Lake Malawi Species • New tank up and running... Looking for suggestions.

[nolt2005]

Hello all,
I am new to the Cichlid keeping hobby and being so i thought I would join some online forums for news, advise and discussion.




Well i have finally got my new 75 gallon tank up and running. It has two xp3 filters, 2 koralia power heads, 300 watt fluval e-series, slate/limestone rock scape with tons of hiding places, aquatic life t-5 lighting, and aragonite substrate. So far I've stocked 3 yellow labs, 1 acei, 2 afra's, and 2 crabos. Any suggestions to what I should stock next? I want to get some labidochromis hongi srt's in there but having a hard time getting any breeders to get back to me on them. Any suggestions, comments, and advise is welcome/appreciated!

[DJRansome]

Welcome to Cichlid-forum!

You will want to follow a theme of either mixed gender breeding groups OR all male mbuna. With mixed gender, don't stock more than 4 species and have 1m:4f of each. Except crabro which is very large and aggressive...you need 1m:7f for them and maybe have only 3 species in that case.

Or for all-male stick to one male per species and no look-alikes. Maybe 12 individuals. And read the all-male tank article in the CF Library because there are disadvantages to such a tank...you need extra tanks for one.

[nolt2005]

Here is a video of my tank that i described that I posted on youtube if anyone is interested in viewing.
http://youtu.be/XaHBP8_3Suo

[theboothsociety]

I would be careful stacking rocks like that. They will fall eventually and could hit the glass. All you need is one fish to dig out the substrate under one of those bottom rocks and theres goes your whole aquascape.

[nolt2005]

the rocks are actually siliconed together from the base rocks to the top. and the base rocks were placed in the tank before any substrate. i can literally almost pick that whole rock scape up in one piece with a couple extra hands. only problem is that its going to be a major pain to re-scape if i ever decide to. but thank you for the concern.