African_Fever

You could probably get by with 10-12 fish, depending on your choices. Two groups of 6 (maybe even 8) fish should do fine in your tank. You could pick a more peaceful mbuna species and a hap/Aulonocara species....maybe some Lab. sp. 'mbamba' and Cop. azureus? (a bit of a plug for the fish I'm selling for a friend).

I've actually had my Lab. mbamba spawn at 1.5", smallest mouthbrooder I've ever had spawn that small beside my Ps. polit.

I just picked up some of this from Neil over the weekend and I've got to say that I'm already hooked. I've got two week old Aulonocara fry that can already eat it! A much simpler, cleaner way to get a lot of food into fry to get them to grow as quickly as they possibly can. Less need to worry about overfeeding and food going to waste with the pellets b/c you only feed as much as your fish eat. I feed a couple 'pinches' at a time, and stop as soon as food hits the bottom (I've got a ton of fry going right now, and they all feed off the surface, so if food hits the bottom they're full). I don't think you could find a better combination than NLS grow formula and Cyclop-eeze for getting fry to show great colour and grow quickly. I just thought with all the talk about the regular cichlid formula that some people would be interested in preliminary results of the grow formula.

Ty, if you feel like catching them I could come over and vent them for you. There'd hopefully be no questions then. As far as 'iceburg' or not, you'd have to see their father to know for sure. Otherwise that's a lot of trust to be putting in someone.

You might be surprised how many people are interested in females. Easiest way to increase the size of a breeding group. Try posting in the for sale section to see what kind of interest you get. What are the dimensions of your tank? Your Cop. azureus will outgrow your tank regardless, so with them I'm thinking that you've got to look at your options (they'll easily reach 6" in the wild, so in captivity they could probably get to 8" pretty quickly). If you were to get rid of all your azureus you should have room for a larger group of afra's. Good luck!

I'd imagine that your tank sizes and water changes do play a role. If you could figure out fry per gallon or something like that in the two tanks and then compare this with frequency/percentage water changes it may show something. Fish release pheromones into the water that will control their growth and the growth of those around them. The pheromones essentially slow down the growth of the other fish. The more frequent the water changes, the less pheromones in the water, and the faster the fish will grow, but this is also dependent on food supply. I try feeding my fry as many times a day as I can. This often means feeding as much as they can eat in five minutes, waiting 10 minutes, then feeding again, often doing this three times in a row (yes, it does take a while!). I've been doing this and daily/every other day water changes with my fry lately and the growth rates have been nothing short of amazing.

At the size that they came in at it would be hard to sex. Best bet would be to hope the larger ones are males, smaller are females. But b/c it's impossible to know the ages, that's just guessing. Personally, I think you're going to run into major issues having just two afra's. Almost all Africans (except for pair-bonding species) do 100% better in larger groups; I'd recommend that you go pick up at least another four (one large and 3 smaller) and hope that you get a good male/female ratio. Even if you were lucky enough to get one male and one female, when they get large enough to breed your male will probably beat the @#%# out of the female and kill her. More fish of the same species spreads the aggression around.

Hey Larry, I was wondering if you were going to find this site sometime soon. I had been meaning to give you a call to let you know about it, but I haven't been back to the Hat too often lately. Kyle

Great looking tank!

Wow! Those colours are amazing!

I think you're looking for Ameca splendens; doing a search with the correct name on google may come up with the info you're looking for, and I'm pretty sure that they're livebearers (like a guppy). Cichlid-forum.com should have all the info you need on your Pseudotropheus sp.'acei' and Lamprologous brichardi's.

Three weeks to a month if she lasts, but if it's her first time it may only be a couple days. Congrats!

Nope, only brought back Malawians. Thinking about going to Tanganyika in the near future though, maybe do the same thing there that I did with Stuart in Malawi.

But at quite a few of the on-line retailers from the US you're able to get bunches of plants, such as crypts, for around $10 a bunch, or even $2 for single plants such as crypts and swords. I know that you're often able to get a couple plants in a pot, but there still isn't the choice of the exact types you'r always looking for.

Leleupi are also more of an orange than yellow colour. I personally won't mix lakes, so part of it is that it depends on whatever other fish you're getting as well. You can never have a huge, bright 'species tank' with leleupi swimming everywhere b/c they're not nearly as social as yellow labs.

I don't know if the larger size in our tanks has to do with the 'better' conditions or the fact that most people overfeed their fish. I don't see why any fish in captivity couldn't grow to similar max size as wild fish if they were fed the right amount. My WC male is definitely not larger than 3.5", probably just under 3", with all four females around 2". I guess size is somewhat of a personal choice as to how much you want to feed your fish, but I've never seen a 5"+ yellow lab that doesn't have poor black markings everywhere. And the largest yellow labs I've seen have also been the ugliest, with very poor colour and black everywhere it shouldn't be.

It doesn't hurt to have one day a week when you don't feed them, I often use Sunday. I think that most people would be surprised to learn how long their fish can go without food. I've regularly left my fish without food for an entire week while I was at home with no problems, just to see how they did if I went away for a week. Even two weeks probably wouldn't kill most healthy adult fish (female mouthbrooders can often go a month), and in many instances it can help them breed more (the ovaries become surrounded by fat and can't produce a large number, or any eggs in some instances; plus, why would they want to breed and not eat for a month when there's food everywhere?).

And that's not at Golds!!!!!

Well food and more frequent water changes can make a big difference. As for your yellow labs, how large are you hoping to get them? My WC females are only about 2", with the male being close to 3. Your azureus shouldn't get much more than 6" for the male, 4" for the females, and the peacocks shouldn't hopefully get too much larger either. 5" for a male is huge IMO, the only WC's close to this size is Aul. 'ngara', the rest are much smaller (3-4" for males, 2-3 for females).

But who wants to pay what the stores want for their plants? I've seen the 'red flame' swords on US mail order lists for $5 each, yet at the places that do carry Tropica they're $20 each! Too much disparity for my liking. There are a number of plants, ie Glossostigman elatinoides, Echinodorus tenellus, Sagittaria subulata, that I've been looking for, and when I have found them all they are is old crappy looking plants that are all half dead, with prices ~$10 a bunch. Plus, quite a few of the nice plants that they carry are all potted, and everyone knows you pay a lot more just for the rockwool and pot (which you take them out of right away anyways). If we'd like to turn this into a 'plants to trade' post, I've got Crypt. affinis, jungle vals, and regular vals to trade for any of the above mentioned plants (or any nice red swords or other red stem plants).

Too many stripes for Metriaclima lombardoi. Met. lombardoi only have 5 stripes, the fish pictured has 7. Could be a Met. aurora of some type, but I wouldn't think so coming from a tank of mixed africans, and it's face isn't quite the right shape. Most likely a mixed african itself.

I've been looking around a bunch of other boards, and most people there seem to feel that play sand is definitely NOT the way to go. They find it too light with particles that are too small, and it ends up ruining their filters, along with packing tightly. Quite a few posts about people tearing their tanks apart to suck out all the play sand and replacing it with pool filter sand. I actually went to Target themselves here in Calgary and paid $11.74 for two 50 lb bags (the receptionist said she wasn't supposed to sell less than 10 bags at a time, but I went looking for black sand and this was the best sand they had). They did have a nice dark crush, but I guess it was the 'raw material' that use for making other sands, too bad b/c it was almost black with probably 1-2 mm grain size.

Another note of mention, did a quick look around cichlid-forum on the reviews section. One point I think that us Eheim fans seem to take for granted is how quite they are. I've never had an Eheim that I could actually hear running. I have to put my ear to it or feel it to know that it's running. Quite a number of people liked their XP's, but found them rather noisy. And as far as prices go, the Eheim classic (which I think more people seem to have and prefer, myself included) is comparable to the XP3.

I just finished adding the remainder of my decent dive photos (some are still great, but there's a couple that had to be cleared up but I felt people really need to see the fish). I hope to still add more to the website; if anyone has any ideas please let me know. There will hopefully be more pics of Stuart's compound and facilities, as well as pics of fish in the tanks there (I have a great pic of an 8" show male Cy. moori). May even add some safari photos too. I did slightly change the link, but the old one will still work too. http://members.shaw.ca/AfricanRiftValleyCichlids

IME Eheims are the best out there. Sure they're pricey, but I'm still using two that are close to ten years old with never a problem. A friend has one that lasted him 20 years. I don't think you'll find any better reliability than that.