My 75 Gallon Mbuna Aquarium



The stand is 36" tall made of 2x4 spruce secured with heavy duty deck screws and 1/4" bolts through the tops of each leg. If it ever gets loose I'll bolt the bottoms, but I don't think I'll need to. For the shelf deck I used a dozen 1x4s secured with smaller haevy duty deck screws. The tank sits directly on top of the 2x4s without a top deck.

I'm still deciding how I want to finish, but I have a good idea... Stay tuned.



The filter is a 20 gal. wet/dry with a Sen 600 GPH submersible pump. The pump, 2 submersible heaters, a 250 watt and a 300 watt, are all 3 plugged into a secondary power outlet so when I turn off the pump during water changes the heaters go off too. I have 2 48" light fixtures, the desk lamp mounted above the sump, and the secondary outlet plugged into a primary power outlet.



The box for the bio-media is a plastic three drawer organizer that I got at a local discount store. I cut the bottoms of the drawers out, leaving enough around the edges to hold egg crate. On top of the egg crate is some plastic mesh I got at a hobby store in the embroidery area. I also put a nylon sock on the end of the overflow drain to catch particulate.



I filled the second drawer with small sized lava gravel for the bio-media, and put some pieces of the plastic mesh on top of the gravel to spread water flow over the entire contents.


The third drawer is just a larger version of the second.



Since Mbuna require a pH level of 8.0 to 8.4 I filled the paint bucket with limestone gravel. That gravel neutralizes the acids that form from decaying wood. I put the wood in the tank because some of the cichlids feed on the algae that grow on it. I cut the top off of the bucket so the top is just above the max water level and drilled 6 - 3/8" holes in the bottom. This keeps the limestone buffer soaking under water, and serves as a platform to keep the bio-media above water level for max oxygenation.





Attached to the top of the pump is a 1" flexible tube looped around to a 1" PVC pipe. I used stainless steel hose clamps.



The sump also functions as a refugium. You can see in the lower right hand corner a female Kenyi I had to rescue. After the apha male Kenyi wore her down the other cichlids joined the attack. If I hadn't removed her she would've been killed. Mbuna are very agressive fish and tolerate no weakness. I can now return her to the pet shop at my leisure.



I put a ball valve in the pipe line so I'll be able to regulate the flow if I decide to tap another tank into the filter. Until then it stays wide open.




Here is the top end of the pump. Nothing fancy, just 1" elbows and some flex. Maybe I'll paint them black some day.

I have 2-48" lamp fixtures. The front one is a single lamp fixture with a 32w Full Spectum Daylight bulb, and the rear is a double lamp fixture with only one 32w 50/50 bulb. I can use them together or one at a time. The rear bulb is dimmer and I tend to use it alone during twilight.







And finally, the overflow siphon whichs drains down to the sump.