# Tank is ready! Pretty excited!



## ferrah182 (Jan 31, 2014)

Here is a picture of my 90 gallon bowfront tank that I am turning into a mbuna tank. I am quite proud of it. I am new to African Cichlids, but not new to aquarium keeping. My tank is finally cycled, it still took almost two weeks on a fishless cycle even with a boost from cycled media! 
Anyway I decided to go with terra cotta pots because I'm in Canada and all our fabulous river rocks are buried under three feet of rocks right now! I went to the home supply stores to look for appropriate landscaping rocks but they're all out until spring, bummer! Then I went to the pet store and they want $30 for a medium sized holey rock...ummm no thanks. So terra cotta it is until spring thaw. I have some more terra cotta pots to add later, right now I'm siliconing terra cotta formations in the basement because when I tried to put more terra cotta pots and stack them higher the creation got pretty unstable. So I am silconing some formations that will make the structures more stable and I can stack the pots higher...phew!
My substrate is pool filter sand and crushed coral. My filtration is an Eheim Pro II and a Fluval 406. 
I am picking up my first group of mbuna tomorrow. I am SO excited. I went to the lfs today and bought the food the breeder recommended. I got so excited at the fish store that I went a bit mad and bought all three of the brands recommended to me, maybe overkill, haha oops. I got the Xtreme, New Life Spectrum and Dainichi. Can you tell I'm pumped?
Here is is, feel free to make suggestions


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

Attractive!

As you know with mbuna you want to fill the tank to the waterline with rocks but I see why that has to wait until spring. Since you did a fishless cycle you are adding all the fish at once, right?

I've tried a couple of things with both terra cotta and PVC, this was my experience. I made a triangle to the waterline with PVC lengths siliconed together. I found it held too much debris and was too disruptive to remove it for cleaning. I tried cutting doorway holes in terra cotta but found the fish did not use the "cave" that much. It did, however, make a good platform for stacking.

For now, know that the males will want one of the pots on the substrate, and any associated substrate in front of it. (It's the females that use the stacks of rocks higher up in the tank to hide.) You want to create space between the territories so the males can't see each other or at least have boundary markers to defend.

So first I would face half of the terra cotta pots to the back so there are territories all the way around your stack. You want way more territories than males. Then I would arrange the rocks you have to divide the territories. Even if there is just one rock between 2 territories the fish will use it to draw an imaginary line and chase intruders to the other side of the rock.


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## ferrah182 (Jan 31, 2014)

Those are great suggestions, I will for sure be doing some rearranging as per your suggestions when I get home from work before I pick up the fish. I am getting one large group today (12-15 fish) and then picking up a second large group (about 10 fish) in a couple weeks. I'm not sure how the introduction of the second group will go, I'm a little worried of that.
In the original post I meant that river rocks are buried under three feet of SNOW! Snow! Not rocks, that would be silly.


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

I figured you meant ice, but still a problem!


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## spotmonster (Nov 23, 2006)

Paint the back or add a background to hide all those cables and the white wall :thumb:


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## atreis (Jan 15, 2013)

spotmonster said:


> Paint the back or add a background to hide all those cables and the white wall :thumb:


x2. You'll be amazed at how much of a difference this simple change makes.


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## Iggy Newcastle (May 15, 2012)

What type of silicone are you using?


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