New to African Cichlids

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
best thing you could do is get more fish than you actually need, because if you overcrowd africans they are a lot less aggressive. I have a 60 gallon full of africans that's been set up about 8 months and the fish are all around 4" 5 at the most. they don't tend to grow that fast compared to say american cichlids. so if you say 10 fish in a 55g, the fish would become aggressive asserting for the territories that you do have, either have lots and lots of different caves and areas or have more fish than you want in the end, and just downsize your stock when they get bigger.

There are lots of africans you can have in your tank and lots of options just do some research and let us know what kinds of fish you like and we can help set up a stocking for your tank!
good luck
 
Hes right, overcrowding africans usually lessens aggression and so I'd have about 10 african cichlids and lots of filtration. I'd suggest mbunas or peacocks...its up to you but I'd go with peacocks :)...both mbuna and peacocks get to be around the same size when fully grown which is about 6". I would eventually upgrade to a 75g though, so they can have more room to swim...a 55gs footprint is horrible in my opinion due to the 12" width.
 
the only problem you may encounter is, you would want to have many differnt species of peacocks so you get the different colours, blue, red, yellow etc. to do this it might cost you a lot because all the peacocks I see are pretty expensive unless you can rescue one from a "Misc African Cichlids" tank and hope its going to be a male. you could go with a mix or peacocks and Mbuna, if you think its a possability that you will upgrade to a 75g or larger in the future then you can stock some of the larger haps and overstock the tank.
 
Thanks for all your inputs, everyone!

I never knew there's so much options for African cichlids lol. I've been reading about it and I'm torn between getting mbunas or peacocks. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but mbunas don't grow as big as peacocks but they're also more aggressive, right? So I need to setup a lot of caves/rock and overstock them to tune down the aggression. But if I go with peacocks, they usually get bigger so I can't overstock them and they don't need as much caves/rocks as since they swim in the open?

I'm leaning more on peacocks since they're more peaceful but I'm concerned about how big they can get. The chances of me upgrading to a bigger tank on this one is very unlikely since I'm already in the process of setting up a new 150 gallon for my Oscar. The family won't let me keep two big tanks lol. We'll need to throw out furnitures if I do that. =P

Anyway, if I go with peacocks, what's the maximum number of fish I can put on my 55? Do you know any specific species that won't grow too big for my tank? Likewise, if I go with mbunas, how many can I put and is there a 'too aggressive' species that I should avoid?

Thanks once again to everyone! :)
 
most peacocks grow between 4-6 inches so many of the common variaties would work out fine, but if you want colour like you mentioned earlier you won't want the drab grey females, and mature specimens can be expensive.

best to research mbuna or wait for other input but the one i know you should avoid is P. demasoni, if you have them in groups of less then 10 -12 or with anything that is blue and/or has black stripes then you will soon end up with one fish.
 
most peacocks grow between 4-6 inches so many of the common variaties would work out fine, but if you want colour like you mentioned earlier you won't want the drab grey females, and mature specimens can be expensive. You could overstock either since peacocks are generally more peaceful but males are quite mean to similar coloured fish

best to research mbuna or wait for other input but the one i know you should avoid is P. demasoni, if you have them in groups of less then 10 -12 or with anything that is blue and/or has black stripes then you will soon end up with one fish.

for peacocks the largest species is A. Rostatus, which grows approx 8 inches. this is too big for a 55 but approx 90-95% of peacocks grow as mentioned before to around 4-6 inches. You could do A. Jacobfreibergi, A. maleri etc...

heres a link to a website with good profiles on malawi cichlids. any fish with the name aulonocara first is a peacock
 
I greatly appreciate all your input, everyone!

I will be heading to my LFS today to check out their mbunas and peacocks. They said they'll get a new delivery today. I'll post pics once I have everything setup. :)
 
Careful on putting too many rocks stacked in a 55g if it's a newer tank. The glass is not thick enough to support the taller stacks of heavy rock. I would do some sort of "egg crate" on the bottom to evenly distribute weight. I would also get a power head or stream pump of some sort to keep the poop moving around and into those emporers and not built up on the substrate. Mbuna are very hardy and easy to take care of. Entertaining too. Make life easy and use a buffering substrate like aragonite or similar. Good luck.
 
A good place to look to get ideas of how the different species look and which ones you might want to get is http://livefishdirect.com/. I've never ordered from them before so I can't comment on their reputation, but they have a nice catalog to help you figure out which direction you want to go in.
 
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