New Cichlid Owner

Hunkgoldn

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Hi all,
I'm a new cichlid owner. I've had them for about 3 months now. My question is do I need a bigger tank? I have 2 Kenyi and 2 cobalt blue zebra cichlids in a 32 gallon tank. I just added my pleco to the mix instead of my syn petracola. I figured the pleco would be better at any algae and put the petracola with my community tank.
My LFS said not to put more than 6 total in the tank, but after reading the article posted on the Kenyi, I read at least a 70+ gallon for them. Any ideas?

Sorry, not good with the scientific names yet.
 
I'd say the artical is good advice, but that's not the only problem with the tank. Check out the pinned artical on mbuna for a detailed intro on keeping these guys. In summary, mbuna are very active and very aggressive, and smaller tanks breeds more aggression. 32 gallons is considered very small for them.

Make sure you have no small fish in the community tank, the syno's are predators. They don't eat algae, but make great mbuna companions - in a big enough tank.
 
Thanks for the info. I'm thinking of upgrading to a 70 gallon tank soon.
My petracola is hanging out with my zebra loachs and redtail shark and staying away from the others. He is still small. For now he is in the tropical tank, i didn't think it was a good idea of having him with the cichlids til he gets a little bigger.



Hi all,
I'm a new cichlid owner. I've had them for about 3 months now. My question is do I need a bigger tank? I have 2 Kenyi and 2 cobalt blue zebra cichlids in a 32 gallon tank. I just added my pleco to the mix instead of my syn petracola. I figured the pleco would be better at any algae and put the petracola with my community tank.
My LFS said not to put more than 6 total in the tank, but after reading the article posted on the Kenyi, I read at least a 70+ gallon for them. Any ideas?

Sorry, not good with the scientific names yet.
 
Thanks for the info. I'm thinking of upgrading to a 70 gallon tank soon.
My petracola is hanging out with my zebra loachs and redtail shark and staying away from the others. He is still small. For now he is in the tropical tank, i didn't think it was a good idea of having him with the cichlids til he gets a little bigger.
I have tiny 1" petricola with full grown mbuna. The mbuna have never paid attention to the synos. Of course I don't have kenyi, so that may change things....
 

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