Value of my fish ?

[HoldenOn]

Haha, good, glad you can remain social!

I want to learn some more about cichlids, I really don't know much at all. I tend to go for peaceful above all else, so peaceful community fish, livebearers, nano fish etc, the idea of seeing my fish beating each other up stresses me out! I don't think I have the knowledge nor nature to be able to cope with that, lol. Id be panicking and moving fish out all the time and end up with dozens of massive tanks with one fish in each

Cichlids rule

 

[HoldenOn]

Oh I'm sure they are! And there's no denying how beautiful and colourful so many of them are. I was reading a little about them the other day, especially since I'm in a hard water area, with a GH of 253, so my choice of fish is pretty restricted compared to those lucky folks with soft tap water. I'm still pretty new to the hobby, and started with livebearers, thinking they'd be typical hardy starter fish. I didn't know at the time that guppies especially are not the hardy fish they always used to be, being quite poorly bred and genetically weak now... but as fun as livebearers are for a while, gotta admit that they can get boring too. They're certainly not going to interact with you the way an Oscar or even an Angel would.

And despite my weakness for planted tanks, have also seen some stunning cichlid tanks with the rocks and driftwood, like the one of your old set up you shared recently! It was stunning.

Any recommendations for a beginners guide to cichlids? I read this article the other day and found it really fascinating, about how the fish in lake Malawi live, how the lake was formed, the importance of the rocks etc, it was fascinating! And helped me see why rock work is so important in cichlid community tanks.

The mbuna keeper's survival guide

Mbuna are colourful, hardy cichlids that are easy to breed in the aquarium. But they’re also highly territorial fish, so get things wrong and you could have a blood bath. Here’s how to avoid a rocky horror…

www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk

Well your water is hard, so any rift lake cichlid would work. You would need a pretty big tank (75 smallest) and you would have to overstock it, meaning a bigger water change then normal every week, and a little stronger filtration. On the upside you get to see some crazy behavior and some cool colors!