American Cichlids mixed with African ?

[BC in SK]

Maybe stress, maybe not stress. Mbunas are primarily herbivores. Herbivores have longer intestines and their digestive system is not designed to digest excessive proteins quickly. Proteins are not easy to digest even in predatory fish. It takes usually hours and even days before they can completely used up the proteins. Now, with the long intestines, it takes a long time for the fish to excrete the wastes so failing to digest the proteins while accumulating more as the fish feeds on excessive proteins, will simply cause the fish's abdomen to protrude abnormally and the organs eventually become blocked thus the fish is unable to expel its wastes. This is why bloat is often related to diet as much as stress and other factors are.

#1) Plant matter, has protein ---- takes just as long for this protein to be digested as animal protein.

#2) A long intestine is a characteristic of an omnivore ----- Pigs and humans are 2 examples of omnivores with very long intestines.

#3) Mbuna maybe more herbivorous, but they are omnivores. Just because many of them rely on aufwuchs, wich is mainly alagae ( but certainly also has tiny animals) does not mean the animal portion of their diet is not the more nutritionally significant. Different mbuna have very different diets in the wild but all are opportunistic feeders; they get what they can ; what is available to them. Some are much more carniverous ; for example some species of Melanochromis are considered piscivores etc., etc.

Some strains of midas cichlid have primarily aufwuchs in their bellies as well ----- no different then many of the species of mbuna. CA have jsust as varied diets.

My own circumstantial evidence leads me to question it: Kept mbuna for most of 34 years. How come, feeding them large amounts of chopped sardine, salmon, frozen shrimp, earth worms and I have never had a single case of bloat in an African cichlid ( I've had a female con and female FM once, on seperate occasions get it). I've had mbuna live off such a diet EXCLUSIVELY for months, with NO pellets, and they certainly never got bloat --- just grew very fast

NO real scientific evidence, as far as I know that links animal protein to bloat in mbuna. Not saying, of course , that there never is some connection to diet,; only thing we know for sure is the micro-organism(s) that it is associated with.

 

[Natural_Born_Killer]

The one that I have fallen in love with is the giraffe hap, just love the colouring on that fish.

But I also like Oscars so I am quite in between the two.

 

[Cichlaholics Anonymous]

if the tank is very large, you might be able to keep the oscar and venustus together if the individual venustus has a not so aggressive personality

 

[Natural_Born_Killer]

after good thought decided to go against getting malawian fish.

have decided instead to trade them all in this weekend and keep an oscar as they will get on better with my JD's.

 

[Cichlaholics Anonymous]

you made a good choice!

 

[Natural_Born_Killer]

you made a good choice!

Yes, I must agree currently I have 2 small JD's (hoping one is a male) to go with my females. If they all turn out to be females then the smaller ones will go to my LFS. So, time will tell.

Right now I have a 95g tank so there is plenty of space to have these guys as they are all under 2inches.

 

[dbrann11]

a little late to the party, but I have had Mbuna for severals years. Some are more herbivorous than others. With water @ 78F, 0/0/10 and buffered to PH 7.8, I forget the hardness number I had a bloat issue with Iodotropheus sprengerae and yellow labs. I switched food from Hikari to NLS Cichlid pellets. About 1/2 recovered. Coincidence? Maybe.

The various other zebras and EB Johanni didn't have issues.

They're all omnivorous in the sense that while scraping algae in the wild they also consume the various 'pods and snails living in there. All of my Mbuna used to go nuts for the snails i pulled out of my planted tank (post food change). Anyway various types of Mbuna rely more or less on the meaty part of the diet.

I keep CA/SA as well, just seperately.

Sort of off topic but in my salt reef, I have a lawnmower blenny that doesn't touch algae or vegetable matter of any sort but will eat Mysis shrimp until he wobbles on his fat gut.

 

[Brewster]

Just added another fish. A Tropheus Duboisi. The Red Snook is a good 7' now (loves those rosies). What's odd is that the #1 respected fish in the tank is the Hoplo cat. Number 2 is (believe it or not) the Green Severum. None of the other fish mess with it. The Jack Dempsey is #3, he is a fast aggressor. Number 4 is the Placidochromis electra Likoma..he likes to lock lips with the Borleyi who is Number 5 to establish dominance once in awhile. The 6th fish in the pecking order thus far is the Red Snook (he's a big bucket mouth). Number 7 is the Tropheus Duboisi. The yellow Lab is the runt but gets along with everyone because it's so passive. I have a wierd mix but they all have their place in the tank just like mixes of single lake species. I think of my tank in terms of people from different cultures and countries, we are different but can still co-exist.