African_Fever

Do not use the white hose from your trailer - the chemicals that are added to keep the mold and mildew from forming WILL kill your fish.

Bare tanks do help with aggression among Tropheus if you find that it gets too bad. No hiding places or rocks means nothing to fight over.

That's great! How large are they?

And you're going to somehow magically filter out the salt if you overfilter a brackish tank? Filtration doesn't need to be tied to water flow - you could have a sump the size of the tank that it's filtering with 1x flow rate, or you could have a filter with a volume 1/10th that of the tank and a 10x flow rate. Which is better, I don't know. I think people are confused with overfiltering and too much water movement. Black water doesn't get filtered out any more than salt does as long as you're not using carbon/charcoal, and even though a lot of fish come from murky water I highly doubt anyone would want their tank to match because you wouldn't see what's inside. Can you over-filter? NO. But can you have too much flow? YES.

The cyaneorhabdos pictured above is a very bad example of what the species should look like, and might not even be a pure cyan. The stripes should be much more distinct, and not as blurry as they are. I've attached a pic from my tank; and it shows how distinct the stripes should be. The different genus names are old, and were before people became more educated about fish and the differences and were based purely on external looks alone (Pseudotropheus is the old name for a lot of fish, Metriaclima is the new). To me, the bimac and guttatus look completely different - different body structure, different eye size. The 'blue stripes across the face' of your fish could be at least 50 different species found within the lake, so aren't even a starting point for an ID. The dorsal fin on the cyan's is black with a white/blue edge, the msobo's is white.

Tank looks great. Any pics or plans of the internal filter that you're doing in the end section?

Blue dolpins are great tankmates for fronts, as are Cyathopharynx foai/furcifer, or any of the other featherfins from Lake Tanganyika (I'm partial to not mixing the lakes). Fronts can be rather slow and almost secretive cichlids because they come from such depths and it's much darker down there. Having other fish out in the open that aren't too rambunctious should help the fronts feel more comfortable. Clown loaches should work great, as would some Syno lucipinnis (petricola) or multipunctatus. I personally prefer substrate in all my tanks, and if you think it would be easier to keep the tank clean without substrate, then I'd just have a thin enough layer to barely cover the bottom. How brightly lit is the tank? Because of how deep they originate, fronts seem to prefer having a more dimly lit tank than many other commonly kept cichlids.

I'd guess about two years, possibly more. They'll need to be about 3" to breed from what I've seen, and with them growing so slowly it can take two years to get to that size. As for spawning they don't pair off at all, but spawn as a group, and having more males than females is needed. My 'breeding group' currently consists of 12 lucipinnis, all 3-4".

Boom - the GARF plans have been done by thousands of people, probably even more. They work; I've had my DIY ply/epoxy tank up and running for at least 8 months now with no problems (I also did a step by step in this folder) at all, and know personally of a couple people who've had ply/epoxy tanks up and running for over 10 years with no issues. I'm still planning on doing another 1 or 2 tanks as soon as I have some free time (possibly 96x48x22 and 60x20x24 for now) because they work and are quite easy to do. Good work on the construction; my biggest worry would be the long-term bonding of the acrylic/silicone/pond liner and leaks. Super glue can be nasty stuff, and I've found in the past it eats away or melts plastic. I never even thought of using the composite decking; great idea! I think that depending on how well it works for you, I'll have to use it for my top braces and supports when I do my next tanks.

She's got about a 10" disc, and probably 16-18" overall. She wouldn't eat for weeks after I brought her in, and I was force-feeding her for at least 8 weeks, possibly longer. She was being fed every day to every other day until she finally ate blackworms on her own (we don't have any available locally and Riverfront didn't seem to get any in that they felt were good enough to ship forever!). She's now eating at least a dozen nightcrawlers if I give her that many a day, and has quickly been putting on weight and getting her colour back. She's all over the tank, constantly swimming and not just sitting there like most motoro's I know of, so it's a nice change!

This is my miracle fish. She's gone through hell and back, and is finally doing amazing and looking as good as she did months ago when she came in. She's a true Colombian flower ray (P. schroederi). I have a male as well, but he's a different variant and much smaller (about 6" disc) and not dark like she is. The flash does wash out some of the base colour because she is closer to black than the pics show.

Great looking Pheno's!

I agree with a large water change, and stop feeding BRINE shrimp, it's essentially useless as a frozen food. First thing I do whenever fish are not looking right is a large water change. Good luck.

Whatever you do decide for rocks, I'd get all the same type of rocks. If you have a couple different types of rocks IMO it doesn't look as good. Make sure your rocks go all the way to the bottom under the sand, because your fish will dig under them and they will collapse. I've actually built myself 'tables' out of pieces of granite (free in the scrap bins from any granite countertop places) that bury in the sand, and then pile my rocks around. They allow the fish to dig out and get a cave under the rocks, and keep the rocks placed exactly how I want them. This also allows me to grow vals in all my cichlid tanks because I essentially control exactly where the fish dig (with practice you'll get good at 'enticing' them to dig exactly where you want). Having a few separate rock piles versus one large pile throughout the tank will help separate the territories of the dominant fish, and allow them to co-exist more peacefully. One big pile means one fish will rule the roost; piles separated by sand allows different males to claim different piles.

I don't know what it is, but there's something about those L90 Papa's that I just love. Great pics as usual Charles; too many more of these posts of yours full of great pleco pics and I'll find myself with tanks full of them myself!

Nice work supercop.

I can't believe how fast they're growing; the big female must just be a pig! I wish my male flower would grow half as fast as they are; he's still not over a 7" disc and he's been eating awesome since he came in.

I've been happy so far with my hydor inline heater. Seems to work well, and it's nice to have a little more clutter out of the tank. Plus with it being attached to the water flow directly, I think it probably helps eliminate hot/cold spots a little better. I've had too many problems with the cheap heaters in the past to trust them; they either fry your fish, or stop heating but the light still comes on.

Some new pics of the pups. They're attacking chopped up nightcrawlers now, and getting a nice little booty on them! Hopefully I will be able to get them to take pellets soon enough. The largest has probably grown a 1/2" in disc size already too.

Wow, great looking marbles! Are they pretty active, or do they sit around most of the time?

Awesome fish!!! You'll need a bluebase XB next to just round things out.

Mike - the tig is growing great, and I love how it's been able to keep the tail streamers! Great tig too Chris, it looks much larger than 13"! Have you found it's growth to slow once it hit a certain size?

Depends on the tank size and how many of each you're looking to combine. In smaller tanks with smaller groups of fish your chances of hybridization increase.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but the silver dollars with annihilate any live plants within days of being in there. Some of the dugouts I've been working around this summer have been chock full of some plants that look similar to vals; I added two thick clumps (as thick as your arm) to a 135 with 30 silver dollars, and there was nothing left the next morning but roots and green faeces everywhere (I put them in to see just how voracious the red hooks were with plants). I think silver dollars would look so great swimming in and amongst jungle vals, but unfortunately that's not a possibility, at least not with red hooks. Great looking setup BTW!

How much larger is the female than the male? Are both males the same size, and is one male more dominant than the other? How large is the female in relation to the two males, larger, smaller? It may just be that the male getting attacked is the subdominant ray in the tank, and keeps trying to mate with the female and it's just her way of picking the male she wants to mate with.