Can anyone suggest some tank mates for melanochromis please?

[mike dunagan]

auratus are very aggressive too. if you got the blue male color morph, then the males will look similar enough to the mainganos to encourage interbreeding or they will kill each other as competition.

What are you referring to here? What blue colormorph? Auratus are black/gray. I have never heard of a blue male colormorph. Can you shed some light on this morph? I would also like to see a pic of the morph. It sounds interesting.

 

[terminalMTS]

some auratus males have blue stripes. some others are just black and white. or black white and yellow. it is not really a color morph but a different area they are collected from. google m. auratus and you will come across a blue and black male. they look a little like a dominant m. johanni with only horizontal stripes. too bad you aren't close to me, because the lfs ends up with alot of beautiful males because they are so aggressive. then they try to sell them for 35 bucks.

 

[terminalMTS]

sorry for the double post, but i found the species. melanochromis sp. "auratus elongate" source is cichlid-forum.com species profiles. there isn't a picture though. they are always listed in my local stores just as "auratus" though.

 

[mike dunagan]

from my understanding the elongate is the same with a different.

Are you sure it is not chipokae? The females look a lot a like. I have seen them label as auratus before.

http://www.cichlidforum.com/profiles/species.php?id=755

 

[terminalMTS]

chipokae females look different than auratus. the females look the same as auratus the only difference is the male color.

 

[mukundam123]

Hmmm...interesting points. How big a tank would I need for the peacocks? I was supposed to be getting a 72x18x15 this weekend, but the guy didn't show. This should be big enough for the fish Ive got right?

 

[terminalMTS]

one problem i see is that if you are going to have females at all, you need at least 3 per male. i like 4 or 5. the males will chase one female to death. or you will have to remove her and keep her in a different tank to recover after she spits the fry. males torment females if they are not ready to breed and will kill them if there are no alternatives. having three or more spreads out his attention so that one female doesn't have to take on all that aggression and ultimately die from it. i bet mike will agree with me