Well, I'm bummed now. We don't have much for aquariums around our area and we purchased our fish from a near by Petco. I assumed that the two species of fish would be fine housed in the 30 gallon for now given that they were both in the same tank at Petco. Petco, didn't really tell us anything about the species, and I didn't do much research before we bought them, I was under the assumption that any fish from Lake Malawi would do fine together. We live in a tiny apartment and have room for just the 30 gallon, plus the tank was free to begin with.
Now when you say "mbuna" what do you mean? Which species are the harem breeders? I thought they were all mouth breeders?
As for the "bully" in my tank, he/she is the bigger of the 2 Auratus. He is larger than the other in the tanks, I'd say the johanni, and the auratus, are an inch, to an inch and a half, and my yellow lab, is maybe 3/4 of an inch.. he's very small. He definately knows that he's the boss, and doesn't care to show it.
I cycled my tank by setting up the decor, rocks, etc. Adding water and letting it run. I also added some Stress Zyme to help the good bacteria grow. Made sure I always checked my levels, and made sure the water temp was good. Right now, I'm using the 5 in 1 test strips. my nitrates, are at 0, my nitrites are at 0, my hardness is between 25-75 ppm,my alkalinity is between 120-180 ppm, my ph is at 7.4-7.8. I know they like it higher and I'm working on that.
I was doing research last weekend, on how to harden my water and help raise the ph levels, and most websites said to used crushed coral in the tank. So I went and bought some but I have not added it to the tank, because the bag said it was mean't for salt water. Should I add some ??
I'm not sure of the "footprints of the tank, How should I measure it by? All I know is my friend who gave me the tank said it was a 30 gallon, and she had issues with her tank due to her water conditions.
I am using a water conditioner when I do partials, and with the intitial set-up, I'm using tetra AquaSafe..I also have another, same stuff except it has nitroband in it..
Now when I treated my tank for ick, I used this stuff called "quick cure" and it told me to take out my filters when being treated. I did exactly what the bottle said, and two days later my catfish had little to no spots. He was odd to begin with when we brought him home, so i thought his behavior was normal.
I have only had the fish for a week, so far I feed them 3 times a day, little at a time. They devor all flakes with nothing left over. I did a partial last night maybe 25% just to remove some treated water, but not enough to stress them out. The filters have been in for a few days, and my water still has some cloudyness to it, but not much.. i planned on doing another partial sunday or monday.. Would this be a good idea?
How should I take a pic of our tank? This way you can see what I've done, good or bad?