The Puffer Forum

My 155 gallon tank has arrived! I am cleaning and setting it up as we speak!

EDIT: The previous owner actually had some fish left in the tank and I got a beautiful 5" Calico Ryukin and some 4" Convict Cichlids for free with the tank!

Great find! What are you going to do with the "extra" fish?

The owner had a 20 and a 29 gallon setup that she gave me for free as a part of the deal. I paid her a few days ago and got the small tanks first to get them set up and cycled while the large one was broken down, this way all of the fish will have somewhere to go while I get the large one set up and cycled. I setup both tanks and ran them for 24 hours after treating the water and then used a bacterial supplement. I have placed the Calico Ryukin with my other goldfish in the 55G and the Cichlids in the 29G.

I want to either keep the Cichlids (they are Convicts I believe) in the 55G or the 29G, however the 29G has a nice sand substrate and some flat sandstone rocks that can be stacked to make underwater caves and ledges as this was actually their former home shown in the second picture here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=29933

I may either make the old 55G or the 20G another puffer tank. (Dwarfs or Fig8's)

But all of this was $400 plus gas money for them to transport it. I checked at Petsmart and this would have retailed at around $1500 so this was the deal of a lifetime!

400 dollars all in sounds very good to me. Nice find.

Here is the big beautiful Calico Ryukin taking up temporary residence in my 55G.


And here are the Convict Cichlids in the 29G settling in nicely.


Not bad for free fish?

Nice 155g tank mate, very jealous

that is sweet. Nicely done I love the Ryukins they have so much personality.

I have never wanted a goldfish or two more than ever. I am super jealous of the tank buy and your luck! Congrats dude! =D

Thanks everyone! This could not have came at a better time with tax season and all!

Anyways I have the thing set up and ready to go and I have added some bacterial treatment to the water to get it cycled tonight. I believe I should be able to add my fish in a couple days or so. That big Ryukin is looking restless and ready to move back into his home and I know my little guys are gonna go nuts inside this big new home they got! I bet they will get big and beautiful in there just like the other one that I "adopted"!




I happened to stop by Petsmart tonight to get a couple medium airstones for the tank and some food for the Cichlids when I noticed that they were having a big sale on Marineland filters and I got a Emperor 400 for $50! Now this tank will have two Emperor 400 filters instead of one along with a Maxijet 1200!

My only concern is that sand bed. Anything deeper than 1/2", must be thoroughly stirred every week.

That is true and I had discussed that with the previous owner on this issue. She had the tank setup for 5 years without doing a total teardown and that is actually not all sand in there, how she had it set up is that there is some undergravel filter plates powered by two 170GPH reverse flow powerheads that force the water up through the plates and substrate with 1-2 inches of penny and nickel sized coarse gravel placed directly on top of the plates, then the sand was placed on top of that as the water will flow through the coarse gravel and stir the sand subtly. It is supposed to make substrate maintenance a little bit easier since this is such a large and deep tank.

But I don't disagree with you and the sand should probably still be stirred a bit from time to time.

For higher tanks you can buy 30" or longer gravel cleaner extensions to at to the end of your siphon.

Cool deal I will look into one of those. I just moved my fish in there today!

You're not using the UGF are you?

Well by traditional means no. As I stated above it was also part of the tanks previous setup. I understand why most people nowadays shun the UG system but I had always preferred it as a secondary filtration system using the reverse flow system with Powerheads as it draws water down through the uplift tube and stirs up the substrate and debris from underneath the plates so my two HOB filters (Emperor 400's) can get the missed debris and it helps when doing substrate cleaning/stirring. I had based it off of this info here: http://home.comcast.net/~tabco/rfugf.htm

But I understand everyone has different preferences and experiences.