Greetings from the Carolinas

[Aiptasia]

Hey ya'll. Just wanted to introduce myself. I live on the Carolina coast and i've been in the hobby for about 25 years now. I'm glad I found your forums, they look very well designed and maintained. I usually hang out over at www.petfish.net and www.reefcentral.com.

I'm starting to get more interested in tropical catfish and African cichlids since hearing about the devestation of their wild habitats. I moved into a new home recently and i'm going to be converting my two car garage into a true fish breeding room. I've had some experience with breeding cichlids (SA and AF) but would like your help in learning and educating myself on Zebra plecs before I take the proverbial plunge.

Now, if I could only find a forum for blue eyed plecs.

Here's a recent project I just finished, the installation of my 185 gallon African Cichlid tank in my LR. Sapphire glass with completely enclosed cabinetry. Ten day fishless cycle using bio-spira. Eco complete small grained substrate (mostly aragonite) at 1/4"-1/2" depth. Big strawberry pots for caves. Wet/dry setup with an additional magnum HOT canister filter in the sump running purigen chemical media. UV filter and chiller. Water parameters: 74 deg. f., pH 8.6, 220 ppm TDS. I use a Kent Marine Deion 200-R (no wastewater) for replacement water cleaning and Seachem buffers and water change about 20 gallons a week.

The only thing I can't seem to figure out how to do is to set the date/time in my new camera.

[smithrc]

welcome to the boards

Very nice setup you have there - sounds like the future zebs will be well looked after

[Frontyking]

welcome to the boards and enjoy your stay.

Nick.

[Mindy]

Welcome Aiptasia... there's plenty of info to be had here about Zebras and a few others as well. Have you looked on Planetcatfish.com for info on the Blue Eyed Plec?

[Plastic Mac]

Welcome to the forums

That's a great looking tank you got there...if your zeb tank gets even half the effort of that one, it'll no doubt be a great looking tank.

Plastic Mac

[Rob]

Aiptasia

Welcoms to zebrapleco.com !!!! Glad you like it, and I't only just getting going! We have los of new developments on the horizon so watch this space.

That is an absolutely amazing tank you have tehre. HOw long has it been running for?

enjoy the site!

rob

[Aiptasia]

Thanks guys, glad to be here .

Umm the 185 gallon tank has been up and running for about a month now. I was able to get away with it by using three packets of bio-spira and a week's worth of fishless cycle before all of the ammonia and nitrite were at zero. I've got to hand it to marineland labs, it's the first time i've used bio-spira to cycle a tank and it works as advertised according to my test kits.

Most of the cichlids are haps and peacocks which came from dykemyster's fish in Summerville, S.C.. There's livingstonii, compriceps, venestus, rubicens, boyeri, pseudotropheus.. all kinds of nice cichlids in there in pairs and trios. I just transferred in a gold nugget pleco from another AF cichlid tank and he's adjusting to the size of his new environment. It's a pretty aggressive setup but by stocking it heavily, peace is achieved through attrition.

I wanted some nice cave structures but I wanted to limit the amount of extra weight, and I was also limited by the portals at the top of the tank. The sapphire glass is box framed and there are three 17"x 13" access panels with custom fit hinged glass canpies covering them, and I just couldnt find the right sized texas holey rock or slate structure to build in there. So, it struck me to use strawberry pots with 3" openings. The biggest strawberry pot has about six of it's holes converted to true caves. I used some 3" diameter PVC, PVC elbows and even an old coffeecup and margarine tub and just used two part marine epoxy to turn the holes into true caves. Then stuck artificial plants in a few of the holes up front to hide the PVC caving inside the pot. The smaller pot I just left empty on it's side. They turned out really well and aesthetically pleasing (fish love them) while adding almost no extra weight.

Now, to design a tank or two for the zebra plecs. I'm torn, I have two empty 20 gallon tanks in my garage that I could clean up and set up for them, but i'd rather use those tanks for my fishroom project and just set up another display tank, either in my den or my master bedroom. I guess I have MTS (multiple tank syndrome) pretty bad, eh?

I'll ask again about possible L046 tank setup options in the proper forum, probably somtime this weekend.

Thanks again for the warm welcome!