Another "Help me choose my stock" thread...... This time it's a 300 gallon !!!

If sticking with mbuna, I would do the demasoni for sure. They are always out and about, causing the other fish to feel safe and come out also. Can't believe the differance they made in the tank.

I would do
Demasoni
Nice yellow labs
pearlmutts
rusties
accei
petricola cats
albino bristle nose
If not worried about cross breeding some really nice looking yellow labs.

Wow!!   

That's exactly the tank I'm getting (as soon as I get a house or I might get a divorce!!).

300 Gallon is perfect!  Although, I'd proabably mix in some big fish too (I'll probably get yelled at for that statement by the experts) with all that space.  Predators would love that long tank!

Get some mixture of colors to make them pop out.

I'm a big fan of Demasoni ..  but then you'd probably have to stick with just Demasoni..   since they are probably the most aggressive mbuna of them all...  but Demasoni and Yellow labs would be a nice contrast!..  and so much action!!!








Pseudo Polits are also my favs...   they are striking!!!!!!!  I picked up about 7 of them from a meet (donation auction) a few months back, but I'm not sure that they are polits..  they don't look like Polits at all..  I think the person who donated them was confused or they are all female .



Also, white top hara's are awesome looking..   



So many good-looking mbunas out there..   

I have a 30G tank with about 20 hongi babies right now that I probably have to get rid of very soon....   My hongi's are crazy..  the do nothing but mate 24/7!!!!!!!!!   Everytime I clean the 65G I have at least 5 or 7 little ones I can take out and move to the 30G.

Below is what my male looks like all the time (mating bright colors)!!


Anyone who wants hongi's, please let me know!!!  I can't always make it to the meets to donate.

Again, nice work on the tank!..   exactly how I'd do it!

That tank has so many possibilites, its amazing. No matter what you choose to do, I would HIGHLY reccomend geophagus, but either way, get a big group of catfish. Cories, synos or whatever else you like, they would look great in a tank like this.

Radek

That tank is screaming for fronts. LOL

Oh yeah. And about 50 synodontis petricola!!!!!!

Very nice set up indeed. And Wilpir is spot on. If you are not worried about fry go to the swap. Walk the tables. Pick 10 or 20 bags of fish up and enjoy. And the swap has great deals so it won't cost ya an arm and a leg.

I have a in wall 125 set up pretty much like yours with 300# of rock..this is what I did...I went to the GCCA auction and 1 swap, bought about 10-12 varieties of mbuna at 1"-1.5"..6-8 each, made sure they were all different colors and shapes and put them in all at once..3yrs later I have my favorite show tank(out of 32 tanks) and I don't use this for breeding, with all the rock it would be a pain in the *** to catch any..It is one of the most active, colorful tanks I have ever seen (If I do say so myself!!!) Sounds like alot of fish but overcrowding and good filtration keeps aggression down...you could easily put 2.5 times what I did, and yes you'll lose some but it's well worth it..btw there are no peacocks in it...look at my stock list ...Good luck you have a great starting point.. ;D ;D ;D

Very nice setup.  Looks great.  You said it was obvious you were looking at mbuna - is that because of the rocks?  With that size of tank and all those hideouts, I would simply post a want ad on our Classifieds board for anyone's unwanted large male mbuna and add as you wish.  But I'm a new world guy and my thoughts take a bad seat to the experts here.  You'll get some good ideas. 

Welcome to the forum.

Recently put together my latest "wet dream" tank........ center overflow, 300 gallon tank (96 x 24 x 30), 1500 lbs rock, 250 lbs pool filter sand.   Filtration is 2 HUGE wet/dry filters (running 100 micron filter cloth) with approx 15 gallons of bio-*****.......  Flow from returns is over 1100 gph, undergravel jets pushing another 1200 gph.  36w U/V sterilizer.  4 x 65w actinic CF, 2 x 65w 10,000K CF.

Obviously, I've got mbuna in mind........ I'm not "seriously" into fish, other than they help me de-stress at the end of the day.  I'm not into breeding, nor do I worry about how pure the strains are.....  I've done the "technical" hobbies (still do somewhat......  If you know about collecting Seated Half Dollars by die variety / die marriage, we can talk about that also) and want to keep fish for pure enjoyment.

If you were stocking this set-up, what fish would you have, how many, and M/F ratio for each........

I wasn't planning on going this big, as I had been keeping a few Mbuna in a 70g and was looking for a larger tank, when along came this deal that I couldn't pass up on Craigslist.  I'll admit that I'm a bit overwhelmed by such a large tank (previously, my largest was a 125 FW planted and a 120 SW reef), and would like to get it right the first time since some of the big rocks are approaching 85 lbs each, and a teardown is out of the question.

Thanks in advance, Jim

P.S.  I'm thinking about doing Peacocks in the now vacant 70g.....  Any suggestions there would also be appreciated.

Below is the 300g

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a248/mcblp/PICT0002-1.jpg?t=1257054961