wwe

whats the best way to make my african cichlids to be healthy.

2nd is there a good site to find cichlid rocks tank setups?

Blub

Angela_96

first off, yes there are certain parameters better for cichlids (african) they like a higher pH than other fish, 7.8-8.2 you can naturally do that w/ using crushed coral for a substrate, or a special cichlid substrate you find in the fish store (if not fosters and smith carry it), then for their rocks to aid in the hardness of the water and ph rise you can use limestone. (easy to find where I live here in tn thats what we used in our mbuna tank. They also have cichlid buffers (a chemical) you can add to the water to increase the ph.

A little tip I learned about stress coat/stress zyme they are not good for cichlids! They cause the water to drop in ph (meaning they are acidic). Instead I would treat the water w/ Amaquel plus (closest thing to what I bought our fishstore that we shop at manufactures a product very similar) that chemical will be your water conditioner for water changes/etc (to remove clorine and clorimene), it can be used to help relive the stress on your fish from the nitrites and ammonia when they go up (only before you do water changes), and lastly when you have a fish w/ damaged fins, etc or been netted or new fish use this chemical in your tank. (basicly its an all in one)

Personally I would recommend a heavy filitration for the tank also, for example for my 55 gallon I have an Eheim Ecco canister filter (made for a 60 gallon tank), and a penguin biowheel (made for a 70 gallon tank), we also have 2 long bubble stones and a air pump for a 60 gallon tank. When the cichlids get around adult age they will need that heavy duty filitration. Plus w/ an african cichlid tank I would recommend lots of water changes as much as you can, I was doing a 50% once a week and a 25 at the end of that week, then we added new fish my chem is all messed up (not out of control) but I am doing daily 50% water changes.
I don't know if I am aloud to post a website on here but cichlids.com is a good site w/ lots of pictures of mbuna tanks (rock tanks). The fishlore homepage should have info on setting up a proper african cichlid tank.

Here are a few of our mbuna pics for you to see how we set ours up we also change the rocks around when adding new fish, and when you have to vaccum the tank:

Allie

Here a site which is pretty good for african cichlid info.
http://www.cichlidforum.com/articles/

MissMTS

The site that Allie posted is really helpful. I used it while setting up my African Cichlid tank. They also have a cookie cutter tool which gives you possible stocking schemes.