Starting a Cichild tank....what can have sand?

Hey all,

I am starting a 75 gallon cichlids tank, and i am starting with the bottom. I want to know what kind of gravel or sand i need? I want to have sand, so what kind of sand should i use and where to get it? I heard you can use pool filter sand, the sand from lowes, and homedepot, or fish tank kind? What should i use? I even heard use some arogonite sand to raise the pH because the cichilds like the raiser pH.
Help me out here.....
thanks

what kind of cichlids are you going to be keeping?? In my lake malawi mnuba tank i have smooth river rocks, in both my lake tanganyika and SA, CA cichlid tanks i have pay sand i bought from home depot for like $4.00 a bag. In my 20 gallon Guppy tank i have cichlid sand, it doesnt do anything to my pH but i have very hard water. As most will probably tell you, it is best to have a stable pH then have a pH that contantly fluctuates.

It realy depends on what kind of cichlids you are wanting! As molliefan09 has already state. Once you find that out then we could better help you on geting the best substrait's and decore, if you would like.

I was thinking of african (Lake Malawi) or new world cichilds (Rams) for my tank. Ok Can you mix different cichilds together?

For the Malawi (Mbuna's). They Prefer a finner sand and a rocky decor with no plants. As they are pron diggers. They will up root any plant in the tank. If you use any decor you will want to place it on the bottom glass of the tank, so they dont dig it up then haveing a calapes of rock work. Also you will be looking at a PH of 7.6 to 9.0. They need harder water.


For new world you can plant the tank. I think they even like softer water, not 100% sure. as to i have never had them befor.

Rams, especially German blue rams, like acidic, soft, warm water. Basically, there's no way you can keep them with rift lake fish as they require totally different water parameters. Not to mention the rams would get torn to pieces by mbuna.

I would pick a region and stick with it. You can (sometimes) mix fish from the various rift lakes but you definitely don't want to mix rift lake fish with new world cichlids.

In my cichlid tank, I used play sand from Lowes, 2 fifty pound bags and i mixed that with a 20 pound bag of florida crushed coral to help raise the pH to a steady 8.0. It looks pretty cool having small coral pieces mixed with the sand, the fish seem to appreciate the sand just fine. Some will say the argonite sand would be a better option because the pH values, but I cant see buying like 100 bucks worth of sand when 20 bucks will get you the same result, just wont be as pretty and white as the argonite.