New cichlid help and info please.....

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Yes, if you do it wrongly, adjusting the pH can be an extremely stressful thing to fish. But if your fish needs soft acid water and your tap water is hard and alkaline, you will need to soften and lower it. I'm not encouraging you to do anything to the pH of the water, I'm just trying to tell piranha45 that pH IS important.
 
both sites I linked to are coming up perfectly fine for me. Read the hard evidence before you go making baseless claims.
 
ah found out why, im not a member of pirahna fury board. i thought i already checked the site you sent but i didn't man thats a big list to search. I'll just keep it simple. in the mean time. i have 2 different blue ones and arange one, and a black and green one! :) man these little buggers have some personality. now i see why everyone likes them so much! :headbang2
 
Keeping and breeding healthy ichthyologist-approved Tanganyikan cichlids in pH 7.1 is clearly a quality practice. Don't mess with your tapwater's pH; that's the pH the fish were kept in at the LFS, and it's the pH the fish are thereby accustomed to. The only thing required of pH is that it be kept steady.

Someone get KUTTY off his high horse, the darned fool is going to ride into the sunset; fry himself to a crisp.
 
the funny thing is, years ago when i had no clue what i was doing, my PH would drop like a rock, and i would suffer violent amonia spikes. now that i have it figured out my PH rarely changes. to be honest i used to think they LFS told to you needed an inch of gravel just to sell you more gravel. i always got enough just to cover the bottom. they never explained a biofilter either. they said you have to let the tank "settle" for a wekk then put 3 fish in and when they died get three more. then you tank was cycled. cause the dead fish took stuff out of the water that killed them. i thought this was silly but i didn't know any better
 
I might also add that very few (close to nil) people on the various forums I frequent (myself included) have had diet-related disease issues with african mbuna, despite the rumor to the contrary. I feed all my cichlids 45% protein pellets, and they all (mbuna included) get live guppies and ghost shrimp on a somewhat regular basis. I've read plenty of accounts in which other keepers feed their mbuna similar diets, such as bloodworms and the like. I can count the number of times I've read "HELP! MY MBUNA HAS BLOAT!" over the past 2 years of my fish-forum going on one hand, with 2-3 fingers removed.

I invite the all-knowing all-mighty KUTTY over to El Paso where he can examine my mbuna and tell me they are all unhealthy disease-ridden quagmires (which they are not).

KUTTY I know it may be pretty tough for you to accept this, but you don't know everything, especially in regards to this topic. And don't distort my argument regarding pH, please. I made an inquiry with the use of a statement on a thread, and I let the ichthyologists take it from there.


The only african cichlid species that require a monitored diet, to my knowledge and experience, are Tanganyikan Tropheus species.
 
flakes will be suitable for the 1-3" length range, but thereafter I think they will find small pellets easier to manage....

they love zucchini btw. Get something to anchor it down with (screws/nails, rock+rubberband, etc.) and cut it lengthwise into two pieces. Can make your water all ugly and cloudy if you leave it in the tank for more than 3 days or so, tho. They can also get rather territorial about it, you might find it easier to cut it width-wise into multiple smaller pieces spaced apart from one another in the tank, so that more than one or two fish can eat at a time.
 
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