# Mbuna tank complete!



## Sinister-Kisses (Jul 19, 2013)

It's been many years since I had an mbuna tank. I've done lots of mbuna tanks over the years, but I honestly can't remember the last one. I worked my way into large tanks, 8 and 6ft ones with large CA cichlids over the years, though one tank was a hap/peacock tank. Two years ago I decided to shut down all my big tanks, and keep only two 5gals at the time with bettas. That progressed into importing extremely expensive bettas from overseas and breeding them for about a year and a half. We got a new puppy back in April and I didn't have time to do both the betta babies and the baby dog, so I shut down my breeding room and just kept a handful of pet bettas. My largest tank was a 33gal, which was a betta sorority. I got tired of that, as I"m prone to do, about a month and a half ago, and decided I wanted to get back into a cichlid tank. Working with a small size like a 33 can be limiting of course, so I weighed my options and decided to set it up as a brichardi tank. However, that got me thinking about mbuna, and while not something I wanted to cram into a 33, I had an LFS order me in a new 40 long which arrived last week. I got it set up over this past weekend, and it's stocked with albino L. caeruleus and Cynotilapia sp. "hara" so I could have colourful females in the mix as well. They are settling in nicely and I'm happy to have a cichlid tank once again. Still a bit cloudy from the new sand, but I'm happy with how it turned out and the fish seem to approve. Going back to a mbuna rock work tank after a couple years of heavily planted betta tanks takes some getting used to, I keep expecting to see green in there lol.


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## Deeda (Oct 12, 2012)

Oooh nice job on the tank setup and fish!


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## sledge27 (Aug 13, 2012)

Looks real good!


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## Greg_Young (Aug 24, 2020)

Your rockwork looks great! 
Are those Seiryu rocks?
How many pounds of rock did you add?
Thanks,
Greg


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## jcover (Apr 18, 2014)

That looks great!


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## Sinister-Kisses (Jul 19, 2013)

Greg_Young said:


> Your rockwork looks great!
> Are those Seiryu rocks?
> How many pounds of rock did you add?
> Thanks,
> Greg


Thank you! I have exactly zero idea what the rocks are. They're whatever is local here, I gathered them from outdoors lol.

I'm terrible at guesstimating...but probably about 100lbs of rock?


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## Mudkicker1 (Aug 6, 2013)

Very cool tank

Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk


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## JimSparks (Apr 7, 2020)

Looks very nice. Is that a spot light or a strip light that is shorter than the tank. Very cool effect!


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## Sinister-Kisses (Jul 19, 2013)

JimSparks said:


> Looks very nice. Is that a spot light or a strip light that is shorter than the tank. Very cool effect!


Thank you. It's an LED light bar/strip that is shorter. Tank is 48" long, I think this is a 24" light. I always down size the lighting on my tanks, the "proper" sized lighting is always way too much for my tastes - plus usually fills the tank full of algae pretty quickly. I'll use a "2gal light" on my 10gal tanks, for example.


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