Rocked and Stocked
The fish are in!! The last 2 days have sure been busy ones. Thank the good Lord above that I joined the Midwest Cichlid Association website. I have to throw out a ton of props to the members of that site, in a VERY short time, I’m talking about 2 or 3 days, I had narrowed down my full stock list and found all the rock you see in the picture above.
The rock was provided by scottr – all 500 lbs of it (11 5 gallon buckets @ 45 lbs each) at no cost. That’s right, nothing. Scott also has about 1000g of Cichlid tanks, so if you’re looking for anything, look his way. He has some beauties!
About half the fish came from Fremont NE from lmod58 who has about 2000g of cichlid tanks. These are the 5 species listed in the prior post. From him, I got 6 of each and 3 extra of the Thumbi and Msobo (Deep Magunga), and one extra Makokola for a great price. He breeds many, many species.
I got 7 each of the Flavus and Acei from Floppygumboy from Panora, IA, a nice selection of those for a great price also
I got 8 Yellow Labs from shooter50014 here locally in Des Moines, who also has probably 1000g of cichlid tanks, with some rare species, tons of Synodontis, lots of Victorians. Also a great price!
And tomorrow, I will be picking up the last batch of 18 Saulosi from powerskc locally in Ankeny IA. He also breeds a couple types of bristlenose plecos.
So here’s the story of the tank build that started last night. I picked up all the rock from scottr on the east side of Des Moines around 3pm, then put it in the tub with hot water and soaked it to warm it up and rinse it off, then put it in buckets and transported to the restaurant. I started by removing all the rocks that were in there, then I moved the sand to the side to clear off about ¼ of the bottom. The brownish rock is a landscaping paver of sorts, scott got them for free at Rhino Materials in Des Moines – apparently left over from a job. They all have a perfectly flat bottom, so I was able to put a layer of these down on the bottom of the tank, I just worked my way across the tank, moving sand and placing rock like this:
Then I covered those in sand, and started building the exposed layer of rock like this:
And then just kept placing rocks until it looked like the pic above. It took about 2 hours and I pulled about 15-20g out before, and it was about full when I was done.
The fish arrived from Nebraska at 8:30am; he was kind enough to pick up the fish from the guy in Panora on the way (he drove down from Panora and met him @ the interstate) and arrived at the restaurant and got in there about 9:30am, tested the water, started draining the tank, and sucked a bunch of sand out ‘cause there was way too much (I’ll use it in one of my tanks). As soon as I started filling, I floated the bags and cleaned the sump, pads, rinsed the crushed coral bags, etc. I opened each of the bags after 15-20 minutes and put about ½ cup of water in every so often over the course of about 20 minutes, then dumped the bag water, filled & dumped again and released. Here are the ones from lmod58 (Nebraska) floating
And released
And the full tank after all released
They crowded in the corners at first, but by the time I got back with the Yellow Labs, they were adventuring all around their new home. The Labs went in about 3:30. Next step: buy food. I suppose I should have planned that a little better. I bet they’re starving. Off to get some Spirulina flakes!