sammyswife

Beautiful fish!

Thanks for the update RD, your fish are looking great! It is so nice to see how awesome the fish are doing. Sorry again for the state of the fish when they arrived; I knew they would come around again Amy PS-Anyone else that purchased some of our beauties I would love an update!

Oh no, I don't want any part of starving a beautiful Calvus!!! Sorry Jvision...listen to RD I would have to say dietary needs are his expertise. Amy

IME, with mbuna (<-which was maybe six months) and then with Hap/Peacock tank (which we had for over two years maybe three), we had no issues with tangs ever. It was like the fish totally ignored the tangs. I have seen quite a few malawi tanks with tangs however, mostly they were hap/peacock. My opinoin is there isn't aggression towards the tangs because they look so different compared to the cichlids. We had almost the same tangs as you do except instead of a calvus we had a sexafaciatus. The only problem we ever had was when the bicharsis bred and took over the 90gallon. Of course this was my fault because I thought the birchardis would look so cute if we had two :heart: I would suggest you try it out and see if there is any aggression towards the tangs and let us know. Hope this helps, Amy

What other fish do you have in the tank with these? IME, it won't be long before the birchardi take over the tank and are willing to fight for their babies. Don't let their size fool you. When we had birchardis that bred we had a daffodil as well that ganged up with the bichardis to fight off all other fish in the tank from getting near the babies. Amazing to watch though the fry are like a little cloud and when the mom says they go down all at once. Very interesting to watch. I hope all your fish survive Good Luck! Amy

We just recently sold off all the fish from our all male show tank. We had a mix of Peacocks/Haps, a couple of tangs, some catfish and bristlenose pleco. There was definatly a pecking order but for the most part with the exception of a couple peacocks all fish coloured up beautifully. When we first got into the hobby we started with mbuna and slowly added more peacocks and got fewer and fewer mbuna... We (ok maybe just me) could not stand how violent the mbuna were to the peacocks and Haps. Eventually we were down to what a coincidence, Borleyi and Socolofi and had to eventually give them back to the pet store. Mbuna IME are a more violent type of fish and do not do well in a mixed all male show tank. I would say if Mbunas (with the exception of Yellow Labs) were dogs they would be pitbulls and Haps are more like Labs where if they attack a lab will generally not kill you. A pitbull on the otherhand....well I wouldn't want to find out really. But, it is hard to say your fish could have been different than our fish and if you do want to add some more Haps I would suggest a Yellow Chin and Azuras. Haps grow faily fast so they are a good fish for a show tank and very colourful. As with any show tank adding new fish can be a blood bath. I would suggest adding more than one fish at a time. Hope this helps. Amy

Nice fish.... Thanks for taking some pictures. The Azuras should be back to his stunning self in a week or so

Your fish and pictures are absolutly stunning. Please post more Amy

Hi Degrassi, Thanks for the info. These fish are 4" - 5" and just didn't quite look right. They all have stripes sometimes but clearly are not phenos.... These fish have been returned to the lfs I think they originally came from. Amy

Hi Gina, Nice fish Your lithobate looks identical to ours. I see the taiwan reef is doing well. Amy

Hi Seajays, The blue peacock is probably a nice way of saying hybrid, most people selling fish at the auction would list the latin name if it was a pure line. Of course I could be wrong it could be someone that just didn't know the name. As for the firefin these are a hybrid as well however, these are bred purposely to achieve the nice colour of the firefin and IMO they are one beautiful fish Hope this helps, Amy

I think the right terminology for these fish would be selectively bred not as harsh sounding as hybrid.

I believe they have some acei at big als right now.

What a looker!! I have to agree with Val that in Edmonton the ruby's are all orange. I will be looking to take one of the offspring home if they look anything like the daddy. Sammy might wear the pants in this family....but, I tell him which ones to put on :P

Well, I think you should add more africans but, I wouldn't suggest acei if you have a tank full of peacocks. We have had an acei in a peackock/hap tank and we soon had to take the acei out once he grew up. Our fish come out everytime someone walks by. Africans usually beg for food if they are healthy (of course you can't feed them everytime they beg). We have all our tanks in the basement and when I go to get up from my chair in all 6 tanks they come swimming to the front. Who says fish are dumb?? Sometimes I tease them by standing up and then sitting down again (this is a great thing to show company ). Oh yeah, I don't even feed the fish so they just come out to say hello. You could always try getting some acei and seeing how it works out they are a nice colour fish that love to swim about. As for how many I guess that would depend if you want females and you don't mind breeding fish? Good luck, Amy