Over-stocking A Malawi Tank

[fry_lover]

You can't really do peacocks in that tank. I have a six footer and my peacock still gets picked on quite a bit. I just got rid of my chipokae after he killed 3 fish... Don't make that mistake! Feel free to PM me because I have a lot of the fish you plan to get.

i have been lucky so far, and yes i am looking to re-home my Chipokae even though they havent dont anything bad yet! And the person i got them from thinks i am over reacting my moving them on, but everyone else seems pretty clear how bad they can be, i will PM you, cheers for the offer

 

[nukeonekitty]

The activities everyone is telling you are from fish that are fully mature. I didn't have my first problem until over a year of having the tank running. You just never know when the chipokae devil is going to kill!

 

[borissimo]

I had a tank overstocked (at lfs's recommendation) - a nice selection of different Malawi species with not too many aggression problems which was the whole point. They were all between 1 and 4 years old when disaster happened. Although I realised too late that I wasn't too happy with overstocking and had intended to buy a larger tank, I lost the majority of them overnight when the airline came off and I discovered a kink in the filter pipe. The nitrites had risen from nil to very high just overnight. When I found them in the morning the majority of the fish were dead, probably from axphyxiation. One syno was bloated and dying, the other survived.

Personally I would never, ever overstock a tank again. The consequence of a tank failure is just too heartbreaking.

 

[fry_lover]

sorry to hear that

I have x2 eheim externals, one Juwel internal and one FLuval 4+ internal running on my malawi tank, mostly to ensure a good flow and biological capacity. It also means i obviously have a lot of back up

The one thing that would of course stuff me up is a complete power failure in my flat.

But i wont stock fish tanks purely on the basis that there "might" be a power failure

But its a good point you raise,

 

[nukeonekitty]

If I ever lose power for more than 2 hours I will hook my filters and heater (depending if it's cold or not) to my generator for a hour or so and do that every other hour. That is if you have a generator, which I guess a lot of people wouldn't.