Finally Setting Up the 90 Gallon

Its been about a year now since we bought our 90 gallon aquarium and it is almost ready to start setting up.
We are planning on eventually putting 2 Jack dempsey's and some dither fish, however in order to set it up we have to take apart one of our other aquaiums. We decide to disasemble our 29 gallon with our blood parrot and transfer him to that tank along with our 2 clown loaches.
In an earlier post (http://www.auspet.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12369) We established that we would like 2 jd's and some giant danios or barbs. The question is what types of barbs and how many would fit with both:

1 blood Parrot(4"), 2 clown Loaches(2")
-and-
2 Jack Dempsey's (will be added later when blood parrot and loaches move back to 30 gallon)

Any suggestion welcome.

Tyler And Amanda

 

Schools of tiger barbs have done really well with my severums and parrots. Just be sure to keep them in schools of 4 or more. They do a really good job eating the remnants from messy eaters like parrots.

 

i was thinking a school of 6 rosey barbs.
i know they will be fine with the blood parrot but he will eventually be moved and 2 female JD's will be added. Will that school have a chance with the JD's.

 

i recently did some measurments to calculate the volume of the "90 Gallon" and it came out to be 110 gallons. The questoin is if i rounded off some of the measurments can that have changed it 20 gallons.

 

Possibly, depending on how much you rounded them. Did you round to whole numbers? Or single decimals?

This is an odd shaped corner tank isn't it?

If you want to figure out the exact volume, you can first make sure there is no water running in the house. Check your water meter and note what the reading is (also see what the units are - might be gallons, might be something like cubic feet). Fill the tank with cold* water then check the meter again. You sould be able to subtract the 2nd number from the 1st (and possibly do some unit conversions) and find out the exact volume. That's how I figured out the volume for my pond.

*You have to use cold only because if you use hot, it will come from the water heater and the amount won't show up on the meter.

-Chelle

 

I rounded to whole numbers and yes it is very wierd shaped tank (well a pentagon). I redid the calculations and i got 95 gallons. I tried to keep as many decimals as possible. I cant do the water meter becasue im in an apartment.

What do people think about the Rosey barbs with 2 JD's?

 

They may get eaten. They only get around 2" - 3" and have a fairly streamline shape which makes them relatively easy to fit into a large fish's mouth. I think the tiger barbs might have a better chance (although there's still some risk there) becuse they have taller bodies.

-Chelle

 

What if anything can be kept with jack dempseys.
Ive done so much research and im out of Ideas. It seems like the only other fish are other aggressive Cichlids.
Any Suggestions would be great.
Thanks

 

Maybe a medium sized bottom feeder.

I think the tank size is a big limiting factor. If it were a bigger tank, you could fit a nice school of silver dollars in there, but I think that might be a bit too much bioload for a 90.

-Chelle

 

Post some pics, sounds like a nice tank

 

Tyler, the difference between 90 gallons and 110 gallons is not that great on a tank that large.
Chelle, It wouldn't matter if you use cold or hot water to take the measurement from the meter. The Hot Water Heater input is from the cold water line. As the hot water is used from the heater tank it is replaced with water from the cold water line. A Hot Water Heater does not pull a vacume. The only problem with reading from the meter if they are like the meters here, the smallest amount of measure on them is 10 gallons. They do not read single gallons.

 

Good point.

True, but you can still get a pretty good idea of the single gallon measurement by where the 10's dial is located. For example, if I was filling a tank and it stopped at 12 (x10) gallons and the last dial was halfway between the 2 and 3, 125 gallons will be a pretty close guess.

-Chelle

 

Two more questions:

1) How many pounds of substrate should be used to cover the bottom about 1 to 2 inches.

2) If you had a 95 gallon aquarium what type of cichlids would you stock it with. Any suggestions.

Thanks.

 

What are the dimensions?

My initial thought is maybe around 75 for about 1 1/2" and 100 for 2".

-Chelle

 

1: i dont know the asnwer, sorry

2: are you talknig about a singular aggressive cichlid, or one to go with the loaches and BPs?

 

here is the tank dimensions
<img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y106/tyler_amanda/Tank.jpg" alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">

 

Well, I found this spiffy calculator (bottom of the page)
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/calculator.php

I entered 37 x 37 and 1 1/2" depth (went with 37 instead of 36 because it's a little bigger than a perfect triangle with 36" sides). That gave me 117 lbs and I divided that in half (because it's a triangular tank, not square) and came up with 58.5lbs. So probably something in the range of 60 - 70 lbs should be enough.

-Chelle

 

For standard size rectangular tanks we used to recommend 2 lbs. per gallon for a 2 inch depth. Given the irregular shape I'm going to guess at the following amounts:
1 inch - 70 lbs.
1.5 inches - 100 lbs.
2 inches - 135 lbs.
I've never used a computer formula, So keep us posted. I'ld like to know if the computer or I come closer.

 

Also im in a bit of a situation.
Im kinda running out of funds for the tank. Im trying to find shortcuts in setting it up. Because of its irregular shape and being custom build tank i cannot purchase a glass top. I got some estimates on custom ones and they are all out of my price range. The cheapest place i could find was still over $75 cnd.
What im wondering is I have build a custom hood to fit over the top. Is it ok for it to be that close to the water without having a glass top. Could I put a sealer on it to protect it without damaging the tank in any way.

 

Have you tried going to some place like Lowes or Home Depot and getting them to custom cut some glass? I don't know if they can do the odd angles, but when I had them cut glass for standard tanks, it ended up being about 1/4 the cost of a store bought lid.

Another option would be to buy a sheet of plexiglass or acrylic and cut it yourself using a jig saw.

-Chelle