Stocking From Scratch

[Wills]

If you went out to the LFS today what cichlids would you be able to get hold of? Also have you asked about ordering some in, its often suprising what they can get but dont.

If you want to add in some colour you could go for flame tetras instead of black widows Have you seen cupid cichlids and festivums before? Pics on the net dont do them justice, cupids go a great gold colour with bright blue iridescent sparkles and the festivums, depending on species gets a range of oranges and red as they catch the light or blues and greens, they are quite sparkly fish in real life that cameras just dont pick up. A combo of them would work well with the tetras and hoplos would be a nice South American biotope as well.

Wills

 

[OldMan47]

A nice smaller cichlid is the rainbow cichlid, Herotilapia multispinosa. It is primarily a plant eater so it would not work too well in a planted tank. They only grow to about 4 or 5 inches so they won't be too big for your tank. This is a picture of some of mine.

This is one of them with newly hatched fry. The dark color on the fish is its breeding color. It is the smallest one in the first picture but is in breeding color in this picture.

 

[Jonny_russell]

Ok just an update

after a couple of weeks cycling the tank with the lone long time resident sucking loach (SAE i think) with ammonia 0 and nitrite 0 i was considering my first addition, came home from work to find a small plec in the tank, a 'present' from the wife !!! it looked like a common plec so i informed her i would have to give her present away in the future.

Anyway there was very slight ammonia rises for a few days (back to daily water changes) and then back to good zero's again, so MY first addition was a small male firemouth (just over an inch long, hardly a perceptible raise in ammonia but back to daily WC anyway, the firemouth was still very shy at this point.

I was then considering the type of 'dither' fish to add, when an 'acquaintance' offered me 4 black widow tetras and 4 white ones - which in his words he was going to 'flush doon the bog' if someone didnt take them !!!!!!!!!!

They were a right mix of old and young and very thin looking but thankfully no sign of disease, so they were re-homed, they have been in there about two weeks now and a looking a lot healthier my only concern is that they appear to swim tail down a lot of the time? perhaps the current with the old internal still running with the new external. But their addition gave the small firemouth bags of confidence !!!!!!!

did the usual daily wc until the extra ammonia was being absorbed.

at the weekend i added 6 small peppered cories - and again back to daily wc till ammonia etc is back to 0

BUT on sunday morning i came down to a dead plec !!!!!! he was feeding and swimming happily before lights out

anyway thats where i stand now