African_Fever

I recently did the black out method with two tanks of mine that were beginning to get quite the cyanobacteria bloom. I just covered the tanks for 3 days with the lights off, and the change was amazing! All the blue/green cyanobacteria was gone, and has now been gone for over 3 weeks. My tanks are more 'low tech' though with only fluorish added, and I didn't add anything else or even do any 50% water changes.

Cool pics! I can completely understand why the first pic would be so hard to get.

That's a little high for a tig; I've seen them at $900 for 9-10", and a $1400 for 12", but I think even those prices were a little high. I brought mine in myself almost a year ago at 4-6" and they've done quite well since.

I've been keeping a group of 'Paraguay tetras' in a 10 for a while now, and just wish that I could find more of them. Neat little tetra that I've never seen before or since I picked mine up.

Yes, it's a tigrinus, I've got three right now, all about 12-14".

Blue dolphins do better with groups of their same kind (as do all Malawians), and though I know people have done them in a 90 with success, I personally feel it is a bit on the small side for them and they would appreciate a 6' tank because they are a more open water fish than many other commonly kept Malawians.

Great looking cichla!

You're definitely changing a lot of peoples' minds about Vic's with your picture taking skills as usual Patick. Amazing looking Vic, almost makes me want to set up another cichlid tank again.

Congrats on the new rays. Definitely a great looking setup! You might get lucky with the rays lasting over 6 months in that tank, but you will definitely need much more filtration for them if you plan on keeping them much longer than that in there. Rays produce a TON more waste than other fish that 'appear' to be about the same size, so you need way more filtration at the very least.

A few pics of some of the silver dollars I currently have. The first two are Mylossoma duriventre with the red anal fins, and the third is one of my red-hooks. I currently have a shoal of 20+ red hooks, 4 schomburgki, and 11 M. duriventre. They're not the easiest fish to get pics of because the tank is dividing a room so there's no background.

A few updated pics of my male flower ray. He's nowhere near as dark as the female yet, but he is finally getting darker. He's at least an 8" disc, and probably 18-20" overall. He's also a ravenous feeder, and probably eats a half-dozen shrimp himself every day.

Jorg that is truly a stunning male! Almost makes me want some Malawians again! Best of luck with getting some fry some them; more people need a fish that nice in their tanks!

I'd probably go with a 3 or 4 on the 150, and you could do the same on the 90. Tropheus are from essentially the 'surf' zone, so are used to a ton of current and getting washed around. They shouldn't have any troubles with strong current in a 90 gallon tank.

Great shots of some great tanks/fish! I love the azureus. The shoal of clowns is probably pretty cool to watch. I've really been finding the advantages too of keeping shoaling fish in a large shoal, and how much better it is to watch the large shoal together than just a small shoal that aren't the dominant fish in the tank.

Are your rainbows wild caught? If not, I'd doubt that they know what kind of water they're supposed to prefer and would do fine in any tap water from Alberta. Rainbows are probably among the most common fish I've seen in heavily planted tanks w/CO2.

It would be best to fill the tank in a garage or somewhere where if it leaks it won't be a problem. Silicone can sometimes dry out and leak, but in my experience a year isn't all that long to have a tank empty for.

I hate being a doubter, but are you sure you didn't buy three of them? If not then congrats, because you're probably one of the first people to ever have bred them in captivity.

I'm hooked on Eheim's personally, through and through. I've got one running solid for over 15 years now and you still can't hear it. IMO, you get what you pay for. I have Eheim Classic's running on just about every single tank I have running right now, and they're almost the only filter I feel confident buying used from anyone.

Great pics. The unidentified one is a Copadichromis of some type, and it might even be verduyni (if so, you have a future stunner on your hands!).

Hybrid. Mbuna is a term used to describe a 'type' of cichlid coming from Lake Malawi (specifically rock dwelling/grazing cichlids are known collectively as mbuna).

If you bought it without knowing exactly which Aulonocara species it is, unfortunately it's just too hard to ID them because they can change from the wild to captivity, and because of the hybrid issues as well. Great looking peacock though.

OB's are almost impossible to tell exactly which species they are unless you get a group of wild caughts. There are TONS of zebra-TYPE mbuna in Lake Malawi that have OB females, and the ones found in pet stores are most likely hybrids of some form or another. Met. estherae used to be fairly common in OB, though I honestly haven't seen them around here or Calgary at all for a while. So in all honesty, an OB zebra is about the most accurate (and truthful) ID you could ever get.

I used to mix the lakes when I first started keeping cichlids years ago, but found over time that I was never very fond of the mish-mash that ended up resulting. I prefer to keep colonies of fish that do well together, rather than a few of these and a few of those, and find that for the most part the lake vary so much in behaviour that the fish from one lake will usually thrive over those of the other (most often Malawians outcompete Tangs for food). Vic's I've found do well with Malawians for the most part (though I have nowhere near the experience Patrick has with them), and some Tangs work as well, but for my personal fishkeeping, I'd rather keep them separate if I can. If I were going for the show tank that you are with an all-male show tank, I probably wouldn't worry too much about combining the lakes, as long as all the fish were healthy, eating well, and aggression wasn't an issue.

Nice jacob! Definitely one of my perenial favourite peacocks.

I agree with above, buy the tank, then the fish. Black aro's aren't too hard to order when they're in season, but getting a tank big enough for one is much more difficult for a lot of people.