Thread: My New Pets!!!
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Old March 28th, 2008, 12:21 AM
MyBirdIsEvil's Avatar
MyBirdIsEvil MyBirdIsEvil is offline
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I hear that one male to two females per species is the best way to keep harmony in the tank, ans these fish are omnivores
Do at least 1:3. If there's only two females he will harass them to spawn CONSTANTLY and they'll get stressed out. If they're gonna be in a 65g I'd actually do a whole group of them, like one male and 7-10 females. Lots of rockwork or hiding places. Don't underestimate the spawning ability of most african cichlids. My male livingstoni had 5 females holding eggs within a day, lol. You may have some issues identifying male/female with that species, but I wouldn't worry about it since they're not too aggressive. You could actually keep all males if you wanted to and it would prevent unnecessary spawning.

Yup, they're ominivores, they actually lean towards being an herbivore and they consume quite a bit of algae. I let algae grow on the sides of the tank for my mbunas (electric yellows are mbunas - from lake Malawi) to graze on and they also eat Hikari and various other pellets. There's no need for live foods.

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And how about a pleco, can I put a pleco in with cichlids or will he be eaten? I ask this because the pleco I have is getting too bog for my 20, so I'll have to bring him back to the store to exchange him for a smaller one if I can't put him in my big one.
I don't wanna say it's ok outright, I'd say mix them with caution. Depending on the type of pleco he might outgrow the tank anyway though. You'll have to watch that they don't nip at him, but plecos have pretty tough skin anyway and mbunas mouthes aren't made to rip stuff. Mine haven't ever bothered plecos or bottom dwellers. Electric yellows especially are fairly docile as far as africans go.

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My 65 and my 30 are going to be my display tanks, I also have a 10 that I will be putting up in another room... should I use that as a hospital tank, or a tank to put my new livestock in before I introduce them to the larger tanks?
If a 10 is the only other tank you have I'd keep it as a hospital tank. As far as quarantining before adding to the bigger tank, if you're adding all the fish at once from the same source it's not necessary. If you're gonna be adding them one by one then you probably wanna quarantine.
Personally, I'm a bad fishkeeper in the respect that I don't always quarantine, lol. My LFS is pretty trustworthy though and they'll keep fish while I watch for any signs of disease, so I do have that advantage.
If you wanna cut down on the risk of a disease outbreak then it's best to quarantine for a week or more before you add to the tank.

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Thanks in advance for your advice - 11 tanks is amazing! How you find the time is beyond me...
No problem. I love giving fishkeeping advice
I'm trying to cut down on the number of tanks, but upgrading to bigger ones. Right now I'm back down to 7, but I traded an old 75g and two 55g tanks for a brand new 125g. It doesn't take much time at all, every single one of my tanks right now has no substrate except for a 90g reef tank. I have powerheads blowing everything off the bottom into the filters, so I just maintain the filters and do water changes.
I do know one woman in town that has 40 fish tanks, all have undergravel filters which require several inches of substrate, so I should be asking her how she keeps up with that
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