baobeiiiiiiii
Aquarium Advice Regular
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2013
- Messages
- 56
hi,
I'm in Shanghai, China, and i'd like a Lake Malawi biotope tank filled with mbuna as a gift for my Brother. He's coming back in 3 weeks, so time is short!
Key things: i'd like it to be as close to the natural environment in Lake Malawi as possible, biotope. That is of course impossible... the rocks there are the size of cars. However hopefully I can achieve a similar 'look'... that is still natural looking.
A few issues to begin with... i can't get limestone here, period. So i'm using what I can, which is called Chinese 'dragon stone'. This is a pic of the tank after a couple of hours of rock placement:
Full size pic: tank thus far
I bought perhaps 100kg of that rock, of all sizes, many much smaller than the photo, but I chose bigger rocks because... Lake Malawi has huge rocks.
With this rock placement, I just 'tried' to make it look like what nature would do, if there was a landslide of rock into the ocean. No fancy wall or anything, but i'm sure it can be improved.
I'd really appreciate advice on several things:
Rock placement: (how can I make it better (more rocks, less rocks, more height, no detail is too small) If you hate a particular rock, let me know
),
Lighting: the tank is using two bulbs which together put out about 85W, way too bright... something like a soft-ish blue light would be nice. Recommendations?
Sand: I don't want to use white sand. ADA la plata sand looks nice, but can't find it here.
Filtration: I have an eheim 600, should i add crushed coral into it or anything else?
TY.
I'm in Shanghai, China, and i'd like a Lake Malawi biotope tank filled with mbuna as a gift for my Brother. He's coming back in 3 weeks, so time is short!
Key things: i'd like it to be as close to the natural environment in Lake Malawi as possible, biotope. That is of course impossible... the rocks there are the size of cars. However hopefully I can achieve a similar 'look'... that is still natural looking.
A few issues to begin with... i can't get limestone here, period. So i'm using what I can, which is called Chinese 'dragon stone'. This is a pic of the tank after a couple of hours of rock placement:
Full size pic: tank thus far
I bought perhaps 100kg of that rock, of all sizes, many much smaller than the photo, but I chose bigger rocks because... Lake Malawi has huge rocks.
With this rock placement, I just 'tried' to make it look like what nature would do, if there was a landslide of rock into the ocean. No fancy wall or anything, but i'm sure it can be improved.
I'd really appreciate advice on several things:
Rock placement: (how can I make it better (more rocks, less rocks, more height, no detail is too small) If you hate a particular rock, let me know
), Lighting: the tank is using two bulbs which together put out about 85W, way too bright... something like a soft-ish blue light would be nice. Recommendations?
Sand: I don't want to use white sand. ADA la plata sand looks nice, but can't find it here.
Filtration: I have an eheim 600, should i add crushed coral into it or anything else?
TY.
