African Cichlids

This is my new obsession. It's a 75 gallon aquarium in our living room. I read all about fish for close to two months before I actually decided what to get. I have 14 African Cichlids so far and I hope to get some more soon.

I let the tank run for about a week before I got the fish. Of course I decided I didn't like how I set it up, rearranged everything, and made the water really cloudy right before I put the fish in. I started with 15 fish but one of them was killed on the way home. Notice I say killed and not died. Cichlids are kinda aggressive.

Sam was fascinated the first few days and wanted to feed them all the time, but he's over it already.

They all crowded in this corner of the tank when they were released.

Here's a picture of the front of the tank about a week later.

All of the cichlids that I started with are Lake Malawi Mbunas. They love to hide in any little hole they can find.

I got lots of driftwood and Texas holy rock and a few fake plants.

This one rock weighed about 40 lbs so Chris had to lift it for me.

This is a picture looking at it from the side.

The yellow fish is a Labidochromis Caeruleus (Yellow Lab). The striped fish is a Psuedotropheus Elongatus Chailosi.

The white fish is a Pseudotropheus Socolofi Albino (Snow White Albino).

The orange fish are Metriaclima Estherae (Red Zebra).



Feeding frenzy. The tan fish in the top middle is a Pseudotropheus Flavus (Dinghani). They are all juveniles so they haven't gotten as colorful as they will get. They started out about an inch long. There adult sizes are between 3 and 5 inches depending on the species. My intention was to get one male and two females of each species, but you can't really sex them when they are that young. As they are getting bigger, I can already tell that I definitely didn't get the ratio I wanted. There are a lot of males in there and they are starting to get territorial. It's time to shake things up a bit and get some more fish.

Here is the tank a few weeks later. It's done cycling and it's ready for more fish. The rocks are starting to grow some algae too.

This guy is the king of the tank for now. His spot is front and center. I wonder what's gonna happen when all the other fish are bigger than he is.

Of course I can't do a post without a few pictures of the boys. Here is Sam with donuts -- his favorite breakfast.

Ben is having a breakfast bar and is doing his best to unwind the silly straw.