Cichlid Tank Reboot—tips Welcome!

HI everyone! My brother has a 75-gallon African cichlid tank. It’s been running for about 5 years and doing well.

He has recently asked for my help with making some changes to the tank. He has three larger “artificial rock” pieces with lots of hides. At this point, he would like to change over to more natural rock. We would love to get some input on types of rock that would work well. Also, tips on how best to make sure the weight is evenly distributed and the set-up is stable/won’t topple over.

My brother really enjoys my planted tanks, and we have decided to try some plants in his tank. We realize that is less common in cichlid tanks and can present certain challenges. Our plan is to start with a few hardy plants (probably abubius and java fern) attached to the rock work. We’ll see how that goes and work from there.

If anyone can share tips on hardscape, that would be great! Also, if anyone has successfully kept plants in an African cichlid tank, please share your experience (and pics for inspiration!)

If anyone knows of particular members who could be of help here, please tag them for me. Thanks! Maybe tyguy7760 or Ed1957?? Sorry if I’m way off there—cichlids are a new area for me

Here is a pic of his tank as it looks now:

 

Dragon stone! You could drill out some holes and some caves. But, make sure the rocks aren't too sharp to slit a belly open

 

When I leave base today I'll send you some pics of my 75G lake MalawI tank. I use river rocks from my creek. Plants in a cic hlid tank need to be anchored. I sewed mine to egg crate and then put substrate over it in my Amazonian tank. Dragon stone looks awesome in Amazonian tanks but river rock is really realistic in a African rift tank.

 

African cichlids are rough on plants. I'm not familiar with stocking requirements for the african cichlids outside of some of the lake tang cichlids. Sorry

 

I don't think plants will work well with chiclids. I would try an amazon sword or smaller rosette swords. Moss balls are a possibility. You could also try floating some plants like Anacharis Elodea Densa Egeria. Maybe introduce one plant and see if they uproot them.
The plants should be anchored down if possible.

Then there are always silk plants.

 

Learning from experience here, moss balls will most likely be destroyed and create a huge mess in your tank with vegetarian cichlids. I would think anubias or ferns of some sort would be the most likely to survive...but still not likely

 

When I leave base today I'll send you some pics of my 75G lake MalawI tank. I use river rocks from my creek. Plants in a cic hlid tank need to be anchored. I sewed mine to egg crate and then put substrate over it in my Amazonian tank. Dragon stone looks awesome in Amazonian tanks but river rock is really realistic in a African rift tank.

That would be great! Thank you!

 

Getting plants into an African cichlid tank requires a two pronged approach. Because they think greens are delicious and anything new must be investigated... With their mouth, then it is best to add plenty when you do some rearranging. Also, you will have better success by adding two sets of plants - the ones you actually wish to grow and keep, and your 'throwaways' which will be eaten by the cichlids.
If the cichlids in their exploring find one plant to be easier and more palatable than another, they will naturally seek out that plant to devour. So get your Java ferns and anubias ready, but also get some horn wort, anacharis and/or water lettuce. These are your throwaway plants. Cichlids think they are delicious and will eat them, especially after they try a bite or two of java fern and spit it out. These are great because they are cheap and easy to cultivate - you can throw them in a tub outside with some water under the sun and they will grow. Or you can throw them in any other tank without cichlids for a bit and then pull out clumps as needed. They grow fast. Also, all these plants float. Whereas the plants you want will be anchored down. Cichlids quickly distinguish not only which plants they think taste good, but where in the tank they are found. Thus floating plants are eaten, plants on the bottom tend to be ignored.
Eventually over the course of a couple months you wean back what throwaway plant mass is available and you should be left with just the plants you want that will hopefully be relatively unmolested by the cichlids.
Or if you have a ton of hornwort growing in your other tanks, you can throw handfuls of it in your cichlid tank whenever you need to thin it out. The cichlids will always appreciate having greens to eat. I regularly pack Tupperwares full of hornwort I've pulled out of a couple tanks to drop off to a friend who has cichlids. He feeds it to them. They're just overgrown annoyance plants to me.

 

Getting plants into an African cichlid tank requires a two pronged approach. Because they think greens are delicious and anything new must be investigated... With their mouth, then it is best to add plenty when you do some rearranging. Also, you will have better success by adding two sets of plants - the ones you actually wish to grow and keep, and your 'throwaways' which will be eaten by the cichlids.
If the cichlids in their exploring find one plant to be easier and more palatable than another, they will naturally seek out that plant to devour. So get your Java ferns and anubias ready, but also get some horn wort, anacharis and/or water lettuce. These are your throwaway plants. Cichlids think they are delicious and will eat them, especially after they try a bite or two of java fern and spit it out. These are great because they are cheap and easy to cultivate - you can throw them in a tub outside with some water under the sun and they will grow. Or you can throw them in any other tank without cichlids for a bit and then pull out clumps as needed. They grow fast. Also, all these plants float. Whereas the plants you want will be anchored down. Cichlids quickly distinguish not only which plants they think taste good, but where in the tank they are found. Thus floating plants are eaten, plants on the bottom tend to be ignored.
Eventually over the course of a couple months you wean back what throwaway plant mass is available and you should be left with just the plants you want that will hopefully be relatively unmolested by the cichlids.
Or if you have a ton of hornwort growing in your other tanks, you can throw handfuls of it in your cichlid tank whenever you need to thin it out. The cichlids will always appreciate having greens to eat. I regularly pack Tupperwares full of hornwort I've pulled out of a couple tanks to drop off to a friend who has cichlids. He feeds it to them. They're just overgrown annoyance plants to me.

This is very helpful! Thank you so much for these tips! I have water lettuce in one of my tanks, so that will be super convenient

 

Plants are a good food source for mbuna, I've tried several types several times, don't waste your money. If you still want to try, anubias lasts the longest. that's great looking tank, happy fish and a very good amount of filtering! My favorite rock is Mexican bowl rock, it can be found at rockeries and is fairly cheap and has lots of natural holes and bowl shapes to hide in. The tank in the picture is a 360, it has 600 pounds of bowl rock, that's because the rock structure is 8 ft long 12"to 18" wide and about 30" high, you would only use a fraction of that amount in a 75 gallon. If you notice the tank has lots of anubias plants, and a week later it looked like a forest fire went through lt.

 

Plants are a good food source for mbuna, I've tried several types several times, don't waste your money. If you still want to try, anubias lasts the longest. that's great looking tank, happy fish and a very good amount of filtering! My favorite rock is Mexican bowl rock, it can be found at rockeries and is fairly cheap and has lots of natural holes and bowl shapes to hide in. The tank in the picture is a 360, it has 600 pounds of bowl rock, that's because the rock structure is 8 ft long 12"to 18" wide and about 30" high, you would only use a fraction of that amount in a 75 gallon. If you notice the tank has lots of anubias plants, and a week later it looked like a forest fire went through lt.

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Wow! Incredible tank. Thank you so much for your input. We will definitely look into Mexican bowl rock. Looks awesome. I cannot get over how amazing your tank looks!

Hahaha. I’m sure you are right about the plants. I think I’ll be stubborn and give it a try anyway, but thanks for preparing me that it will most likely be a fail

Edit to add: Did you put anything under the substrate to help distribute the weight of the rocks? Are they attached to each other in any way or just carefully stacked?

 

Nataku, do you have any pictures of your African tank with the plants that have been in the tank awhile? It's a very interesting theory and I'd like to see the results (maybe I'll try it!)

Mine is an acrylic tank, that is much more forgiving than glass, so I would get some egg crating to protect the bottom of the tank from the rocks.

 

fissh actually isn't my tank but a friend's I helped him build and plant. I'm not huge on African cichlids precisely because they are such plant hogs, amongst other things. I like plants in my tanks, it is what it is. But I was growing so many plants that it was easy to take trimmings and stock his tank. I think the only plants he bought were anubias and red root floaters. I cautioned him the red root floaters would be consumed but he liked the look of them... For the two weeks they lasted.

I'll grab a couple pics next I'm over there.