Quick question

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seankh
 
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:42 pm

Quick question

by seankh

Ok well i was doing a little more research on all my fish and i found out that when full grown ill have 77 inches of fish in a 55 gallon tank is this gonna be a problem? All my fish are mbunas except the albino peacock and the frontosa and i know i shouldnt mix them but i did. What do yall think?


Peterkarig3210
 
Posts: 1980
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:04 am

by Peterkarig3210

Wait for Gumbii or Miami. They're cichlid experts. I heard that cichlids do best a little over crouded for territorial reasons, but you'll also need to have extra filtration.


seankh
 
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:42 pm

by seankh

i have a whisper 60 a ugf and a penguin 200 with a bio wheel as filtration i tink i have enough filtration.


miami754
 
Posts: 373
Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:18 am

by miami754

Since you are already aware of the problems in mixing the front and the peacock with the mbunas, I will answer your question without going into that,

77 inches of mbunas in a 55 gallon tank is just fine. That is about the amount of cichlids I have in my 58. Now, your problem is that you do not have the filtration for this amount of fish. Putting 77" of mbunas in there is great for controlling aggression assuming you have the right mix of mbunas, but you have to overfilter to compensate for the added load. In a normal tank, you want to generally combine filters such that they are rated at 10x the volume of your tank. The reason you have to have such a large mutliplier is because the filters are rated with no media and at zero lift. If you have filters rated at 10x your tank volume, you will probably end up filtering your tank's entire volume of water 2-3 times per hour.

Now, this is normal so for a heavily stocked cichlid tank, you need to go above this. For instance, in my 58 gallon mbuna tank I have a fluval 305, an Emperor 400, and a Penguin 200 running on it (I am going to replace both the Emperor and the Penguin with another canister here in a bit). Therefore, my multiplier is closer to 15.5x.

I believe your Whisper 60 moves around 330 gallons of water while your penguin moves 200 gph - giving you a total of 530 gph. Therefore, you are just under the 10x needed for a "normally" stocked tank (you are actually probably slightly over the 10x multiplier because your 55 is not really holding 55 gallons of water - but we will ignore this for the sake of this discussion - the point of needing to increase filtration as they grow still holds). You should be fine with this for now as I think I recall that your cichlids are fairly small at the moment, but as they grow, you will definitely have to add filtration. By the time they are full grown, you want to be up in the 15x range.

So to sum it up - 77" of mbunas is just fine assuming you up your filtration as they grow.


seankh
 
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:42 pm

by seankh

always gret advice thanx miami


Peterkarig3210
 
Posts: 1980
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:04 am

by Peterkarig3210

Damned straight!


gumbii
 
Posts: 1695
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:31 am

by gumbii

yeah... most of my african tanks are over stocked... the tropheus tank has 120" of fish and it's a 60g tank... i have two penguin 350's, a magnum 350 and 600gph of water movement thru UGJ's...

all the other tanks are like heaviy stocked but, heavily stocked in biological filtration...

the only cichlids i can't do that to are south americans... they lay some pretty heavy poops... lol...

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