dmm28

I may be getting a used 50 gallon on the weekend and am entertaining the idea of using it as a Malawi cichlid tank. I know it;s not the biggest tank for cichlids but I wanna go with smaller more docile fish anyway. I'm really into the rusty's right now they're soooooo cool! I'd also like to go with electric yellow and maybe a few red zebras.

Would this work out alright or should I just wait? The way I'm thinking is, I'll have room for 10 fish max. So if I put in 5 rusty,2 yellows and 3 red zebras I should be just slightly under my inch per gallon.

Any suggestions?

Angela_96

With malawi mbuna the inch per gallon rule doesn't apply. You have to overstock for aggression.

When you stock the tank remember that you need to keep one male to 2 or more females. ALso keep with the same aggression levels. Don't mix 2 psuedo species, 2 met species and so long (such as mixing met zebra w/ met kenyi).

Heres a good website for help: http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q...p-f=ISO-8859-1

dmm28

Thanks for the link! After looking at it under the cookie cutter 55gallon, it looks like my 3 pics are in there! (woohoo!) It also says 12 fish max for a 55 I'm getting a 50 so I would think that 10 would be perfect.

Please steveangela1 correct my if I'm wrong.

Angela_96

I actually have 15 in my 55g with no issues, now in my 36 peacock tank I only have 8 cichlids. 10 is a good number to start with, you can get away with 12 with proper filitration and maintence to your tank. With my cichlid tanks I vaccum once a week, two days later I do a reg waterchange. I also have a canister and biowheel on each of them. I haven't had an issue w/ nitrites, nitrates, or ammonia since I set my tanks up and they were cycling.