Setting up a hap/peacock tank

[stalefish83]

Fortunately I'm only an hour and a half away from one of the best fish suppliers in the country (my humble opinion) so I don't have to worry about the males shipping. I'll be driving to Portland to get them. I thought about trying Mbuna's with Haps and Peacocks, seeing some cichlid people (like KGTropicals) swearing that it can be done as long as you get Mbunas at a size disatvantage, and of course over stock. But there's also the issue of different dietary needs. I also got a LOT of Texas holey rock with the tank, which would've been perfect, but I didn't like how it looked. So I collected to large pieces of river rock and I think I'm going to just have two rock piles, one larger than the other, and keep the middle open, and forego Mbunas and just keep Haps and Peacocks, and go all male.

I took some video of me cleaning and prepping the tank, so I might try to edit it together just for kicks. That may honestly never happen, so in the meantime I'll post some pics of my progress. Hopefully I'll get some pics up tonight. Thanks for all the replies!!

 

[stalefish83]

WHITEBEAR26 looks like you have some great looking fish!! Super jealous of how big your tank is. Did you cull/re-home the females? In your experience, about what percentage of male-female ratio did you end up with getting un-sexed juvies?

 

[stalefish83]

Here's a few pics of the tank


The last one is closer to what I'll probably end up with. But less rocks. I'm also going with black sand, and hopefully the fish will still display bright colors. I've heard that dark substrate and background can cause fish to darken up in an attempt to blend in, but I don't know if that's true of peacocks

 

[WHITEBEAR26]

WHITEBEAR26 looks like you have some great looking fish!! Super jealous of how big your tank is. Did you cull/re-home the females? In your experience, about what percentage of male-female ratio did you end up with getting un-sexed juvies?

I re-homed the females. To much drama with them in the "BIG BOY TANK" . Good Idea to steer clear of the Mubunas , You might have a nice Hap or Peacock that gets chopped up. I found that it's about a 50/50 coin flip with juvies(Male& Females) But I guess that could swing one way or the other depending on how lucky you are at picking them out? When I got antsie and wanted those big Male and didn't want to wait to grow them up in my 125 gal. I bit the bullet and paid premo $$$ for some fish from an online place, I am in the Bermuda Triangle for lfs. After about a year of ordering some large& medium size males off and on I'm back to the growing out of juvies, I couldn't get use to the 35% death rate I was getting from my online supplier over all, They didn't die right away, but the ones that did was dead within 6 weeks & Trust me I'm the terminator when it comes to clean water and all that goes with it. Makes for $$$$ freezer trash Good luck with the new set up and keep the pic's coming. THE BEAR.

 

[WHITEBEAR26]

Some of my grow outs. THE BEAR.

 

[markstrimaran]

My peacocks are all females, and twice as big as mbuna. They only bother each other. Queen bee contest.

 

[stalefish83]

Beautiful fish! Thanks for sharing, Bear.

Here's the most recent scape with a little of the black sand. Will be more, of course, when all is said and done

 

[stalefish83]

It's really simplistic, and looking at it I think I should move the right grouping of rocks a little to the left so it's not directly under the roots, but I'm also trying to hide the sponge filter in that back corner.

 

[WHITEBEAR26]

It's really simplistic, and looking at it I think I should move the right grouping of rocks a little to the left so it's not directly under the roots, but I'm also trying to hide the sponge filter in that back corner.

Just a tip if you want to do some playing around. In my 125 gal that I use for growing the little guys , went down to my local building / material place and got some cheap flagstone, A little hammer and chisel or a screw driver , get some tank safe silicone and you can make some awesome structures for next to nothing out of pocket. And it looks great! THE BEAR.

 

[stalefish83]

I've tried using silicone to build caves in an old 20 gallon tank I had. It was a bit of a nightmare, haha! I just don't think I have the right 'nack' for it. It's good to know places to get cheap rocks, though. I've been able to avoid buying rocks by either collecting rocks at the river, or inheriting them with craigslist tanks. Do you know if the flagstone has buffering capabilities? Cuz that's the next thing I want to try to figure out. I may just put some crushed coral in the filter, but I don't have a whole lot of it, so I'm a little concerned it won't be enough buffering for the volume of water in the tank.