Newbie To Malawi

[furry catfish]

Hi everyone I have recently come into a 42 gallon tank and I am still wondering what to put in it.I saw a lake malawi tank in a store and it looked amazing.I would love to set one up but it sounds really complicated and this is only my second tropical fish tank.Can someone tell me about them because I really like the look of the tanks but I am new to this so a extremely complicated tank is probably not for me





chris

p.s sory for being so unspecific

 

[furry catfish]

Or could i get any other african chichlid tank?

 

[HappyGeorge]

I have a Malawi tank, it is my first ever tank. Just took a while to read up and gain some knowledge, not sure aside from the aggression issues whether keeping them is more difficult than anything else. If you're going to heavily stock the tank to reduce aggression then you may need more filtration than a community tank would, and if you have a low pH reading from your water supply then you may need to artificially buffer the pH.

I am thrilled with my tank, could sit and watch it forever, always something going on.

There are lots of pinned topics for new starters here and lots of people willing to answer questions, although I'm sure most of the questions your itching to ask are probably covered in the pinned topics.

 

[demasonisrule]

Anything below 55 gallons there is really not a lot that you can get other than demasonis. You could get about 15 of them. This is about all you can get but they are very beautiful.

They aren't all that much more difficult, the biggest difference is that you need to have a much higher PH than most fish could tolerate. Test your water supply. If it is high than you don't really have to worry about that. If it isn't high, than add crushed coral sand, and lace rock to buffer the water.

Mbuna means "rock dweller," and they live up to their name. You need to have a lot of rocks and caves so that every fish can have room to set up its own feeding territory. Make sure that your rocks are fish safe. The easiest way to tell if a rock that you have found is safe is to drop a bit of vinegar on it. If it fizzes than it is NOT safe. Also, if you can clearly see veins of metal, than it is not safe either.

Since you will have so many fish, you need a lot of filtration. The turnover needs to be at least 8 times higher than the volume of your tank, but feel free to go higher.

Good luck, do some more research, and I am sure it will look great!

 

[dthoffsett]

As demasonisrule said Pseudotropheus demasoni is the only mbuna species you could keep in your tank, due to aggression, a 4ft tank would be necessary for other species. That said, you could look at some of the Lake Tanganikya species or some of the African riverine as well as some New World species. Cichlids really aren't all that difficult to care for, the biggest challenge is to stock them correctly (matching up aggression and territory needs).

 

[Dalaran]

Ya from what I've read there are a fair amount of New World Cichlids that would be suitable for a 42 gal tank, but when it comes to africans it really needs to be 55gal+