ely

i found a great deal on a 30 gallon tank setup with everything - including 8 african cichlids. i dont know anything about them - so anything you can share would be appreciated! i'll do a google search too, but i'd love some first hand experiences....

also - any advice on how to move the tank and the fish? i'm thinking of taking out about half the water and the decorations and just putting the tank with the fish in my van for the hour drive. what temps can these guys handle? hm. i hope they make the trip!

oh! and what do they eat??

thank you!!
-ely

Trpimp147

africancichlids.net, or cichlid-forum.net top two cichlid sites if you read a few post in each area on there forums youll get all the info you need. but ill post some here and now quick


make sure the tank is cycled before setting it up, pH level is to be 7.6-8.2 water temp around 78f-80f. make sure there is 6 hiding places per fish. buy aqua salt and put amount listed in the water for the drive home. feed them a few types of food a day to mix things up, suggest omega one flake (fish love it vary colorful) feed only what they can eat in a 2 min period. lighting does not have to be the highest quailty due to the fish do not like alot of bright light, stick with alot of rock due to thats were they come from a rocky lakes. do not stack up rocks to high at first because african cichlids love to dig and will dig under standing up rocks. let lights off at first to relax them when putting them in the tank once you get home (i turn lights off in the tank to calm them down, i also have a good bit of light on my tank to help grow plants and algea) if you have any other questions pm me ill try and answer them right away. these are the simple starts to it. then there is more detail.

outlaw

For mine, I feed them Cichlid flake food every other day which they seem to eat without problems (same for fry but every day).

Our personal experience (everyone has different ways to do it)
We had about an hour drive with our also (Madison to Milwaukee if you are familiar). 6 of them were transported in a 5gal bucket (in that was tank water and pumped air tied off). The gravel was put into a bag to keep wet and the filters were put into a bag with water (also to keep wet). We did not have a heater or pump in the water and the fish didn't seem to have a problem. If you are able to keep the water to recommended temp, more power too you, but its not usually easy to do. Like Trpimp said, they like rocks and lots of hiding places. Right now ours has some fake decor (tree stump, tree branch and some stone thing) with slate pieces bridging them and hanging out from them. the 46Gal link in my sig is my picture post if you are interested for ideas. I am not arguing what Trpimp said, but we did not use any aqua salt for our trip and they didn't seem to have any problems.

Hope that helps for any ideas.