That’s about what I had in our custom built 160 gallon cube tank and marine life. From Fuji live Rock and live sand on up. Octopus was the coolest thing to watch.

I just spent the last hour online building a tank in my head. Oh jeeze.

Have had tanks all my life
Currently have a 35 gallon up right

Have had African cichlids for the last decade or so

FK, get you some peacock bass if you ever do south American cichlids.

I just started to get really into this! Got a Betta fish for my dorm and quickly realized that I knew nothing about aquariums or how to keep it alive. Been spending all my free time pouring over forums online. Bank account is taking a hit, but I'm really excited about it.

Well how about an update. I acquired 2 new tanks the other day. A 65 and a 250, with canister filters, medicine, gravel, some cool wood pieces and a bunch of random equipment. My wife about flipped out when she walked into the garage. The 65 was pretty much setup ready to rock and roll so I got it home and up running and am making it a dedicated cichlid tank.


This 250 was pretty rough, I’m still not 100% what/how I’m going to set it up so it’s a work in progress. I’m waiting on some parts and I’ve got to get the stand finished. Sort of liking the idea of a native freshwater tank, but my wife wants colorful fish. My uncles said I should do piranhas, think that’d be pretty sweet too.

It’s getting crazy

Better call Drew

I bet that is gonna be fun and look great when you are done-

That structure in the first pic reminds me of the conona thing though lol-

Here we go, we’re about a week in on the big native. I’ve got 15 bluegill and a 10” crappie. They’re still adjusting but getting more and more comfortable each day. Not as cool as Dfitz’s but all my neighbors and all the kids think it’s one of the coolest things on our street!

Put a crawfish in there. They do surprisingly well.

Keeping gamefish in an aquarium is illegal!

Looks great! This hobby escalated quickly

nonsense

This is awesome, congrats on both . Good call on going with canister filters and skipping the wet dry filtration sump. Did you plug the overflow boxes?

Regarding what to keep, Im biased, Texas natives have excellent colors, good amount of species diversity, different personalities, and different levels of aggression. With 250 gallons you have tons of options, 1 example, ETX fish and Hill Country fish give a cool color contrast within the same species. Rios are awesome. Sunfish hybrids are one of my favorites and can be very unique. Spotted and Guad Bass don't grow as fast or large as LM and have interesting markings, bonus if you find one with redeyes, Mudcats look great. If you want to add some prehistoric/ancient fish, Bowfin or Gar. Drum are another good one. Esox species are fun predators that hammer live minnows.

With the 65 being African Cichlid and 250 going Native, I'm interested in how you will compare the 2 six months from now.

What are you feeding the Crappie?

You have at least one Longear in there that is circled in pic below.

One piece of advice, lose the rock pile, its adding extra weight but no hiding places and will be a pain to siphon, wood is your friend.

Looking forward to your updates. Congrats again NoconaBrian

Thanks! These all came out of lake Nocona, I’ll probably start hitting some of the local waters around here and seeing what I can find. I was hoping to catch some more longears but out of the 20 or so I caught that was the only one. His tail was also like that when I got it so I don’t know the story behind it. Crappie eats minnows.

I fill the water up just below the overflows and run the inlet/outlet tubes through the holes in the bottom of the tank, it’s missing the fittings... I’d like to figure a way I could use the overflows with this setup but it’s four holes to incorporate.

I’ll lose the rocks, I’ve been debating on changing up the cichlid tank, losing the wood and doing some of those stacked flat rocks with caves, and bringing all that wood to this one.

Did you do your own 3D background or find it somewhere?