yellow labs, electric blue alhi, kenyi...?

Question

These are the cichlids that I will house together when I get my 75gal....

One male of each species and about 5females.....

I got my tank set up in mind... many caves and rocks...
My substrate: crushed coral for high buffering capacity

Any recommendations.. think this is a good selection of fish?

Answer 1

I think your selection of fish is a good one. 18 fish in a 75 should not cause you any problems. Five females per male should keep the males colored up nice. I have 25 fish in a 55 and have no agression problems.

If any of them suffer, it will be the yelow labidichromis, they are the least agressive of the group you mention.

I don't know if you need the crushed coral, doing the required 30% weekly water changes should keep your pH where it should be if your tap water is over 7.2. Mine is 7.4 and I use no buffers of any kind. The water changes keep it where it should be.

The fish seem happy, I am constantly stripping holding females. So it would seem they are breeding like convicts.....lol.

Good luck with your setup. Hope you get fry soon.

Answer 2

Of course...

However, There's a GREATEST website devoted entirely on Cichlids only and it is wealth in information, articles, mixing up fishes together or cannot be together because you cannot mix African Cichlids (the ones you want is called Mbuna) with Lake Victoria or lake Tangainka or Peac*cks or Haps.

But I would like to advise you to lay down between one to two layers eggcrates or light diffuser (plastic) on the bottom of the tank. You can find them in lighting deptarment in hardware stores like home depot or another kind of stores. The reason for eggcrate is to lay on the bottom of the tank, it helps to spread the weight of rocks and no contact with the glass because the glass will crack. Then arrange your rocks on the eggcrate first then fill the rest of the bottom with sand (sand is preference for cichlids). Get rid of undergravel filter, they are not great with Cichlids because sand will fall through the cracks on undergravel filter and it won't work that well.

I have found that overstocking your 75 gallon with one male with 4 or 5 females in same species are great idea and try to mix about 5 different species, the aggression will be much lower than understocked tank.

If you plan to overstock your 75 gallon, make sure you have filtration that can do 10X over per hour, for example 75 gal tank should have filters that can do the water filtration to about 750 or 800 gallon per hour. I'd recommend that combinate with a canister with a HOB filter or two canisters that will give plently of water movements for the fish you would like to have.

I had White, orange, yellow, blue, blue/black mbunas under the family "Pseudotropheus sp." and two yellow labs in my tank before. They got along quite well.

Just a warninig, electric blue (Melanochromis johanni) or (Melanochromis auratus) are very aggressive and temperative fish you might not want them in your tank. Try to speak with the fish store saleperson with lot of experience and try to work with a person who have a lot of experience that way you can enjoy your fish much more.

Here's the website you can find more information.

Answer 3

I really doubt it. If there is some sort of grass they can hide in they might. I'm not the fish expert but I own quite a few. Never bred them though. No guarentees...

Answer 4

that sounds really good. And I would keep the coral as it wouldn't hurt. different people who live in different places have different water coming out of the faucet!