Pics of our Mbuna Tank

[loafybones]

Here's some pics of our Mbuna Tank and our favourite fish, including our one of our swordtail fry from the community tank
Any Comments are welcome

Mbuna Tank

Mummy #1

Mummy #2

Loafy's Favourite

Bones' Favourite

BadBoy

The Plec

The new arrivals (only 1 on pic)

 

[skye4jc]

nice job!! beautiflu tank and fishies! congrats!

 

[glolite]

Beautiful fish!!! I love those electric yellow labs Your aquarium looks spotless aswell. Lovely

 

[loafybones]

Thanks They are wonderful fish to keep, our little boy loves them, almost as much as the community tank in his room

 

[G_Sharky]

 

[fufanu360]

very nice tank, i really like those fish as well, did any of them breed as you were saying "mummy"?

and dont you think a swordtail fry will get eaten ?

 

[loafybones]

The yellow lab spit some fry the other day but I dunno where they went, probably all got eaten
The swordtail fry are in a fry tank, they are from one of the fish in the little tank in my son's room so they're safe, don't worry!!

 

[Sunny.C]

How many gallons or litres is your tank? how many fish you got in there?

 

[loafybones]

It's all in our sig, but it's 180 litres with 26 fish, in my opinion and also many others overstocking is best for this type of fish, we have excellent filtration, surface agitation and we are regularly performing 20% water changes.
We have only had 1 casualty so far which was an unknown fish which I saw in the LFS, it was in a bad way there, but I thought he would pull through, unfortunately not.
We have regular mating dances, and two of them were holding fry in their mouths (with no success); as juveniles they do practice, so we are not too worried about that. Just having them breeding is a sign that they are comfortable and doing well.
We have three dominant males in this tank, each one keeps his own little cave and regularly patrols the area (Especially when a female swims by )

These fish are incredibly entertaining and colourful, you could watch them for hours!

I am not saying we are experts, there is always something to learn, but I do think we are competant fish keepers.

Sorry about the rant, you only asked "what size is the tank?" and "how many fish?"
Just wanted to let people now that we havent just bought a tank and stuck a load of fish in there! good luck to anyone that has!

Rich

 

[Sunny.C]

26 fish in a 180litres, well done dude. Tank look pretty good. How many you think i should have in my 130litre??? i got 8 at the moment. btw Whats your average and biggest fish size?

 

[Sanj]

26 fish in 180 litre is ok for a Mbuna tank. The standard stocking rule does not apply for these, overcrowding is exactly the way to keep them (with in limits)...its just the maintenance regime is correspondingly elevated.

That size UK40gals is probably a minumum you would wat to go for this kind of set up...stabiltiy etc considering elated stocking and territory.

Nice.

 

[loafybones]

26 fish in a 180litres, well done dude. Tank look pretty good. How many you think i should have in my 130litre??? i got 8 at the moment. btw Whats your average and biggest fish size?

Thanks! I'm not really an expert but in a 130litre I'd say maybe abot 15-20
The biggest fish we have is about 3" but they should grow to about 5"

 

[G_Sharky]

I'm pretty overstocked too, I wanted to add more, but my most dominant male(aul.red shoulder) won't tolerate any males that are coloring up..I brought home a wild caught haplochromis burtini and it only spend a day in my tank before i return him because my male peacock will probably kill him....but i found out that when I add smaller fish he don't seem to care about it...As far as filtration goes I have an AC300 and a rena filstar xp2 canister filter and I do 30% water change every week...no problems so far...no fishy casualties either....

 

[loafybones]

These fish are generally hardy, and will take a lot of stick, but you gotta treat them right, for the bright colours and for their sake.

We have 3 dominant males, each guarding their own cave, one in particular has adopted a cave with 3 entrances, the back entrance is where the plec lives during the day, the male hates it and is always attacking the poor plec, gotta get rid! Luckily it's one of the unknown we bought as female WT Afras, which are going back to the shop.
I'll post some pics to ID them 'cos we haven't got a clue

Rich