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621 Posts
It's been many years since I had an mbuna tank. I've done lots of mbuna tanks over the years, but I honestly can't remember the last one. I worked my way into large tanks, 8 and 6ft ones with large CA cichlids over the years, though one tank was a hap/peacock tank. Two years ago I decided to shut down all my big tanks, and keep only two 5gals at the time with bettas. That progressed into importing extremely expensive bettas from overseas and breeding them for about a year and a half. We got a new puppy back in April and I didn't have time to do both the betta babies and the baby dog, so I shut down my breeding room and just kept a handful of pet bettas. My largest tank was a 33gal, which was a betta sorority. I got tired of that, as I"m prone to do, about a month and a half ago, and decided I wanted to get back into a cichlid tank. Working with a small size like a 33 can be limiting of course, so I weighed my options and decided to set it up as a brichardi tank. However, that got me thinking about mbuna, and while not something I wanted to cram into a 33, I had an LFS order me in a new 40 long which arrived last week. I got it set up over this past weekend, and it's stocked with albino L. caeruleus and Cynotilapia sp. "hara" so I could have colourful females in the mix as well. They are settling in nicely and I'm happy to have a cichlid tank once again. Still a bit cloudy from the new sand, but I'm happy with how it turned out and the fish seem to approve. Going back to a mbuna rock work tank after a couple years of heavily planted betta tanks takes some getting used to, I keep expecting to see green in there lol.
