Becca
Fishaholic
If this post belongs elsewhere, please feel free to move it.A few days ago, I came home a few of my plastic "wanna be" plants were uprooted in my African Cichlid community tank. I thought "Hey, their moving sand around, no biggie. A day or two later, I started seeing bigger bare spots than normal on the bottom of the tank. I thought "Cool, they moved more sand around. Cichlids do that, no biggie."
Then over the weekend (Saturday, I believe), I was relaxing in front of the tank and it dawned on me...all of my fish, mostly my males...were different. The males were now sporting bolder colors and prancing around the tank, almost as if trying to impress me. As it turns out, I think they were trying to impress the women of the tank.
I noticed 3 female fish (all different species) with dropped jaws.It appears my tank is spawning. And when I say tank, I mean every single fish in my display tank. Now, mind you - I did not purchase any fish with the idea of breeding them in mind. I simply wanted a nice community tank to view in my front room. I've thought about breeding, but if I intend to do that, I want to steer clear of cross breeding and I'll setup a species only tank.
Anyway, since my original intent for this tank was not breeding oriented, I paid no heed to female to male ratios. Heck, most of my fish were purchased *before* I could determine sex.
The bad news is last night I lost a Red Top Hongi, which is one of my husband's favorite Africans. I'm think it was the male, but I'm unsure since he was the one that removed the remains and examined the remaining population. I checked my water parameters twice and everything looks as good as it normally does.
The only thing I can think happened is the guy got stressed out from other fish in the tank since agression levels appeared to be higher than normal due to spawning. I did isolate what I believe to be the single thing that triggered the "mood" in the tank. Somehow, my tank temp has reached about 83f. I normally keep it at 78f, but a week or so ago, I raised the room temp in the apartment *without* adjusting the tank temp. I believe all my heater really can do is keep the water X degrees warm above room temp. When the room temp changed, so did the tank.
I've adjusted the thermostat on my heater hoping to lower the overall temp of the tank (gradually, of course) and as a result reduce the desire to mate and lower agression levels in the tank.
Now that my rant is done, I do have a question. Does anyone have a heater that is rock-solid that they'd recommend? I'd like a nice submmersible heater that will read the temp of the water water in the tank and adjust heat accordingly. I don't believe my current heater does that...if it does, I don't think it's doing it very effectively.
