BigWill - forgive me if I've jumped the gun, but I haven't read the whole thread. Welcome to the hobby first of all. I'm fairly new, just started last February. Just one note....TMercier is actually a good guy, he's helped me a ton, you just took him wrong. I hope the rest of the thread went better....for both of you.


And I hope you go to that bigger tank. I have a 37 and wish I had a 55.

For a simple, cheap, easy, brightly colored fish, and hard to kill.....I like Platy. My yellow twin bar recently died, but it was nearly flourescent. The red/orange are bright, too.


Welcome,

Zambize

chances are your best bet is an algae scraper/brush. Your tank is probably still going through NTS and balancing out phosphates and such. If you're seeing absolutely 0 nitrite and nitrate though, either you're on the very brink of a complete cycle, you're changing your water incredibly frequently, or your test kit is a little whack...without one the other should always be there...

The pleco you have in your tank now will probably be ok as its growing at the same rate your other fish are and I'm assuming was introduced as they were setting up territory rather than after it was already established, if you were to add another it would most assuredly have to be larger than the stock of cichlids you have. Common plecos can take a beating but not an onslaught.

Unfortunately as they age they take more stock in your cichlids food, and driftwood rather than algae. So the larger the pleco the less algae it will actually eat, generally.

I don't know of anything else really that could be kept with what you have. If your problem doesn't go away within the next few weeks naturally as the tank ages you could consider trying to pick up a few hundred malaysian trumpet snails from your LFS (i doubt they'd charge you much of anything if anything at all) and introduce them to your tank at lights out.

They generally spend the daytime hours IN your substrate away from predators and will actually cannibalize each other if not enough food is present to continue reproduction...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDX1j1z5mME

I have 0 experience with sumps and I learn by doing when it comes to mechanical things...sorry. A sump may not exactly help as far as poo buildup on the substrate. an increase in waterflow doesn't exactly mean that it'll pick the stuff up off the bottom unless you're directing the flow to do so.

However you have to think of any interconnected system as an increase in volume of water. Something as simple as a rena XP1 canister filter (which holds 1gal of water) makes my 30gal system holding substrate, plants, rocks, and driftwood roughly 30gals despite all the water displaced by other things in the tank..

So at any rate a sump is great because you're turning your overall volume of water into a ton more which leaves a lot more time between filter maintenance, and water changes..and well, its damn sure healthier for the fish.