queenbobby

just how i feel... to cut a very long story short... saw an ad for someone selling 21 malawis all about 6-10cm...needed a quick sale due to imigrating etc..
thought i was getting a bargain...
when i got home half of them are unidentifable///
dont even knw what they are please help to id these fish... im gonna have to take them to LFS!!
...but without a name i could get short changed....
please let me know....
IMG]http://i1013.photobucket.com/albums/af253/queenbobby/fish120.jpg[/IMG]




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10gallonmadness

Chicilds. These fish I believe are chichilds. The picture is kinda fuzzy for me but I see some chicild colors.

Red1313

the first ones a con but other then that I don't know cichlids... someone who's more familiar with them should be on soon.

Tony G.

Hello
sorry you are having problems. The first picture, they are convict cichlids, not malawi.
The others i cannot help you with other than the 2nd to last picture, the one with the line down the middle, it looks like a Firemouth Cichlid to me

One of your pictures is not visible so i got it fixed:

ATKINSON

The pinkish one in the last pic looks like a red zebra ( estherae)

queenbobby

thanks for that will have to take them to lfs and hope that there honest

Time

Very sad. All those fish look crowded in that tank.

queenbobby

your suppposed to overcrowd with malawi, got a external 405 nd external 305 filter thats twice the filteration needed!!!

Time

Oops! sorry. didn't know. Very nice tank I hope the filtration can handle the bio load.

aquarist48

Hello QueenBobby. Can you elaborate on the above statement about over crowding with malawi's please!
Thanks.
Ken

alicem

It is highly suggested to over crowd Lake Malawi African cichlids in order to spread the aggression around among
more than just one fish.

For example, more often than not, a more dominant male (or female) will relentlessly chase after one target fish and
either stress it or pick it to death.
Then the dom. fish will move on to the next "victim".

When a tank is overstocked with Malawi, the dominant fish will have many targets to chase.
This way the other targets have time to hide and rest between being chased.

I guess it's kind of like with tiger barbs and having atleast 6 so they will chase each other and hopefully leave the others alone.

African cichlid keepers usually over filter (at least 10x per hour turnover) and do 30-50% water changes, often a couple of times a week.
IMO, you really have to want mbuna to put the work and money into it and deal with the agression.
It is rarely a good idea to have a Malawi African cichlid tank smaller than 40 gallon and some would say 55G min.

Lake Tanganyika African cichlids are agressive too, but over crowding isn't a good idea with them.
So Tangs are carefully selected to fill certain niches in the tank so they "play nice" with each other.

A person really need to know what they are doing (or be very lucky) to mix African cichlids with tropicals or even South or Central American cichlids.
Often these mixes are "mass destruction" waiting to happen.
hth,

alicem

ATKINSON

I agree 100% with that statement!!

btate617

#1- convict, Amatitlania Nigrofasciata
#2- too blurry
#3- The fish in the middle of the pic, someone mentioned firemouth, I would say salvini, exCichlasoma Salvini. The fish off to the right I would say Dimidiochromis Compressiceps, malawi eye-biter.
#4- too blurry.

Brian

queenbobby

thanks for that brian... thats sorta what i was thinking...
just to re cap i didnt purposely put the south americans in there,,, and i have taken them to the lfs .. i bought the lot from someone... and soon as i id them they were out...
its a shame that most people work so hard on buying , maintaining, reseraching thier tanks and it take some one approx 10 secs to insult them.. its a really big shame...
but it just teaches you to stop asking eh?

alicem

Umm, was this aimed at my post? Man, I feel like a real jerk if it was and I guess I should...
My intent was to answer the question that aquarist48 asked about overcrowing mbuna...

I'm sorry if you think I was trying to insult you, queenbobby. It truly was not my intent.
Honestly, I was just giving Ken some info on Africans and their setup.

I understand you got the fish from another person and you only asked about IDs.
You were just trying to identify the fish to better deal with the LFS in the first place.

I don't feel that ATKINSON ageeing with my statement about mixing cichlids and tropicals, etc
meant that either of us believe you did anything wrong...
It was meant to head off problems any other person might have stocking an aquarium.

My appologies to you for the off topic post and any misunderstanding it presented.
Don't ever stop asking questions, it's how we all learn and keep learning.
I know I learned a lesson today.
alicem

queenbobby

apologies.... felling really bad on that day.... sorry,.....