BlowPhish

Well it will be a month or two before we get a bigger tank for our cichlids so we rearranged things again. Giving them as many hiding places as we could and some nice open areas as well. I think I like this version. This tank has been going since Christmas now at our house. It was already running for a year when we got it and was transferred with a full dirty filter so we only had to deal with a mini cycle. The tank is definitely overstocked there is about 40 inches of fish in a 33 gallon tank. I do bi-weekly 30 percent water changes to keep them happy. They are being fed a mix of OSI cichlid pellets, Omega One tropical flakes, Hikari algae wafers, frozen blood worms, frozen brine shrimp, cucumber, lettuce and minced peas in a pod.

pH-7.8
Temp-79
ammonia-0
nitrite-0
nitrate-less than 5

We wanted to try to mix cichlids with this tank and so far we are glad to say it has been successful. The fish are happy albeit they could use a bit more room to claim as territory so there not running into each other as much. We don't think its causing much stress though other than the occasional fin nip.

Here is the stock.

P. Socolofi
M. Johanni
Yellow Tail Acei
Jack Dempsey
Convict
Firemouth
Jewel
2 kribensis male/female
M. Estherae
Unknown hap/mbuna hubrid?
Rainbow Shark
2 Clown Loaches
5 Tiger Barbs green and regular
1 Otto
1 Dwarf Frog

I think we'll have to remove the Otto and the frog in a few months before the cichlids get big enough to look at them as a menu item. What do you guys think of the new arrangement?

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BlowPhish

1-the only decent pic of our P. Socolofi. He never stays still.
2-Our lovely female Krib
3-Our lovely male Krib
4-Simon and Lefty the loaches. We call him lefty because he's only got one anal fin on the left.

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Mike19

Nice tank and smart idea on saving the space for any editing

capekate

You have a beautiful tank set up! And its a good thing that you have a lot of hiding places in the tank for your list of cichlids.. Mixing these SA & A. Cichlids as adults would never work and it is most likely working now since they are all such tiny babies. I hope you save your 33g when you get a larger one, so that you can separate some of these guys at that time.
Best of luck with your little ones...

BlowPhish

1-Our Mystery Fish. What is this fish?!!
2-A Mexican standoff starring Cheeky (our Firemouth performing a gill flare), Jackey Boy our Jack Dempsey and our M. Estherae
3-Convict who we haven't named yet. Suggestions?
4-Our menacing M. Johanni. The Mystery Fish and the Johanni are the boss fish. Everyone stays our of their way!

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BlowPhish

We have heard mixed responses from people of it working and not working. It seems to be a topic of debate. We are hoping with a combination of space, hiding spots and fractured line of site we'll be able to keep the aggression down. Right now the Mbuna are most definitely the more aggressive. Out of all these fish the largest will be Jackey Boy. I was wondering if the Americans will be able to hold there own when they get bigger?

capekate

The mystery fish looks like a Butterfly Peacock...
I wish you the best of luck with the mix.. but I really do not see it working out. You have such a wide variety of mixes there and not just a few that may work out.
But with that said, of course for your sake and the sake of the fish I sure hope that it does work out. Best of luck with them... and please keep us posted on the result, it would be good to know for future references.

BlowPhish

We do have another 33 gallon for any fish that doesn't work out. Which species do you think will be trouble for us?

capekate

Well, it seems that you have gone with some pretty aggressive fish, such as the Socolofi, the Zebra (m. Estherae) and the Johanni. Not to mention the Jewel and the JD and of course, lets not understimate the little convict lol
. As Im sure you know the Ph requirements of these species are different as well. Im wondering what your normal PH level is?
The easiest to foresee for problems are of course, the oto and the frog.
Have you mentioned what size tank you plan on upgrading to? I would suggest nothing smaller than a 75g and that is pushing it.
Best possible solution would be to separate the two Cichlid types SA and A. cichlids to their own tanks, but since you want to try them all together that may not be possible.
Looking through your list, there are so many different types, one good thing tho is that you have only one of each aggresive species and that may be your saving grace!

Angela_96

Malawi Mbuna require a high ph hard water, where SA cichilds require low ph/soft water.

Mbuna are not compatable with any other fish from any other lake period. To place different cichilds from different parts of the world together you will have chaos when they become adults. It does not work out eventually, the people on here that have posted they "mixed" the cichilds end up posting "help, my cichilds are fighting, dyeing, hiding, etc" Mbuna do not play well with others.

Also housing a fish in different water requirements than what they are used to is very cruel to the fish. You are hindering their health and overall wellbeing.

5 Tiger Barbs green and regular
1 Otto
1 Dwarf Frog
All are a bad combo with all the cichilds you listed, you are just asking for something to happen there.

The red tail sharks are not compatable with the cichilds either.

As far as the mbuna, the combos you have will not work. Mel species are not friendly at all. The socofi will succome to aggression easily. Also you need a one male to 2+ female ratio to house mbuna.


and lastly for the firemouth, jewel, red shark, and mbuna that tank is way too small for those species. You need at least a 75g tank for the firemouth, jewel, red tail shark, then the mbuna at least a 55g long tank.

agabr123

wow, thats a great set up! unfortunately i'm not very familiar with cichlids, so i can't answer your questions, but you've gotten a lot of great info from others

BlowPhish

I guess I forgot to mention we're looking for a bigger tank. We're going for either a 75 gallon or a 90 gallon tank. We were going to buy one last week but we won't have the funds until mid March.

Our tap water has a ph of 8 and is hard. Our tank water is Ph 7.8 from the driftwood. I researched all the cichlids before I bought them except for the Peacock (are we sure on this one?). From the info I have gathered the Ph requirements are as such.

Jewel-6.5-7.5
Convict-6-8
Jack Dempsey-7-8.5
Firemouth-6.5-8.5
Socolofi-7.5-8.3
Mystery Fish(peacock)-hes malawi so 8 ish
M.Estherae-7.8-8.6
Kribs-5.0-7.5
M.Johanni-7.2-8.8

So looking at that I don't think any fish would be unhappy with the water. I've also read that fish bred in captivity are more adaptive to their water. The Kribs are definitely captive bred. I am not sure about the Jewel. The other fish are not listed because we will probably have to move them out of the tank when the cichlids get bigger anyway.

In my research I have also come across some things that would help to keep aggression down. Keeping fish of different body shapes and colors is supposed to help. We tried to follow this by stocking fish that all look different. Either in both shape and color or just in of of the two.

BlowPhish

Ohh yeah definitely agree with you on the Otto and Frog. Those little guys are fine for now but we have another tank for them when we think its no longer safe for them. The other night we fed them algae wafers and the frog completely covered the wafer with his body. The Johanni came up and bit his foot!! Little froggy swam away to assess his foot. Everything was find so he swam back to the wafer to straighten things out with the Johanni. As the frog approached the algae wafer he courageously lunged head first mouth wide open into the Johanni's pectoral fin! The Johanni took off for the rest of the meal!

BlowPhish

There is a type of catfish that is recommended with cichlid tanks but I forgot its name. It's white with black spots. Does anyone know the name or can you guys recommend another fish to clean the tank when we move the Otto?

BlowPhish

BlowPhish

"Malawi Mbuna require a high ph hard water, where SA cichilds require low ph/soft water."
"Also housing a fish in different water requirements than what they are used to is very cruel to the fish. You are hindering their health and overall wellbeing."

Who's got SA cichlids? I'm only stocking CA cichlids whose water is not soft and acidic but rather hard and high ph. Check the profiles of the Jack, Firemouth and Convict.

Angela_96

Your mystery fish is not an mbuna.

BlowPhish

I think I'm going to bring the Peacock to the LFS to find a new home. One of the stores take very good care of their fish. While we are at it we can move the frog and Otto to our other tank since the fish are growing fairly quickly. The Tiger Barbs are fine the cichlids don't bother them at all. Perhaps they don't see them as a threat. I am also considering moving the clown loaches/rainbow shark as well. That will leave us with the cichlids and barbs in this tank for now. So with a 75 gallon and these fish what other Malawi species could would mix well? We do not like labs and since we're already mixing CA and African cichlids we would rather not mix mbuna and peacocks. I would like to add a few acei females if we can find some in good shape. When we bought our first 3 we had to return 2 because they had HITH.

Would you buy 2 Chinese algae eaters or 1 Bristlenose Pleco for cleaning?

Angela_96

Malawi's only go with malawi's period.

Mike19

I think your talking about the cuckoo catfish

Annadvn

Your tank looks very nice, but i am concerned with the fish you have in the tank.

Mbuna need a very different diet to Dempseys, convicts. Too much protein for the Mbuna will lead to malawi bloat and will kill them, they feed on algae in the wild (no they don't adapt in captivity). With out the protein the Dempseys etc.. will not be healthy!

Clown loaches need at least a 100g tank minimum and are social creatures who are peaceful and do not like aggression, please return them to the fish shop as they are totally out of place in this tank.

The cat fish you are thinking of are part of the synodontis group, but i would not add anything until you decide if you want SA or African tank and return the loaches and get a bigger tank.

Anna

BlowPhish

We made arrangements to bring the the loaches in tomorrow. I just don't think they will be happy even in a 90 gallon since they get up to 16 inches. Not to mention living 40+ years!!! synodontis group. Isn't the cuckoo is a part of this synodontis group? Feeding is tricky and I appreciate your concern. The primary food is OSI cichlid pellets which are high in spiriluna but also contain protien. As for the algae we have our tank near our main living room window. We've grown up the algae in the tank for our mbuna to graze on. However the tank will have too much of a problem with algae unless we add some sort of control other than the mbuna. We moved our Otto to another tank since he was getting rather small in comparison to the cichlids. Twice a week we feed brine shrim and blood worms on a rotation and what I do is sprinkle in some high quality flakes right after the pellets. The mbuna aggressively eat all the pellets off of the surface of the water while the CA cichlids do not. So one the mbuna have their mouths full of tasty pellets the CA cichlids get their munchies from the flakes. I considered feeding spiriluna flakes primarily but a cichlid book I have here recommends against it. It pretty much says a good diet is a half/half roughage/protien diet. Please do not worry yourself the tank is in excellent shape and behavior.

BlowPhish

I respectfully disagree.