Lake Malawi Species • First cichlid tank stocking - 75 gallon

[DJRansome]

Thank you for the kind words. Our auction got cancelled because more than 150 attend so I am having fish withdrawal...I have been looking forward to new stock since the spring auction. Have to hold out until May 3 now.

I have worked from home for 5 years now, grateful for the intellectual challenges and virtual contact with clients and colleagues. I have decided to do some solitary activities in nature, it is a good time of year for birding. I also want to see river otters in my new environment. They are nocturnal and live in river banks so I have to plan this.

[jasminaj]

Unfortunately the eggs are gone I had put the holding female in a plastic (transparent) reptile critter box that was recommended by a LFS and put some hiding caves inside. The whole setup was in the main tank. It was working well, I even had a camera for streaming the tank! The female clearly had eggs that she was tumbling in her mouth and she wasn’t eating. Then today I saw her charging at another fish through the plastic window, and her mouth was open. I fed her a tiny pellet and she devoured it. Then I fed her more and she ate everything. I don’t really know if she swallowed the eggs or spat them out and then ate them? There were no fry in the tank today for sure and I never saw them in her mouth. I only saw her “chewing” and what I assumed was turning or tumbling the eggs. Any guesses?

Also, my biggest fish is a pearl zebra (metriaclima callainos). It always has a very long poop (at least an inch, sometimes longer than 2) strand that is the color of food and pretty thick. Am I over feeding? None of the other fish have this, so I don’t want to cut down on feeding because one fish may be overeating. He (I assume it’s a male given the size) is pretty aggressive at feeding time and very quick, and feedings are generally pretty chaotic, so I can’t tell if other fish are getting their fair share. I feed twice a day two different types of LSN pellets, slightly less than 1/8 of a teaspoon at each feeding. I try to put bits of food in all 4 corners of the tank to give smaller fish a chance to get food, but the bigger ones are really fast and seem to get the bulk of the food. The food never sinks because it’s devoured at the surface, and I read somewhere that long poop could be the result of surface feeding. Any suggestions?

[DJRansome]

Was she holding for 7 days after the spawn? If not the eggs may not have been fertilized. Or maybe there were fry and the adults sucked the babies through the holes.

Long poop means nothing...as long as the food is gone in 30 seconds and none of your fish are getting fat and you have minimal algae, you are not overfeeding.

There is a disease called bloat where the fish could have long thready clear poop, but if it is thick and food colored no worries.