showcase cichlid or small breeding pair in the 55g as well if you got rid of them
 
I'll be honest I expected a little more support or suggestions from the group. Maybe I came off the wrong way although I don't know how. Just tried to provide the most information possible. I'm new to aquariums and was looking for some suggestions on keeping the species that caught my interest is all. Do I need to try another forum or is this just the typical welcome for new members? I'm not a 16 yr old kid that's going to get upset or just do whatever I want regardless of what you tell me. I'm 40 yrs old and here to learn.....I grew up without the Internet during my first try years ago as a kid and assumed a board of dedicated fish keepers could certainly go a long way towards success this time around. What's wrong with my question??

Sarah88.....This obviously doesn't include you and I can't thank you enough for taking the time out of your day to answer me. I can't say I hate the bala's. They eat like pigs and add something to the 55. Just don't want them in my primary display tank. Finding that community relaxing is what got me interested in the next phase so I won't say I hate them. No possible way to fit another aquarium in this apt though so I'll have some decisions to make in that regard down the road. Take care Sarah88 and thanks again for the support
 
I'll be honest I expected a little more support or suggestions from the group. Maybe I came off the wrong way although I don't know how. Just tried to provide the most information possible. I'm new to aquariums and was looking for some suggestions on keeping the species that caught my interest is all. Do I need to try another forum or is this just the typical welcome for new members? I'm not a 16 yr old kid that's going to get upset or just do whatever I want regardless of what you tell me. I'm 40 yrs old and here to learn.....I grew up without the Internet during my first try years ago as a kid and assumed a board of dedicated fish keepers could certainly go a long way towards success this time around. What's wrong with my question??

Sarah88.....This obviously doesn't include you and I can't thank you enough for taking the time out of your day to answer me. I can't say I hate the bala's. They eat like pigs and add something to the 55. Just don't want them in my primary display tank. Finding that community relaxing is what got me interested in the next phase so I won't say I hate them. No possible way to fit another aquarium in this apt though so I'll have some decisions to make in that regard down the road. Take care Sarah88 and thanks again for the support
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sorry you feel that way i would like to help but what else would you like to know that sarah hasn't told you?
 
There lies half the problem I think. I don't really quite know what I'm looking for here. I'm a researcher and not a board person but after weeks of reading and reading I'm just not comfortable with what I want or what I can have and that bothers me. I've see the stocking lists of multiple 125's but mine has a foot less of length so I'm assuming I can't use those as a good guidline in my case? I want CA/SA and Sarah hit it perfectly with my top 3 considerations. In that I learned something valuable as to not try mixing the GT with a JD which I may have very well tried as I do like both. I guess that's what I'm looking for. A stock list that with everyone's experience on this site they feel would be acceptable in the 110. Not sparce, not overcrowded, not aggressive to the point of WWIII. Just what you would do yourselves if it was yours and you wanted a nice display. Skip the stipluation on the GT if you will. Just examples of what you would do as it will help me understand at the same time. Eg.....I GT, 3 convicts, etc, etc I understand that what everyone likes is completely subjective and as stupid as it seem as a request.....Seeing what everyone else would do and knowing that you feel it would work in your own situation...That will help me
 
well it really depends on what do you like? you could try eartheaters or geos, severums, maybe a crencichla.
i would think two longer bodied cichlids with 3 lower lvl cichlids, and your centerpiece cichlid maybe a nicely colored severum (i found mine had nice personalities) might work that would have a nice look to it
 
It really does depend on what you like. If it were me, I would personally go with the a male GT, a male severum, and then a pair of either Rainbows or Acaras(both fish are peaceful breeders and won't make your tank a war zone during spawning). But then again if you look at my stock listing other than the acaras those are the some of the fish that I keep.

I think that if you really want to do the JD & GT you should give it a try. A 110 should be enough room for both, if you put a cave on each side of the tank the JD will most likely claim one and post up there. As long as the GT isn't insistent on trying to get in and aggravate the JD.

There is a lot you could do with a 110 it's just depends on your personal preference.
 
yeah i mean you def could try the JD and GT, you may get lucky. i was just saying IME and from what ive heard from some others they seem to not like each other too much but then again in my tank, when i had my male GT he always fought with the JD, but last month right before i got rid of the JD, he had actually paired up with my female GT (male jumped like 6mnths ago) and my tank is a 5ft 120g so its the same length as yours, so who knows you may get lucky, with these fish its really a matter of getting lucky with individuals who tolerate each other

as for me personally on stocking that tank, for a more aggressive tank i would go with a male GT and Male midas with some silver dollars or other dithers that get large enough to not eventually get eaten.

for a more peaceful tank i would go with 2 male severums (one rotkeil, one nice efasciatus variant or gold) and some angels and larger growing tetras

so its really up to you about which you would like more, i personally like having a mroe peaceful tank where they aren't constantly tearing at each others fins but i also like the look and personality of the more aggressive cichlids so right now im really lucky with my tank in that i have 4 aggressive cichlid juveniles that are so far getting along really well. ive gotten lucky so far though and things could definitely change as they age and i plan on only having 3 in there long term (my current stock is 1 midas, 1 festae, 1 carpintis vontehillo, 1 vieja argentea ranging in size from the smallest being the festae @3in and carp being largest at 6-6.5in, and then i have 3 pictus and 3 senegals and am hoping to add in a school of 15 tiger barbs once they have grown out large enough to not get eaten by the sens)
 
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