Id please!

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ScubaChick0121

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 29, 2009
417
1
0
Florida
Hi, so long story short I got fish yesterday and I have no clue what they are except for a red zebra which is going back today because of agression issues with fighting with the "yellow" fish. When I bought the yellow fish yesterday I thought it was a female but could it be a male kenyi? It kept on fighting with the zebra (who was trying to be the boss) and even though the zebra is now floating in a critter cage the yellow one is trying to attack him through the glass, they hit it mouthing each other, but the blue and black striped one is just swimming around and no one touches it...... So would the blue one be a female kenyi? And the yellow one a male kenyi?
Sorry the pictures are a bit blurry because the move so fast!
Thankyou!

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Hard to tell, they are young fish, all of them. Males tend to have more "dummy" egg sacs on the anal fin(fourth pic from top). Aggression isnt always a determining factor with African cichlids. In other words, getting, say, females only...there can still be a fair amount of aggression. The only "cure" I've had with these fish(I have 50 in a 200) is alot of rocks and places to make territories, sandy substrate(dont stack rocks on substrate, these fish DIG) and over stocking( frowned upon in some circles). Its not uncommon to see 50 of these fish in 75 gallons, even smaller. Overcrowding does quell aggression but it just creates more problems IMO. I have all of the pictured fish and several more, all mean little suckers in their own right. These fish are scrappy!!
 
thankyou! So should I get more of the kenyi's?
Oh and would a kenyi male have faint dark yellow stripes?
 
The male Kenyi will be yellow with brownish orangish stripes. I had a male Kenyi that had change from blue/black to yellow/brownish orange and he got mean...seriously. He would charge my 12' Oscar...R.I.P Kenyi. :(

You could get more Kenyis or any other variety of Rift lake cichlids. You never really know if they will all get along...just stay away from Auratus...demon spawn. Seriously.
 
The yellow one does look a lot like a zebra hybrid of some sort. How large is your tank? Here's the thing, if you research what fish you are getting and stock them based on aggression levels and avoiding fish that look like each other than it's pretty easy to have a successful mbuna tank. Just mixing species together can cause a lot of aggression because many commonly sold mbuna are very very nasty. I would look up more about the fish you have and try to figure out what you want before you buy the fish. Kenyi can be very aggressive and so can red zebras. I find yellow labs(electric yellow) Ps. acei and rusties seem to be great beginner mbuna species. In a 55 you could keep a group of 5 per species and you will have a nice looking and pretty easy set up. That's just my .02.
 
yup...what they said...2 zebras and a kenyi
 
One thing you might want to look out for; I have a Kenyi female and a Red Zebra male. They regularly breed together. So you might end up getting a lot of hybrid fry with that combo. (Not the easiest fry to get rid of). Luckily, I will be rehoming the red zebra and the kenyo to 2 different people next week! No more masses of fry in my tank!!!:nilly:

Other than that, they look awesome! Good luck with tank!
 
Thankyou so much! I went today and returned the zebra, and I picked up two more kenyi! No issues so far, I added more rocks, is it ok that out of the smaller round rocks I made a little pile? Oh and should I silicon the bigger rocks together?
 
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