Community Freshwater Aquarium

[jaywings19]

Okay... I am finally moving into my new apartment and have located several spots for a nice, new, BIG aquarium.

There are two places in particular that can support a long tank with access on both sides to maneuver. Obviously, I'm going to take it one tank at a time.

I saw this nice 72 gallon bow-front tank with matching wood base at my LFS. It's about the length of my bike, but can easily fit in the space I have picked out. Naturally, I'm already planning to get it once I'm completely settled in. So I was hoping to get some ideas to decorate and stock this bad boy. As you can see by my signature, I only have a couple of miniscule desktop tanks... so the new one would blow them away.

Here are a bunch of questions that I have to start planning out my setup:

1. Real or Fake Plants? I'd really like to do real plants, but I'm afraid at the extra effort that this may cause. It would surely take a lot of plants to properly decorate this 72 gallon tank. I've never had real plants, so I'm not sure if having them will complicate things (water quality levels, algae growth, filtration) that I'm not prepared to deal with.

2. Stocking the tank. Below are some types of fish that I'd like to see in my tank. Do you see any conflicts with behavior, size, or water requirements? Any suggestions on other fish to substitute or add to the mix?

Corydoras - sterbai, leopard, or panda
Barbs - cherry or rosy
Sharks - tricolor, irridescent, or rainbow
Tetras - cardinal or neons
Gouramis - blue or red
Loach - clown
Swordtails
Platys

3. To mate or not to mate? I'd really like to avoid having to caretake for baby fish, so I just want to know if the all male or all female stocking technique would work... or do I not have to worry about spawning since it's such a big tank? As you can see, I'd like to have some platys and/or swordtails, but not at the expense of risking babies.

Sorry for so many questions in one post, but just trying to get a jump start on my upcoming "project."

 

[CFC]

Planted tanks are not that hard to do, the hard thing is providing enough light. The bigger the tank the harder it is to provide enough light to get good plant growth, since you are looking at needing 3 to 4 watts of light per gallon which is 216 to 288 watts and a standard 40" tube only provides 38 watts of light you can see where the problem is. To provide enough light you will need a hood you can fit between 3 and 4 38w tubes fitted with reflectors in (reflectors are said to double the output of your tubes, while i doubt they actually double it they do help so are worth fitting). Get the lighting right and use a good fertiliser once a week and the rest will fall into place.

On your stock list i can only see two problems, the first is the irredescent shark, these catfish are not suited to aquariums and will require a tank far larger than 72g, they can reach lengths of 4ft or more, take a look at the pinned pictures of pangasius catfishes in catfish cradle.

The second is the livebearers, while the rest of the fish on your list preffer soft acidic water with no salt the livebearers preffer harder more alkeli water with a little salt added.

 

[jaywings19]

Planted tanks are not that hard to do, the hard thing is providing enough light. The bigger the tank the harder it is to provide enough light to get good plant growth, since you are looking at needing 3 to 4 watts of light per gallon which is 216 to 288 watts and a standard 40" tube only provides 38 watts of light you can see where the problem is. To provide enough light you will need a hood you can fit between 3 and 4 38w tubes fitted with reflectors in (reflectors are said to double the output of your tubes, while i doubt they actually double it they do help so are worth fitting). Get the lighting right and use a good fertiliser once a week and the rest will fall into place.

On your stock list i can only see two problems, the first is the irredescent shark, these catfish are not suited to aquariums and will require a tank far larger than 72g, they can reach lengths of 4ft or more, take a look at the pinned pictures of pangasius catfishes in catfish cradle.

The second is the livebearers, while the rest of the fish on your list preffer soft acidic water with no salt the livebearers preffer harder more alkeli water with a little salt added.

Thanks for the information. I was not aware about the growth potential of the irridescent shark... saw it in the LFS and couldn't find an online profile. I know about the hardness requirement for the livebearers. As you can see from my signature, I have a swordtail & platy rooming with some corys now... the water is a 7.0 pH and medium hardness (140 ppm). Anyway, I could live without the livebearers in the new tank since I already have some and don't want to chance the spawning. Any other suggestions or thoughts?

 

[Moe]

Since you are getting a bigger tank how about thinking about some bigger community fish. They will be easier to see in the big tank. I don't have any but when I get a big tank I'd consider rosy barbs, rainbow fish and I saw some giant yellow swordtails at lfs about 6 inches, they were beautiful. I think bigger fish might be prettier in a big tank.