African_Fever

All male tanks work b/c there's only males, NO females. If you've got all males of one species and males/females of another, you're just asking for hybrids. With no females of their own species the males will pursue whatever is around, regardless of species. With the johanni I'm assuming you have Mel. cyaneorhabdos (since males and females are the same colour) or some juvenile and some mature Mel. johanni (blue males, orange females). Personally, I'd look at getting a couple more of each of everything that you already have, especially elongatus females (if you can find them). Good luck!

Harold, It's not so much my opinion as Ad's exact words from his book for the differences between the two yellow peacocks. I'll have it with me tonight if you're interested in looking at it yourself. As far as ID's goes, I use the 3rd edition as backup for everything.

Aulonocara baenschi is species of it's own, and it's type locality is Nkhomo Reef. Aulonocara sp. 'stuartgranti maleri' is essentially a yellow stuartgranti type, most often exported (at least by Stuart) from Maleri Island. They do look very similar, but the baenschi has a curved snout, whereas the Maleri has a straight snout. If you have Malawi Cichlids in their natural habitat (3rd edition), both fish are pictured on the same page, and you can easily see the difference in the snouts. I'd suspect that these are highly hybridized due to their similarity. Someone not knowing what they have, attempting an ID, finding a pic of a yellow peacock, figuring that's what they have, and then buying more for the group is easy enough to do.

There are actually some people who have used protein skimmers for freshwater tanks. Not too sure where I saw them, but I know that I've seen them around before. Cichlid-forum would probably be a good place to look.

Could add a second AC200 as well. It would give you the combined flow rate close to the 500, but two may have less strength to their currents than the single 500. I'm also partial to sponge filters, but only use them in my fry tanks b/c I don't like the look of them in 'show' tanks.

Does anyone else have a bristlenose that just lays on it's back rather than hang on the underside of the cave etc? My largest female has a ledge that's about 2" above the sand, and often she'll just be laying on the sand on her back, rather than stuck to the underside of the ledge, as if she just got lazy and fell off (no, she's not dead, and is quite active at night and regularly comes out at feeding time).

Larry, Tropheus are NOTORIOUSLY hard to add extras to established groups, though with your's being such small groups, you may be able to get around it. How large of a tank are you keeping them in, and with what, if any tankmates? They're just about where the 'buy more than you want and thin down later' rule comes from. Most people experienced with Tropheus recommend starting off with at least 20, preferrably as many as 30 and thinning the group as problems arise and they grow up. But there are always exceptions to the rule; when I was first starting off I had 2 Tropheus duboisi in a 55 with 5 fronts, and everything did great until they all outgrew the tank! Good luck with them, you'll have to keep us posted on how things go!

I agree. Seeing the 'Medicine Hat area' makes me think they're from the Hat (and maybe someone I'd know), when in fact Lethbridge is over an hour and a half from the Hat.

Or try to add more Chimba's to get the group sizes even. From what I've read and heard from others, they should be ok to keep and breed together. Neil's right on the large numbers, but when we were at Don's a couple weeks back he actually had equal males and females in a couple of his colonies, and I think even more males in others as well. It definitely shocked me! If you're needing someone to 'look after' your Cyps for you, I know of a 120 that they could live in! Good luck keeping the Cyps with the Tropheus (if you decide to), I've never heard of it done before due to the boisterous behaviour of the Tropheus.

With that many albino fry appearing in a single brood, I'd bet that both parents again had some albino history. With albinism being so rare when it's 'true', I have a hard time believe that 4-5 mutations just 'happened' to occur in fish that have no history of it.

Wow. The second looks nothing like a lab. My thoughts mirror Neil's exactly. Why didn't albino labs appear in the 80's when the Brichard's were breeding them by the millions in Burundi? With the way that albino's are 'appearing now', pretty soon everything will be available in albino as well. Riverfront actually has some albino 'peacocks' in a with a tank of regular Sc. fryeri, and the albino's look much more like fryeri than any albino peacocks I've ever seen (there was actually a female carrying when Ty and I stopped by on the weekend). This is part of the reason I started the thred on albino's in the breeding section. With as many members as the board has, you'd think that one would've had an albino fry at some point.

With the recent topic on some albino fry that NWCD had from his 'F1' Aulonocara's, I thought I'd see if any other members on the forum have ever had any albino fry of their own from 'normal' parents (ones not carrying any albino gene). Personally, I've been breeding cichlids for close to 15 years and have never once had an albino fry. I've had plenty of deformities (some from obvious inbreeding), as well a couple of 'oddities' (all from Aulonocara's). A siamese twin joined at the belly (one was upside down when the other right-side up), one with two heads (died while on vacation), one with no head, and one born just a head. I've always wondered what the occurence of albinism was in fish that don't already carry the albino gene. Seeing as most albino Haps/peacocks are derived from crossbreeding with an albino peacock (the new albino D. comp's definitely don't look right), it would be interesting to find out if anyone has ever had any occur naturally.

It is possible, albinism is a naturally occurring phenomenon. But it appears VERY rarely 'naturally'. If there were only 1 fry from the female, then it could've occurred naturally. But having 4 appear in a single spawn, leads me to believe that she has some 'albino' in her heritage, and the male most likely does as well. I don't know about any one else on the forum, but I've been breeding cichlids for 15 years, and have never once had an albino fry (though I have had a number of deformed fry). Hmm, new topic?

I've heard of a number of people using an old pillowcase with great results for cleaning sand. I use it in almost all my tanks, and am in the process of switching over the ones that don't have sand. From the research I've done on it, there've been people who've had bad experiences with play sand, and once they switched over to pool filter sand everything turned out good. I think the play sand is often lighter and/or packs easier, creating the problems. I personally find much more natural, as well as more beneficial to my fish (they're able to go through it as they would in the wild). Good luck with it!

I think I understand Duncan, you have a total of 5 F1 females, and when you bred them to a F1 male, only one of the females had the albino fry? My guess is that your F1's then probably aren't F1's.

Duncan, If you've got 4 albino's from your fish I'd be a little bit suspect of their lineage. I've never had an albino from any of my fish, ever, and I'd imagine that I've had probably 6 spawns from each of my wild female Aul. stuartgranti 'ngara'. Albino young seem to be more prevalent among fish that are farther from wild and have been crossed with albino's in the past; I've never heard of anyone with true wild's or F1's having albino young. It at least makes me wonder if they are true wild or F1 fish. Just my thoughts.

Congrats Ty! They're looking great!

Make sure that they're the same species first. From what I understand, there are a number of species that look very similar, and they will cross. I'm actually attempting the same thing right now, and from the looks of one of my females I better get my act together and get a cave ready for them! Her belly is huge! I've actually been told that feeding high protein foods helps, but I've been feeding the NLS wafers and cucumbers and both disappear overnight (though the petro's probably get the wafers). They seem rather easy from all the research I've found, so we'll have to keep each other posted!

They've both got their pro's and con's. I personally prefer to use both on my tanks. AC type filters are great in that they move a lot of water and do an excellent job of 'polishing' the water, keeping it nice and clear. But they do need regular cleaning, I like to clean my sponges once every week or two in order to keep their flow rates at their peak. Canister filters can't be beat for biological filtration (except wet/dry but that's a whole new ball game!), though because they don't move the same volume of water as an AC type the water can be a little cloudier. They have the advantage of going extremely long between cleanings, I've left mine for over a year with a no problems, but they are more time consuming to clean. I combine both to get the biological filtration of the canister with the water polishing of the AC type. As far as canisters go, there's plenty out there, but I'm biased towards Eheim due to the silent, flawless use over 10 years of my originals.

I think you essentially could call a wild x F1 = F2, but I feel that you'd be selling yourself short, as most F2's people would normally believe to be a brother/sister pairing, whereas the wild x F1 would most likely be unrelated bloodlines. I've got that situation developing with my Ps. polit, and I'll be referring to the offspring as from a wild x F1 pairing.

I'd agree with Neil. NWCD actually sent me a PM and I told him basically everything Neil just said.

Sounds as if you could be missing a part/parts. From what I'm hearing it may be a Tetra Brilli style filter (the kind I personally prefer b/c it doesn't rest on the bottom). There should be a small 'nipple' that you attach the airline tubing to, and there is no need for an airstone. It might help if you try looking up sponge filters to find out just what type you have, I imagine it would easier then b/c someone will probably have used them before. Good luck!

Then go all males, NO females. You could probably have 8-10 males that way, maybe a dozen.

Why not go all the way and get dark rocks? Kind of ruins the effect of going to the expense of dark sand only to have white rocks.

I'd personally focus on 2 species. They may get along fine now, but chances are they won't in the future. You'll end up with a 'rainbow' tank and one king of the tank that beats on everything else. Where did you get the fainzilbergi from? They're not a common zebra and you may have something else.