Tropheus...?

[Exodus99]

Any tropheus experts out there...

I am thinking of changing plans for my tanks and switching to a tropheus habitat.

I am wondering what fish would be a good mix for tropheus morii...what else could i put inside?

It is a 135 gallon.

Thanks all...

[Fishful Thinking]

Excellent! I converted two of my tanks over to tropheus and I have loved it! What type of moorii are you thinking? I am not an expert, but my advice would be get as many as you can (30 is nice if you can get that many), overfilter and don't overfeed (NLS). I have my red chimba with 8 synodontis petricola and they are doing fantastic. I have head some people put a single pair of goby cichlids from Lake Tanganyika. To be perfectly honest, though, I don't think tropheus need any other species in their tank. They are so active and use some much of the tank space that I could watch them for hours. If you want, I have a couple of tropheus journal topics on the go: Fishful Thinking Member Journal

Other sites that I have found quite useful:Tropheus Corner, Steve's Tropheus

Good luck if you take the plunge.

Edited March 20, 2009 by Fishful Thinking

[byte]

Do lots of reading about tropheus, they are very hard to keep after they get to breeding age. They are also very aggressive fish and have very strict feeding requirements.

[Blue Ram]

Do lots of reading about tropheus, they are very hard to keep after they get to breeding age. They are also very aggressive fish and have very strict feeding requirements.

I have to disagree with this statement. I have had a breeding colony of 14 adults for 15 months. I have approximately 20 juveniles of different ages. The aggression is very minimal if you have the tank stocked appropriately. My 1/2 inch fry swim actively with the 4" males. As for care, regular water changes and the appropriate diet are all that is required. I do however think they are best in a species only tank. I only have one pleco in with mine.

[byte]

Do lots of reading about tropheus, they are very hard to keep after they get to breeding age. They are also very aggressive fish and have very strict feeding requirements.

I have to disagree with this statement. I have had a breeding colony of 14 adults for 15 months. I have approximately 20 juveniles of different ages. The aggression is very minimal if you have the tank stocked appropriately. My 1/2 inch fry swim actively with the 4" males. As for care, regular water changes and the appropriate diet are all that is required. I do however think they are best in a species only tank. I only have one pleco in with mine.

I didn't believe the stuff about aggression and proper feeding either... Until I watched a big tank (130 gallon) with tropheus slowly die off one a day. This tank had raised many, many fry and was running about 12 months, then after a two week holiday with fish-sitters, the problems started. The main tank and the fry tank both were affected and they went from having 150 tropheus (with all the fry) to almost none left. We both have many types of fish and tanks (over 800 gallons) and no other fish or tanks were affected. They figure the fish-sitter fed a little too much when they were gone. Even 3 months after the holiday, they were still losing 1 fish a day.

[Fishful Thinking]

I don't find the feeding requirements that strict. I feed NLS and I make sure to not overfeed.

[rayfong]

I feed one tank mainly NLS medium pellets and the other one gets mix of spirulina flakes and NLS cichlid pellets. I again make sure not to overfeed although they are really good beggars. I feed once in the morning and that is usually it as I'm at work and they are usually asleep when I get home.

[punman]

I have had tropheus for 10 months.

I got 30 'cause I was told you will lose some with time.

People said "buy medication and use it at once."

I never bought any medications, ordered 30 -1.5 inch fry from Spencer in Winnipeg in May 2008 and they started breeding two months later.

I feed only NLSpectrum and have never medicated and never lost a fish as they matured.

They spent time in a 90 gallon and 180 gallon tank.

I pared the group down to 22 fish and they will be permanently in the 90 gallon now.

One-third water changes every 10 days and twice a day feedings.

Maybe I am lucky - I don't know.

I am no expert but I would say don't add other cichlid types and make sure you are committed to the water changes. If you know you will be lazy on that, or not sure, then start with cheaper, hardier cichlids. I have not had problems but it sounds like when you do have tropheus problems, they can go bad fast. If you have at least 15 fish, that is quite a loss and they generally are not cheap fish.

Edited March 22, 2009 by punman

[Fishful Thinking]

I do the 30% water changes now as well. I find that with the kiriza, which are bigger, they don't even seem to notice and keep motoring around the tank.

[RTG_Gerry]

The most critical pieces to good tropheus keeping experiences is getting good stock to begin with, having more than adequate filtration, and being able to recognize danger signs.

It is almost essential to have meds on hand since shite can happen fast with a tropheus colony. By virtue of their stomach construct, they are prone to blockage and bloat. Young tropheus seem to not be as vulnerable as adults. You need to be able to observe them all eating, as not eating is a sign of a holding female or a fish that is suffering from blockage or bloat.

They are probably most vulnerable during shipping since they typically have empty guts and thats the perfect environment for a bacterial or parasitic infestation.

I have kept many colonies over the past few years and there is no rhyme or reason as to sex ratios, rockwork, temperature or even number of fish to a particular tank size. Hyper=aggressive males pop up every once in a while and if not dealt with quickly, can decimate a colony and cause a lot of gut problems by way of denying lesser fish access to food (empty gut issue) and causing stress, thus rendering their immune systems vulnerable to infestations.

I only have one colony of red rainbows left, and I feed them NLS. I am not afraid to powerfeed if they haven't spawned recently, but I am meticulous with regular water changes and the tank is very much over-filtered.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to watch for signs of trouble. Not eating, hiding at the back of the tank during feeding time, or shredded fins are all signs that you need to intervene, whether that be possibly isolating a hyper male or medicating for blockage/bloat.

For a first time tropheus keeper, I'd strongly advise getting a group of fry and letting them grow together in the tank you have set up. This way you don't have to deal with the aggression from sexually active males right away and you'll have a chance to get used to their sometimes rather-different behaviours.

They can be mixed with a variety of different fish, ranging from clown loaches to cyprichromis to mbuna. But why? Once you have a good sized colony in a 6 foot tank, there's nothing quite like it. Anyone else will to some degree interfere with breeding.

PS~~It is best to underfeed a couple of times a day rather than one huge feeding. Let algae grow in the tank and that will allow them to graze and can also help reduce aggression.

Edited March 25, 2009 by RTG_Gerry

[Boom]

All excellent advice and information. But can someone tell me, does NLS supply sufficient algae content that these fish require in their diet? In the lake, Tropheus are algae grazers. Their mouths are designed to graze algae, and certainly some good algae growth in the tank would be benificial. But wouldn't a food higher in algae content be better than NLS? Is it a case that NLS is just "good enough", or does it have more algae in it than I know of?

Boom :boom:

[Blue Ram]

I feed my tropheus a high qualilty spiralina flake in the AM and NLS pellets in the PM. They love both. The flake is good for fry because I can crush it up for the fry who cannot eat the larger pellets until they are bigger.

[Fishful Thinking]

When I was deciding what to feed my tropheus, I took a lot of info from the NLS forum:

NLS forum, Tropheus search

My tanks both have algae growth which is jackhammered off by the fish. I like it because it gives them something to do and snack on when I am not around, but I am sure that they would be fine even if they didn't have it.

[RD.]

Boom - NLS contains a large inclusion rate Algae Meal, that consists of Seaweed, Kelp, and Haematococcus pluvialis (a micro algae), a premium grade of natural Spirulina, as well as a fruit & vegetable extract that consists of Spinach, Red & Green Cabbage, Peas, Broccoli, Red Pepper, Zucchini, Tomato, Kiwi, Apricot, Pear, Mango, Apple, Papaya, and Peach.

I think some people get a bit too caught up in the amount of greens herbivores eat, vs where their 'protein' source in the wild truly comes from. The reality is that even though algae dominates the stomach contents of the majority of certain species such as wild African Mbuna and Tropheus, and many of these species are considered strict herbivores, the actual foods that make them grow are insect nymphs and larvae, crustaceans, snails, mites, micro-organisms, and zoo plankton, not vegetable matter. (as per Ad Konings)

FYI - Stuart Grant's facility feeds a generic fish meal based bulk flake to every last herbivore that's collected in Malawi, as do all of the exporters on Lake Tanganyika. Kyle (African_Fever) spent 5 months working on Lake Malawi for Stuart Grant, and was responsible for the daily feeding of all fish. None of these fish ever saw a veggie based food, and he never once saw or heard of a case of bloat in the 5 months that he was there.

An exporter on Lake Tanganyika that I know, Mark Young, told me the same thing. He specializes in Tropheus sp., and he too feeds a fish meal based food. Some of these freshly wild caught fish are kept on this diet for 4-6 months before being exported, and Mark never experienced any type of dietary issues, least of all bloat. Ironically, the one time he did purchase a spirulina flake, the Tropheus refused to eat it, even when in a starving state!

Due to their diet consisting of matter that is very low in nutritional content, in the wild tropheus eat from sun up to sun down, just to ensure survival to the next day. In our aquariums it is impossible to duplicate identical food & feeding methods (without water quality suffering greatly), so we must feed less food, less often, and that food must be of greater nutritional content.

HTH

Edited April 3, 2009 by RD.

[Boom]

Thanks for the info guys.

Blue-ram, do you mind telling what high quality spirulina flake you use?

Boom :boom: