It’s impossible for me to take someone serious when they refer to their mbuna as blue and yellow, and consider a dragon blood peacock, an Aulonocara. While some here have been playing around keeping these fish for a couple years, some of us have been keeping and breeding numerous species from the Rift Lakes, for decades. Many of those fish being wild caught specimens, many others F1. In my case the parents of some of the offspring were collected by a friend of mine, while working in Malawi for the late Stuart Grant. We are speaking from many years of hands on experience, and in some cases sharing our failures so others don't make the same mistakes.
While there are always exceptions to the rules, sexually mature Mbuna are typically far more territorial and far more aggressive than Aulonocara. I don't want anyone reading some of these comments and then attempting to mix a group of Aulonocara stuartgranti with a group of Metriaclima lombardoi. And LOTS of inexperienced people attempt just that, when shopping by color codes. That pretty little blue striped fish grows up and turns yellow, and one day kills most everything in the tank. If there are any survivors, over time they typically get sick from the constant stress, and die from bloat.
DJ has been a mod on cichlid-forum for a number of years, I was a mod there approx. 20 yrs ago, in the health/nutrition/illness folder. In the first few months as a mod in that folder I lost count how many inexperienced people killed their fish due to not understanding the basic fundamentals of keeping these fish in a closed system such as an aquarium. Over the years, there were thousands of sad stories, and thousands of dead fish. Many of them could have been prevented .....
