[Aqualoon.MN]

Since suggestions for my office tank came so quickly I thought I'd post here for my personal home tank.

Standard 125 gallon tank, filtered by an FX6 and FX5.

I was thinking an all male Hap tank but then started looking at mix Malawi tanks on youtube and they were just beautiful. So from that I do have several questions.

- Is this type of thing generally successful? I know all tanks and combinations of stock should be observed and sometimes the off mix does work with some, but in a lot of other cases it's disastrous, was curious where this fell on the spectrum
- For this type of tank, is everything all Males or just the haps?
- Stock wise for mbuna vs haps, is there any specific type I should stay away from that get too large or too aggressive?
- General tips on things to look for in regards to stock?
- Stocking numbers? I know for africans it's best to overstock, I learned my lesson with Tropheus that you can't halfway this

 

[FishKeeperInVT]

Haps and Peacocks you probably would do male only since the females tend to be less colorful. Mbuna's you can do harem's of a few not similar looking species (4 different ones give or take) and the females tend to look as nice or close to as nice as the males.

I won't give you stocking advice, I went insane with my own 125 and my stocking is almost certainly not going to work long term.

 

[DJRansome]

It can easily take 2 years of tinkering to get all-male to be reasonably peaceful so that most of the fish show color. The youtube guys might have added the fish 5 minutes before the video.

Read the all-male article in the Cichlid-forum Library for pros and cons.

The right level of overstocking with the right species is important...stuffing in more fish after that maybe not so much. I like 18 individuals that mature <= six inches in a 72" tank.

Also have a hospital tank and know when to remove fish, how to diagnose and what medication to use. Even if the fish you removed is not sick, you need a holding place until he can be rehomed.

Mixed gender tanks are easier IMO and the males are brighter with the females present. Depending on species, you can do 5 species with 1m:4f of each. Mbuna have the advantage of having many species with colorful females.