The time has come 90 gallon

[Dbigfish]

The time has come after nearly 2 years of acquiring thing pice by pice, planning, and plotting to put water into my 90 gallon aquarium! My question is after I fill the thing full of water and letting it sit for about a week can I add the first 5 or so juvenile mabuna cichlids if I place a filter carriage from my other healthy tank in the canister a few hours before hand? The filter has been in use for perhaps 3 months so there is plenty of established BB.
Here are a few pictures of my tank in stages first I had to paint the stand black then cleaned the tank and applied a black background next I tossed my poodle in for scale haha finally I added my black washed blasting sand and all the rocks I had plus a few bits of wood. Thoughts?

 

[erikmoseley]

That looks great! Even adding filter media from other tank I'd be carefull. There's the whole fish less cycle process which I never did. Here's what I did not doing the fish less cycle w good success. I ordered an ACTIVE sponge from Angels plus online it comes w the BB in it and you run it off an air hose (google angels plus active sponge filter) and I also use Seachem prime conditioner ( a must have) and also Seachem stability ( which says u can add fish from day one which I did) - I added 5 black tetras and followed the Seachem stability direction on bottle. I left the tetras in for 2 weeks and tested water daily changing any if needed (which I didn't need to according to test results but changed it twice anyways.) once the bacteria bloom cleared up I stocked with about 10 fish I wanted and moved the tetras and all was good since. Not conventional but the impatient person I am got to have fish in from the get go and all turned out well. I also just set up a new tank not using stability but did use bio media from other tank in filters and floated some bio stars Ina media bag and filled half this tank w water from other one and all worked out well. I put a few tetra and Cory in it from the start and they're doing great a month later.

If you want to do the "by the book" fish less cycle then google that. Or search threads on here. Lots of info.

Most important thing is to know what your water parameters should be and change water as needed if they're off target.

Good luck! What're you stocking eventually?

 

[5x5]

The time has come after nearly 2 years of acquiring thing pice by pice, planning, and plotting to put water into my 90 gallon aquarium! My question is after I fill the thing full of water and letting it sit for about a week can I add the first 5 or so juvenile mabuna cichlids if I place a filter carriage from my other healthy tank in the canister a few hours before hand? The filter has been in use for perhaps 3 months so there is plenty of established BB.
Here are a few pictures of my tank in stages first I had to paint the stand black then cleaned the tank and applied a black background next I tossed my poodle in for scale haha finally I added my black washed blasting sand and all the rocks I had plus a few bits of wood. Thoughts?

You just need to get it up to temperature and add the filter media. If you are only adding 5 juvs for the one being, everything will be fine.

I'd wait a few weeks to a month before adding more fish, to let the BB grow locally in the tank.

 

[bettaowner]

The hardscape looks amazing.

 

[5x5]

The hardscape looks amazing.

I agree. Nice job.

 

[Cichlid-dude]

Looks great! That is an odd looking hairy fish you have in there lol!!

 

[Dbigfish]

Thanks a lot for the responses! I have well water so I have never had to worry about adding any sort of water conditioners because it comes out of the tap darn near perfect. As for stocking the chain stores in my area sell their cichlids in "assorted african cichlids" and a few by name. I have a really hard time trying to figure out what kind of cichlids are in the assorted section because I have total colorblindness so.....

 

[bettaowner]

You should look for yellow labs to add to your tank

 

[Dbigfish]

They are a must! I had a few for a couple months after my friend tried to kill them with neglect but I wants set up for cichlids then and had to take them to a pet store. But they were growing and happy when I had them

 

[Dbigfish]

Plus yellow is the only color I can really see haha

 

[Dbigfish]

I went with 3 yellow labs 2 acie and 3 of the assorted mabuna but one died on the was home and I got a refund. They are all happy and are eating normally. I have named the most dominate fish Spartacus and he is the only one that defends a territory so far

 

[Alyxx]

Looks great! That is an odd looking hairy fish you have in there lol!!

Well it obviously isn't a yellow lab. Or a catfish. Maybe a dogface puffer? Hehe. Cute dog!

The tank looks nice! I wouldn't have the patience to take that long to piece together a tank, though!

Btw, every time I see this thread's title I get parts of The Walrus and The Carpenter stuck in my head.

 

[Dbigfish]

I thought of the very same thing when I wrote it. I have heard varying degrees of success housing pictus catfish with cichlids does anyone here have any experience with them?