Newbie to cichlids

[rich16]

Hi folks,

While not a newbie to the hobby, I am a rookie when it comes to Africans. I would like to try a Malawi tank. I have been researching a LOT, on this forum and others, and have most of my tank set up, and fish care type of questions answered.

What I'd like to figure out are your opinions on the differences between an all-male tank, and mixed male / female...other than the obvious breeding issues . Mostly wondering about stocking.

The tank is a 110 gallon tall (48"x18"x 30" high).

I saw this stocking list for someone else's tank, and it appealed to me:
Cynotilapia Afra (6)
Idotropheus Spengerae (6)
Labidichromis Caereleus (6)
Pseudotropheus Acei (6)

My other question is about water "movement" - how much do they like / need? I will be running a Fluval XP3 as the main filter, and am not sure what additional air pump I may need?

Any opinion, help, advice greatly appreciated!

Rich

[Sea Witch]

Hi folks,

What I'd like to figure out are your opinions on the differences between an all-male tank, and mixed male / female...other than the obvious breeding issues . Mostly wondering about stocking.

The tank is a 110 gallon tall (48"x18"x 30" high).

My other question is about water "movement" - how much do they like / need? I will be running a Fluval XP3 as the main filter, and am not sure what additional air pump I may need?

Rich

Hi Rich:

I kept Ciphotilapia frontosa (6 stripe) for years, so I can't speak for all the other varieties but I can speak to them.

Now I kept mine for breeding, so a mixed breed tank will be somewhat different. As a rule, the more males there are, the more fighting there is, depending on the breed. Unfortunately, when they're young you can't always tell which are male and which are female.

In a single breed tank depending on the size of the tank, you can keep one mature male and a few immature males and a harem of females. Once the other males got big, then I removed them to another tank.

If you have several breeds, then I would still try to have more females than males. They will figure out their own hierarchy. When stocking be sure to consider their *adult* size, not their juvenile size.

I'm not familiar with the breeds you mention, so you'll have to decide how aggressive/peaceful they are. To help with territorialism you can add some different size clay pots facing different directions that different fish can claim. Also, some varieties like water that's harder than others--take that into consideration too. If you need hard water and your water is soft, you could use some oolithic sand or dead calcium carbonate rock to help with the hardness. (the Cyphotilapia frontosa likes really hard water).

Re: flow. I'd always err on the side of more flow than less. I'm not familiar with a lot of the pumps available today, but taller tanks need more aeration than shorter tanks because there's less water/air interface. I had a 100g with 2 HOB filters and 2 bubble stones (is that what they're called?) running all the time. My tank was shorter than yours and I had, for example, one big male, one juvenile male, and 4 females in that tank + one pleco + 2 clown loaches in that tank. that's about 50 inches of adult fish. I changed 10 gallons weekly. Once I started to try to breed, the clown loaches and the juvey male went into another tank. Once a female had little ones in her mouth the big male got put in another tank too.

So I don't know if any of this is helpful or not, but I'd say more movement vs. less--especially pointed toward the surface for oxygenation, less stocking vs. more, and more females than males if possible. They're lake fish, so they don't need a lot of movement in the water--it's the oxygen they need.

YMMV

[clintgv]

Hi folks,

While not a newbie to the hobby, I am a rookie when it comes to Africans. I would like to try a Malawi tank. I have been researching a LOT, on this forum and others, and have most of my tank set up, and fish care type of questions answered.

What I'd like to figure out are your opinions on the differences between an all-male tank, and mixed male / female...other than the obvious breeding issues . Mostly wondering about stocking.

The tank is a 110 gallon tall (48"x18"x 30" high).

I saw this stocking list for someone else's tank, and it appealed to me:
Cynotilapia Afra (6)
Idotropheus Spengerae (6)
Labidichromis Caereleus (6)
Pseudotropheus Acei (6)

My other question is about water "movement" - how much do they like / need? I will be running a Fluval XP3 as the main filter, and am not sure what additional air pump I may need?

Any opinion, help, advice greatly appreciated!

Rich

I have a malawi tank with aceis, and yellow lab and soon to add the group of demasoni when they grow a bit bigger. Aceis and yellow labs are great together. Not sure about the other ones you mentioned as I never had them before. well I think aceis like water movement as mine are always in the top of the tank and the yellow labs in the low/mid part of the tank. I am running a fluval 304 canister filter with sponge filter and fluval 4 plus internal filter for more water movement. And they are happy with it. Maybe add another type of filter to your tank as It's bigger .

Clint.

[bingerz]

my acei's are wierd...they like swimming at the bottom. i've got fuels, red zebras and acei....but they swim around like a school. freakin wierdos!