Rob E.

Welcome to the forum Victor, and welcome back to the hobby! Do you have a favorite American cichlid? I haven't kept many large cichlids, but did have a firemouth when I was a kid, really fond memories.

Please do share, I'd love to see what you come up with! Many of my tanks are starting to have the same look, and I could use some fresh ideas. Good luck with your fish order, I hope they arrive safe.

I'm sorry for the "chia pet" sponge filter. I think it looks kinda cool, and can't bring myself to clean it :) I set this tank up with sand in the front, and painted black gravel in the back, separated by a thin strip of twin wall polycarbonite. I planted micro sword in the back hoping it would fill in and create a nice thick hideout in back. That plant has never really done well for me, so I think I might put dwarf sag back there with maybe some floating guppy grass or frog bit to reduce the algae growth. I had a ton of duckweed in there at one point, (I think around the time they spawned) After I removed it all, I started getting the algae growth. Since the tank is turned breeder style, I figured the front would be where most of the food ended up, so I wanted to give them some cover while foraging, but still allow me to see through the tank. The anubias nana has grown quite large and works well up front I think. The CoOp use to sell nano dragon stone and big bags of loose spider wood branches, so that is what I have sprinkled in the front. I was bummed when they stopped carrying them and not sure where to get them now. And of course I had to have the Star wars AT-AT in there, I may try adding a spawning mop if I ever get around to breeding them intentionally.

I don't have any pictures of that tank, but I'd be happy to take some and post them tomorrow. All the lights are off right now and I'd feel bad waking them up. Here's an old picture of one corner of my fish room just for fun. 12x20highs on the left, 6x10s in the center (pygmy cory's are in the top left 10 gallon), and 6x 40 breeders on the right.

I set up a 10 gallon species only pygmy cory tank last winter and its been a great tank so far. I think I started with 8 from my LFS and they spawned shortly after to my surprise. There has to be twenty to thirty in there now and they seem happy to me. They often swim around in a big swarm of cuteness. My initial thought was for you to get 20 right of the bat, but then I wondered if that would prevent them from breeding, and you said that you wanted to have a colony mostly breed in you tank. I know that some species will stop breeding if they feel they are at capacity. In my tank, they bred that first time and haven't breed since, but I also haven't tried to trigger them either. I would say go with 10, and if only 6 survive you should have a good enough sized group to get a colony started. If you do go with 20, I wouldn't be worried about being overcrowded, mine love being part of a large group.

What I think most people do is partially cover the feed slot with a piece of scotch tape. Cory had a video on it along time ago using the Eheim auto feeder. It really works well for fine tuning the feed rate. You can certainly use flake food in the auto feeder, but pellets work the best because they have a more uniform size.

I think the mini sponge will fit. I had a spare medium size pre-filter sponge laying around (same inside diameter) so I tried it just now and it fit on, was a bit loose actually. I angle the output nozzle toward the glass to help hold it there. I'm assuming that you want to dampen the outflow and I think that the CoOp mini pre-filter sponge is a great idea. A few years ago I wanted to do the same thing and I used the fluval edge pre-filter sponge on the outlet. It is a much finer sponge and I felt that it reduce the flow too much. I found a site called spec-tanks that showed different mods. one of them was to poke a hole in the discharge line inside the pump chamber to recirculate flow. I had my heater in that chamber and it worked good for awhile. eventually i felt the tank wasn't maintaining temperature well enough and just moved the heater into the main tank with an airstone under it.

I think you would be fine with either 3/4" or 1". I went with 1" because I just copied what Cory did in his fish room videos. That way I was sure what size diamond bit I needed. Also I used 1" for my air header so I had plenty of leftover PVC for the overflows. I feel like the larger size would also allow any debris to pass through better, preventing blockage of the overflow.

I wonder if what you were seeing was a temperature controller. They act as a backup thermostat, the normal heater plugs into it so if the heater fails to turn off and the water gets too warm, it will cut power and save your fish.

Congratulations on the babies! I would just add them in with the adults, assuming there are no predators in the tank, they should be fine. I would definitely cover the filter intake with some fine filter pad or something, they will get in there. Try to add some hiding places for them to feel safe, moss, rock piles, cholla wood, etc.

I heat my fish room to around 78 degrees, and my mbuna tanks are usually between 74 and 76 depending on the season and I haven't had any issues so far. Most of my tanks are a little below room temp, my guess is natural evaporative cooling, so your tanks might be in the upper 60's if you heat to 70. Just my opinion, but I don't think it would be a good idea. They might survive, but It would be a considerable stress factor, so if there is aggression, sickness, or water quality issues then the results would compound. I would use a heater if possible, I think you would have a better experience.

Before I built my fish room and started using the CoOp piston pump, I used a couple Fluval Q series diaphragm pumps to run my tanks and I was pretty happy with them. I used the fluval Q .5 for 2 tanks (40 breeder and a 20 long) , and then the Fluval Q2 for 5 tanks (3x 10's and 2x 20 longs). Both pumps were about maxed out if I remember correctly The Q2 is maybe $35, 4 watts and 4L/min. You would probably need 3 of these pumps to run the rack you are planning, but I think it could work. Using airstones in all your sponge filters makes a huge difference if you want to get more tanks out of an air pump. I've heard that the tetra whisper pumps are good too, but I've never used one so I can't compare them to the fluval pumps.

A few years ago I bought some 10g tanks from my LFS, and one of them had a deep blue label covered by a Seapora label. After that, I always just assumed that they were owned or manufactured by the same company.

lol, my tank is very creepy! It use to look really nice, had it aquascaped with nano fish. Eventually I made it into a pea puffer tank and it became more difficult to manage the algae and cyanobacteria. The pea puffers got a bigger tank now, with auto water change. I really should have torn it down by now, but I'm oddly fascinated by how terrible it looks.

@PineSong The smell that you are describing sounds too strong to be cyanobacteria, my first thought is that maybe there is some old fish food stuck to the tank rim or lid, or a maybe a dead snail. I have this tank in my kitchen that I've been fighting cyanobacteria for years. I've gotten rid of it multiple times using antibiotics and blackouts, but it always comes back. I finally decided to move the fish about a month ago, but haven't had time to tear down the tank. As bad as it is, I can't smell anything from it right now. I normally only smell it if I'm trying to manually remove it.