May as well introduce myself. I live in devon where, when i bought the house, i inherited the in-the-wall 125 gallon. Luckily enough the previous owners had things setup fairly well but, never having kept fish before, there was a learning curve. The tank was stocked with Malawi Cichlids for the most part which is a theme i've kept ever since although i did redo the tank removing the blue pebble substrate and sunken ship theme, and replacing with tahitian moon sand and a large amount of tufa rock. The original inhabitants consisted of 4 ps. Acei 2m2f, 1 OB Peacock, 1 Sunburst Peacock, 2 Electric Yellow 2m, and then the oddballs, 1 Red Jewel, 1 12" common pleco, 1 6" Synodontis Eupterus, 1 7" Sun Catfish.
In the process of learning about fisk keeping in general there were a couple of losses but also many fry. I lost one of the female Acei due to the males beating up on her, the second female when medicating both a male and female together in the same hospital tank for fungus. The male started feeling better and getting frisky and proceeded to 'frisky' the female to death within the inescapable confines of the hospital tank. Finally i lost a male while on vacation due to reasons unknown. Likely a dominance fight again? Who knows.
Although losing 3 of the 4 acei was a little frustrating a lot was learned about male-female aggression and several mistakes i made such as hospital tanking a male and a female won't be made again. However there is always a silver lining. While i did have the females in the tank i noticed they tended to be holding eggs/fry quite often so on one of my early attempts to learn what i was doing, i moved one of the females to a 2nd tank, a 20 Gallon, and allowed her to spit her fry. Now surprisingly enough i must have cycled the tank correctly and to date haven't messed up too badly since other than a couple early deaths and a couple cannabilism's they are all still growing like weeds and several of the more dominant males are nearly ready to join the big tank. I will likely limit the number of them in the big tank to 2 or 3 males and 6-9 females. Either than or limit the big tank to just males and only remove for breeding if i can find a venue to sell the juvi's
There have been other additions to the 125 such as some (3) red empress females (male fry are growing out right now) 3 Female lwands's (male fry once again growing out) 2 Sunburst females (many fry growing out and the males are already spectacularly colored at 1.5 - 2 inches) A 6" Green Severum rescue. (somehow he has handled the higher ph water and gets along nicely) And another 2 properly colored electric yellows. Also a raphael catfish rescue kicking around in there somewhere. Doesn't come out often.
Speaking of doesn't come out often, i wasnt even aware of the sun catfish for the first 6 months of ownership. There was one particular ornament that he hid in the back cavity of and i wasn't often watching in the middle of the night when he likes to come out. Early one morning i came downstairs to find the little fatty cruising the tank. I call him that because of his rediculous beer gut. I guess sitting in an ornament only coming out to eat isn't conducive to watching one's waistline.
As far as tanks go I started with one... now my wife just shakes her head. I've got the 125, a 55 gallon species only Demasoni tank, a 45 Gallon Oceanic that i just resealed and haven't decided whether to try saltwater on yet, 2x 20 Gallon fry growout tanks, 1 18 gallon half hex with some (5) small clown loaches, 2 Altum angels, 2 SAE,1 Albino bristlenose, and 1 (left of 3 ) small pathetic danio's (2 became angel vacation food methinks), Also 3 10 gallon, fry growout/refugium tanks.
I need to get a 75 or 90 gallon long tank and subdivide to decrease the maintenance on all the small tanks.
Oh yeah and a 18 gallon seamless bowfront that i'll likely turn into the demasoni fry tank when i get the time.
Well thats about it for now i think... I'll grab some pictures of the tanks as well sometime in the near future.
