Jaykit

Wow thats crazy.

Unless you are going to be growing high light live plants in the tank, LEDs or t5s are not required. Any high light plant that would require LEDs or T5s would typically be ripped out or eaten by your african cichlids. The live plants that are usually grown with african cichlids are usually low light plants like java fern or anubis and such. For lighting you would be able to go down to home depot or any other hardware store and grab a t8 or t12 bulb shop light fixture and mount it over your tank. They usually come in 2 or 4 bulb set-ups so if you want that extra light grab the 4 bulb system.

Bolt Supply House will have any size of screw that you would need. Just take one of the screws to match it too and it will cost you maybe $0.50

I have lots of tetras and smaller fish in a heavily planted tank with a group of 15 angels. Everyone gets along quite peacefully with no losses or problems.

Great looking group!

Best bulbs from what i have read are the 5000k or 6500k bulbs. This however is up in the air though as many people agree to just go with the color of bulbs that you like and the plants will grow anyways and thus the 10,000k bulbs would work just as good. Plants also need the entire spectrum of light for optimal grow and thus its recommended to have bulbs of different kelvin rating to get the peak points of a larger portion of the spectrum. In my set-up i run with 8 t5ho bulbs being 2-6500k, 4-10,000k and 2 - 5000k, its not my favorite set-up because of the yellowish tinge to everything in the tank but the plants are loving it and grow like weeds. For your set-up i would recommend going with 1-6500k and 1-10000k in each of the no fixtures. You should have no problem locating your bulbs at totem or home depot for a much better price than an lfs.

Thats an amazing photo. What kind of camera set-up are you using?

Great looking tank.

Congrats, they are beautiful fish. Now we must demand pictures! :thumbs:

Great looking set-up. You'll be overrun with shrimp in no time.

Great looking fish!

Agree!

From my little experience, its more an age thing but i could be wrong. Here's some info for you: http://animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/cichlid/RedZebra.php

Great looking tank shots.

Great looking fish!

Great looking set-up. What are the dimensions on that?

I agree.

I would be hesitant to put 3 180g tanks on one stand just because it doesn't seem right. Although previously being a welder i have no doubt that the stand will hold up. Definetly want some pictures when its all loaded up. Any more pics of the nova?

Great looking gars.

Those are some great looking fish!

Great looking tanks!

I would agree that in a 33g tank you probably wouldn't really need them but rather just increase your groups size. Although, for an answer: I've got 3 groups of serpae, black neon, and cardinal tetras that are a great color that stand out and are always swimming around in a group in the upper portions of my tank. As mentioned, "Guppies, Danios, Cyps, anything that occupies the top/med. of the tank will work".

Great looking tank.

Wow thats awesome! :drool:

Nice looking rays. :thumbs: