ScarfaceShaz

I have been keeping African cichlids for a thousand years. OK, more like 14. I've bred more species than I can count. I'm not bragging because they're easy to breed. ANYONE can breed them. ANYONE.

This is how it all started for me.

Back in '88, I shared an apt. w/ a good friend of mine that had a really good year financially. Got this huge bonus and just about blew it all on clothes, car stuff, sterio equiptment, you name it, he helped himself to it!

One thing that he bought that I liked were three fish tanks. A 30, 20L and a 27 gal hex. He had no idea what the heck he was doing and just threw a bunch of SA/CA cichlids in them. One of the cichlids was an oscar that was about 5''. We fed them w/ tubifex cubes. The oscar fascinated me w/ it's almost human behavior so I got this "Sea World" kind of idea and stuck a tubifex cube to the underside of the lid. He would hit it so hard, you'd think it was going to be his last one! this went on for a week or so and one night while watching TV, we heard this BANG noise. It was oscar hitting the top telling us he was hungry. This LED to another idea even more like a "Sea World" kind of thing. I held the food about 3'' out of the water and sure enough, he jumped and grabbed it. Then 6''. Same results. This became the preferred method of feeding him.

One day, my parents came to see the apartment for the first time. After showing them around, I said, "You guys gotta see this!" I opened the lid, grabed a cube, held it about 8'' over the water and turned to my parents to say, "watch this." I only had the chance to utter the word "watch" when oscar jumped for the food and landed on the floor of our living room. "HOLY COW!" was the only thing I could think of to say as I tried to grab him. He flipped and flopped along the baseboard and in the process, picked up every piece of lint, cobbweb, paint chip, you name it. when I finally got him back into the tank, he looked like a giant fuzz ball with all the he picked up during his tour of our floor. We were young and not exactly neat freaks. LOL

That was it. I was hooked (excuse the pun). My buddy tired of the tanks and soon moved out and left all the tanks behind. My brother moved in and he had a 27 gal hex. Now we had four tanks in the place.

Since my friend never really took care of his fish very well (I looked after them better than he did), most fish had died and it was time for me to buy fish for the first time. Off I went to the LFS and that's when I saw cichlids that had MUCH brighter colors than the ones my buddy had. So I took a couple blue ones, orange ones, pearl colored ones, blue ones w/ orange dorsal fins, etc... Didn't pick any of those really expensive "yellow" ones. TOO MUCH money!

Threw them in and that was that. Never really had any deaths. Funny how the more I learned, the harder it was to keep them alive. LOL

After a while, they grew a little and noticed one fish wasn't eating like the others and looked like it's mouth was stuck in the closed position. It looked like it had food in it's mouth but never opened it. A few weeks later, it looked better and ate w/ the rest of them, but why was it so skinny?

Soon after that, I noticed a small "swimming bug" in the cracks that turned out to be babies. WOW, I thought, how cool! and you all know the rest of the story. More tanks for the babies and more newer fish. I finally sprung for the ''yellow" ones That's when I guess I fell prey to "more tanks syndrome"

How did it happen for you?

Allie

When I first got into fish keeping we had gold fish tank and a betta. We joined out local fish club. This is where I met a bunch of people breeding and keeping Malawi cichlids. One of the best breeders in our area happens to live a 5 minute walk down the road form our place. She has so many species at the time. All the colors and types I went crazy and got a bunch... not researching more than what they were and how big they got. I got discouraged with my 80g tank at the time so we sold all our fish and tank. Did a lot more research and then got back into them a year ago.
Learned the hard way about what species can go with what really fast. That was 2.5 years ago. We've kept a couple Tang species, but have always been more attracted to the Malawi mbuna. Over 30 species later we finally figured out how to have a harmonious Mbuna tank.
I cannot imagine not having some sort of Mbuna tank in my house.
But we do keep other cichlids, Severums & Angelfish....we have 13 tanks the other 10 are for betta breeding and betta pets.

chicken-tuna

A friend at work had bought some bettas from the dollar store that was next to us at first he had got them to see if they would fight unfortunately for him they dint, so i asked him i could keep them so we did. a week later i bought a 10 gallon tank with a cheap in-water filter and we dropped 3 more bettas in there. sure enough 2 months later they started breeding.
By now the fish were pretty much a display for the store so i could not take them home, so i go back to the LFS and start looking around and i fell in love with some baby oscars. I asked the shop owner what i need to keep the oscars so they sold me a 30 gal setup the works basically. Stubborn me i go ahead and take the oscars even though the shop keep told me to wait a week so i can break in the tank.
I did not want to wait so i took them anyways, fortunately Oscars are hardy fish so they endoured through my poor decision. Of course i got smart bought all sorts of books and began reading online and realize a lot of the things i had done were wrong so 4 months after i got the oscars i got them into the 250 gal tank and now they live happily with there other tank mates and thats how i became a fish fanatic.
Now on my days off I visit every LFS in the san fernando valley, San gabriel, rosemead, el monte, and garden grove looking for a fish that i might want. Ive been to The long beach aquarium and monterey bay aquarium both beautiful places especially monterey bay I would reccomend it for anyone who loves marine animals.