Metriaclima sp. msobo

AquaDigi · Jan 31, 2008

cichlidaholic · Feb 1, 2008

We have much the same taste in fish, I see!

Another set of great pics of an equally great species...

Those males sure make the colour transformation slowly, don't they? How many do you have?

I have a group of 6 - 1 happy male and 5 females!

Kim

AquaDigi · Feb 1, 2008

Thatâ€™s one happy male

The males seem to take forever to transform. I have a group of 12 in a specie tank. Still need to vent them, but I am pretty sure there are 3m/9f.

cichlidaholic · Feb 1, 2008

The males are beautiful once the transformation is complete, but can look quite strange in between!

Gorgeous group you have there! I'd love to see a full tank shot.

Kim

gbleeker · Feb 1, 2008

I have a question regarding Msobo; I have 6 right now, definitely 1 male, maybe another in a 55 gallon. There are also 6 Cobue. The 2 male Cobue are brightly colored up, and seem to be more dominant than my male Msobo. Will the male take a lot longer to start changing? Right now, the front edge of his dorsal fin is blue'ish along with the tips of hte small ventral fins. He also has egg spots. I am just curious how long until he starts to change!

nikelodeon79 · Feb 1, 2008

Wow, awesome pictures!!!

S4surf · Feb 2, 2008

Very nice pictures Aquadigi of one of my favorite Mbuna. the female are just as beautiful as the males with their dark solid orange yellow bodies.

My male went through the change in 2 weeks at about 2 1/2". He took on a brownish hue where his blue mask will be and mottled brown throughout the body with the yellow base. Everywhere the brown was became the electric blue area and the yelow became dark blue. The next week he was spetacular like the pictures of any adult. Some of them are tough to sex until they are full size. This does not hold completely true because there was a reply to my orginal thread that had females with egg spots. but I can state that every single one of my females ahd none, and every male had them. There was one that I thought was female with the egg spots at 3 1/2" and solid yellow, but as soon as I removed the subdom and the brown mask appeared I knew I was wrong. He looked almost like a darker blue Edwardi with almost no detectable pattern until I put him in another tank where he was the only male.

This was my male when he first turned all blue. Notice the male behind him thats bigger than he is that still all yellow. I don't have any pics left of the change when he was yellow/bronish but I do have 10 juvies growing out

Please excuse my lack of camera skills compared to your pictures.

Kim, I had no idea you ended up getting some of these. You are really going to like them.

Steve

skraeling · Feb 2, 2008

It is amazing how they transform from this

To this(yuck)

Finally this 8)

cichlidaholic · Feb 2, 2008

Steve, you know me...I've got a bit of this and a bit of that! :lol:

I guess the transformation of my male took a bit longer because he didn't have any real competition from other Msobo males...I'm thinking it took him about a month to come into his own, but it was worth the wait.

gbleeker, mine are still young, just thinking about spawning over the past couple of weeks. I have them in a tank where they are somewhere in the middle aggression wise and this seems to work well. (Mine are housed with a large group of Cynotilapia White tops and a trio of L. trewavasae Mpanga Reds, but I plan to move out the trewavasae today - the male is absolutely brutal and interfering with the others spawning.)

Kim

AquaDigi · Feb 4, 2008

Great fish and pictures everyone.

Kim here is a pic of the tank, itâ€™s a bit dark though. I plan on adding more rocks in the future. Itâ€™s a 40 breeder.

S4surf some of my females have egg spots, although not as prominent as those on males. Well at least I hope they are females, otherwise I am going to be stuck with a whole a lot of males. :lol:

Yes skraeling the transformation on these guys is pretty amazing. Youâ€™ve got a very nice male too.

vanBuuren · Mar 18, 2008

Very nice pictures!

I have tryed lots of mbunas (pseudotropheus, labeotropheus, iodotropheus, labidochromis, metriaclima, melanochromis, cynotilapia) and the msobo is among one of my favourite to keep.

I have currently 3m / 4f wild in my tank and in a smaller tank about 35 F1 juveniles.

I have had in the past 2 males / 2 females wild and it was hard to keep them, the dominant male tend to be aggressive against other males and the dominant female (which can turn a kind of brownish colour when dominant and have blue on her dorsal) can be aggressive also on others females.

For this, in my opinion, keeping msobo must be with a ratio of 1 male / 3+ females or 3+ males / 3+ females.

The only downside having msobo is that althought the dominant male is so beautiful to watch, the others males are not very nice because they hide their colors. With my 35 F1 juveniles, I wonder if more than 1 male will display his colors. I will know in a couple of months...

cichlidaholic · Mar 18, 2008

I find the Msobo females to be pretty aggressive among each other...Has anyone else found this to be true?

Kim

vanBuuren · Mar 18, 2008

That is why I said you should have 3+ females. When I got my 2 first wild females, one of them just kill the other.

gbleeker · Mar 19, 2008

Not to hi-jack this thread.. but I have a Msobo question:

I have 11 in a 55 gallon right now.. the largest males are about 2'' maybe 2.5''
I have one clearly starting to morph, and I think another 2 that could be males. Definitely a 2nd to be sure.

So that is 2 maybe 3 males.. out of the remaining 8 fish, I think 2 of them are males also possibly.. this is my question.. they are kind of "dirty" looking and not pure pure orange like some of the other supposed females. They have some blue in the dorsal fin, but not much.

Are those sub doms or females?

Ultimately my ratio may be 5m:6f but I am hoping i'm wrong and have more like 3m:8f

cichlidaholic · Mar 19, 2008

vanBuuren said:
That is why I said you should have 3+ females. When I got my 2 first wild females, one of them just kill the other.

I have 5 females and one male...Any more suggestions? :lol:

The females are so busy trying to kill each other that the poor male can't get their attention, and he's looking really good!

Kim

vanBuuren · Mar 19, 2008

cichlidaholic said:
vanBuuren said:

That is why I said you should have 3+ females. When I got my 2 first wild females, one of them just kill the other.

Click to expand...

I have 5 females and one male...Any more suggestions? :lol:

The females are so busy trying to kill each other that the poor male can't get their attention, and he's looking really good!

Kim

Did you read my message??? :?

For this, in my opinion, keeping msobo must be with a ratio of 1 male / 3+ females or 3+ males / 3+ females.

Your situation is perfect.

vanBuuren · Mar 19, 2008

gbleeker said:
Not to hi-jack this thread.. but I have a Msobo question:

I have 11 in a 55 gallon right now.. the largest males are about 2'' maybe 2.5''
I have one clearly starting to morph, and I think another 2 that could be males. Definitely a 2nd to be sure.

So that is 2 maybe 3 males.. out of the remaining 8 fish, I think 2 of them are males also possibly.. this is my question.. they are kind of "dirty" looking and not pure pure orange like some of the other supposed females. They have some blue in the dorsal fin, but not much.

Are those sub doms or females?

Ultimately my ratio may be 5m:6f but I am hoping i'm wrong and have more like 3m:8f

Your fish are not yet finished growing but at the end you will be able to see the difference between each male and female. Like I said earlier males dominated wont have a nice colors, they will look a pale blue or a mix of dark orange and blue and you wont see clearly their black spots. females stays orange but some can have a bit of blue on their dorsal but they stay bright orange (or yellow, it depend how you distinguish this color)

cichlidaholic · Mar 19, 2008

Yes, vanBuuren, I read your message. :roll:

I said:

I find the Msobo females to be pretty aggressive among each other...Has anyone else found this to be true?

And you said:

That is why I said you should have 3+ females. When I got my 2 first wild females, one of them just kill the other.

To which I replied:

I have 5 females and one male...Any more suggestions? :lol:

:?

I would think 5 females would be enough to spread the aggression out amongst them from your previous post...In my case, that doesn't seem to hold true.

Great fish, none the less, so I may try adding a couple more females.

Kim

MightyWarMonger · Mar 19, 2008

AquaDigi what camera and lense were you useing when you took those pics?

fishboy11 · Mar 19, 2008

Kim, I too have kept the msobos. For a while I had 4m/4f in a 90g along with F1 Ps. blue dolphins and yellow labs. They were perfectly fine in this ratio, however, no breeding. I took 3 males out to see what would happen, and that is when the trouble started. A female became dominant in the group, and the male became aggressive. Maybe you should get 2 more males and see what happens? Mine never spawned for me, even at 4.5", and I sold them, because I wanted my dolphins to be the focus of that tank.

Metriaclima sp. msobo

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