# CICHLID TANK IDEAS please



## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

hi everyone !! im setting up a new tank and looking for some suggestions im setting up a 165gallon cichlid habitat , rite now i have 5 nice pieces of utah rock and the buffered ph sand everything is cycled and im ready for some more fish , my first two fish im introducing to the tank are a pair of zebra talapia cichlids , i know wat your going to say lol , yes i have these before in the past and i know that they are very aggresive fish the ones i currently am buying grew up in TANK with lots of other fish and i think are farmed so not so aggrsive , but i truly love these fish and they are going to be the base to my tank no matter what , im looking for suggestions on nice fish that are a must in a cichlid aquarium , i currently have in mind JAGUAR cichlid ,possibly PIKE cichlid ,oscar,demonti cichlid maybe a few convicts , but open to suggestion these are just some of the fish i like


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

since your looking at bigger cichlids maybe take a look at Frontosa or malawi haps


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## cowis (Apr 21, 2010)

Yeah with the pair of the buttikoferi tilapia u might want to go large African cichlids since that's were they are from.


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

thank both of you i like the malawi haps look very nice , frontosa on other hand i have somethng against fish with the big hump on there head do they all have the huge hump or just when they get older ? i dont know what it is i just dont find it very appealing , and were would i find some nice malawi haps on he coast ??


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## Rastapus (Apr 21, 2010)

Tiger Tilapia are from West Africa preferring a neutral pH, not sure why people are recommending Malawi and Tanganyikan cichlids would make a good choice.......
Travo, I would recommend adding the Tiger Tilapia after a few others, putting them first will likely allow them to give any fish you add after a hard time.


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

thats what i was already thinking the guy i purchased them from has no problem holding them for me in his tank he said so thats what i will do is find some othr fish first, my PH-7.6 GH-160 and KH-120 ive added 2 bottles of water softener to the water to bring down GH it came down to 120ppm and now is back upto 160 4days later starting to get stumped this is my first tank with africans so i want the water to be right , ive read alot of people say on here that your fish will adjust to watever water parameters you have as long as water quality is top notch , which im very anal with water quality and water changes . i have quite a few caves and hiding spots in my tank so was thinking of having maybe 3-4 bigger show fish and rest nicer looking smaller cichlids to fill up space , and one more thing does anybody know the absolute best LFS in vancouver area to purchase cichlids because when i travel down from kelowna i cant shop around i have to hit one store pack my fish and head home asap i dont wna lose them before they gt to my tank .


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

just picked up a red devil , jack dempsey , and a pair of malawi haps there my first four fish ,


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

okay well i think i got a littel ahead of myself today when i went out and bought the 4 fish im just so eager to get my tank going , well 2mrw im going back to my LFS which has rilly bad stock i may add and im trading the red devil and the demspey for a few more haps.... no sa cichlids im going to keep with my original plan and keep all africans in my tank .i just went online to canadian aqua far, i ordered 
x2 aulonocara stuartgranti cobue male 
x3 aulonocara albino firefish male
x1 aulonocara baenschi sunshine male
x2 aulonocara OB male
x2 aulonocara rubescens ruby red male
x2 sciaenochromis ahli electric blue male

Spent an arm and a leg on these guys but there colours look great in the pics on his website , anyone know if these guys will get along or are they just all going to attack eachother ??


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## charles (Apr 21, 2010)

red devil and tilapia will not work in most tanks except something really big or by itself. Looks like you are going with malawi males only tank. It is a great idea. I know lots of my customers do it and it works fine. Just overstock your tank.


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

How much would you define over stocking as ? Ive rearranged my rocks for more caves and am going to be making some gravel covered PVC caves today awaiting the peacocks arrival , I totally agree on the overcrowding because the tank my talapias came from is loaded with fish from convicts to jaguar cichlids.


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## jbyoung00008 (May 16, 2011)

I was just at Canadian Aqua farms yesterday. You bought some nice fish and it must of cost you an arm an a leg. LOL
Those fish you bought will get along but what you will find is only the dominant male will show his colors. So anything you bought 2 of chances are only 1 will show nice colors. This is one of the challenging things with Africans if you want an all male show tank. Bring home a fish with nice color. If he looks similiar to another fish in the tank they can drop there color to look like a female so the dominant male leaves them alone. It can be frustrating

I agree with Charles overstocking is good but you dont want to go to over board. I found I had too many Africans and some were just staying in one place and not moving much which I didnt like. You will be the judge of that magical number. I have a round 40 in my 120g. Dont add too many at once or your bio load with sky rocket. Africans are always hungry so make sure you have the filtration to keep up with their eating habits and perfom frequent water changes. Buffering your water is a good idea. Im not sure what your water parameters are in Kelowna. I use Seachem Ph African Bufffer and Lake salt to buffer my water. Others like to use home brews.

SeaChem Cichlid Lake Salt - 500 Gram
SeaChem Malawi/Victoria Buffer - 600 Gram


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

ugh i used to go through so much of that buffer when i lived in Van lol, not sure if he will need it in kelowna, thankfully we dont here in calgary.


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

for my filtration i have a rena xp3 and a fluvall 405 that i pulled off of my 72g, i purchased a fx5 but it wouldnt fit under my 150gallon so it got put on my 72 gallon .....
i never knew this or i wouldnt have ordered more than one of each fish kinda shityy!!! im returning the reddevil and dempsey today for some AC from from lfs
so there will be just 4 malawi haps in there when my fish from aqua farms arrive , i ordered 12 fish at once will that be too much bio load at once for my tank ? i could place a few of them inmy 72gall community for a few days with the fx5 that is overkill. ive read alot of people saying they have kept peacocks in communitys tanks with the right fish .... i would prefer to add all the my cichlid habitat but this would be a backup option since the fish will be here on friday yaaa !


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

and i have very hard water here naturally and i used crushed corasl for africans to keep my ph around 7.6 its holding fine , only thing i might want to bring up is kh its at 120ppm but im not positive i think that ia already very high ?????????


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## jbyoung00008 (May 16, 2011)

Mferko said:


> ugh i used to go through so much of that buffer when i lived in Van lol, not sure if he will need it in kelowna, thankfully we dont here in calgary.


I havnt used too much. LOL One bottle last me around 5 months. My tank is know buffering itself so when I do a water change the Ph and Kh stays around the same withouth using the buffer. I dont keep my PH above 7.8 or my KH above 10 because I have live plants so adding the recomended dosage seems to be working well for me. I could imagine if you kept your Ph and KH higher you would use alot more of it. Ive heard Calgary has perfect African water out of the tap.


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

im new to africans tho so if im missign something on the buffer part let me know ,,,, ph7.6 gh-160ppm kh120ppm tryed bringing my gh down with water softner i used two bottles it came down to 120 then went back up to 160


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

dont bother to try and bring your softness down just let the fish get used to that water and possibly use some aragonite substrate to keep the water hard and help with buffering naturally, your water is not amazon soft like Vancouver water is.

here is a neat hap and peacock tank i was just showing my wife trying to convince her that we need a bigger tank one day lol, like an in-wall 500g or something





edit: read your using crushed coral, will do the same thing as aragonite.


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## jbyoung00008 (May 16, 2011)

Travo said:


> and i have very hard water here naturally and i used crushed corasl for africans to keep my ph around 7.6 its holding fine , only thing i might want to bring up is kh its at 120ppm but im not positive i think that ia already very high ?????????


I dont use the ppm scale but if you convert that to dKH that is 6.7dKH which is kinda low for an African tank also your dGH is 8.9 which is also a little low. But if you dont want to buffer the water IMO 6.7KH and 8.9GH is exceptable. My water out of the tap has PH 6.7 , 1 Kh, 1 GH. So I have to buffer the water.

120ppm divided by 17.9 = 6.7 dKH thats how I got that number incase you are wondering
160ppm divided by 17.9 = 8.9 dGH

Heres a chart: Aquarium Water Management: Ideal Water Paramaters


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

that tank is amazing i rilly like !! , yaa i duno i must have a different type of test kit its nutrafin i think ive had it for 2 years got it from petsmart its just says each drop of solution i into beaker is 20ppm there for my 8 drops was 160ppm my 6 drops was 120ppm , but thanks for advice


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

just got my fish from can aqua farm they were very nicely packagd just letting them get used to water now i will prob leave the lights off for 24hrs


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## Sidius (Mar 25, 2012)

Travo said:


> just picked up a red devil , jack dempsey , and a pair of malawi haps there my first four fish ,


You might want to reconsider the malawi haps.. they need a completely different PH/GH/KH then the SA/CA cichlids.


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

So the Malawi haps are in my smaller 72gallon with my large balas and guarmis everyone gets along great and they are awesome to feed I'm picking and choosing about 8 more malawis for now , my large tank contains one 12" dat , 9" jaguar cichlid , 4" red devil , 3-4" blue zebra African very aggressive , the kicker is that when I originally set up my 150gall it was for Africans so I used an African lake substrate to raise PH and also some Utah rock ( not sure if that effects anything ) but after removing the haps out of the 150gall I never removed the substrate to raise PH ! , I used a light amount of it on the bottom of the 72g as well ....
I know that the ph is not supposed to higher for the jaguar,dat,devil but all fish seem to be fine except the fact the dat is very picky to feed he honestly only eats market prawns chopped up and my jaguar doesn't like to eat in front of me but besides both fish look very healthy......should I remove this substrate or will they climatize to there environment ?????
Also still looking for ideas for the larger fish tank currently after 2mrw will have dat,jaguar,red devil,zebra African , 2 10" oscars , 5" pike cichlid in a 150gall with dual filters a fluvall 405 and Rena x3 with 30/40% water change every 5-7 days on both tanks.


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## charles (Apr 21, 2010)

Have you tested your pH from the tap? Your area ph is pretty high as it is.


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## Travo (Dec 16, 2012)

I'll check tonight and update


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