WOW My first blog!
I will start on my malawi
mbuna!!
I got into malawis from researching fish for my first 55g tank. I started out wanting rainbow fish, blue rams, and a couple loaches. Then after seeing the "soft" water requirements ended up falling for the malawi mbuna.
I started out w/ rocks I had collected locally, scrubed bleached and boiled. I did the unthinkable and put a couple guppies in the tank to "cycle" it. I will never do a fish cycle again, fishless only!
I got my first cichlids from a "mixed cichlid tank" again another no-no. I ended up w/ a kenyi, yellow tail acei, red zebra, and then out of the species specific tanks got a male kenyi and a yellow lab.
I knew nothing really about malawi compatabiltiy. I ended up loosing the acei, male kenyi to malawi bloat from not knowing how to feed them properly. I used a cheap walmart brand flake.
Then, I decided to buy top of the line spirulla flakes, and some osi cichild flakes, used raw veggies as well and have done great w/ my cichilds since.
My next group included a still unknown to this day cichild (cheif), my pink (red zebra), an ob clown, and ob peacock, and a yellow peacock.
I learned from that that peacocks and mbuna do not mix. So I then expanded to my next tank! The 36g peacock, I will say for me bowfronts do not look good as
FW tanks...
This tank is now ready to go
SW asap!
I ended up pairing my kenyi female w/ a male and got my first "spawn" and learned how to care for the fry. I sold all of my fry for 30 for 5! I then saw that I could make money to support the hobby, buy my chemicals, food, etc.
Loving that, I got a breeding group of yellow labs and moved cichilds around to proper tanks.
Yellow labs do not go for top money, they are way to common. I have had several different species of mbuna, sold them, gave them back to the store if they didn't work out.
My list of species kept is endless...
I learned that buying from people and aquabid instead of stores is a plus.
What is really cool is when you make 300$ in one week from fish sales, and you can turn around and invest it into more fish!
Similar Aquarium Fish Forum Threads 
