Well I'm getting rid of my marine tank to get back into african cichlids :happy2:

I cant decide whether to go back to an all male peacock tank with a few electric yellows, or a tropheus colony with a few other smaller tangs.

What would you choose...

Tough one. I had an all male peacock hap tank for about 3yrs ended up closing it down and starting a troph tank. I do miss my peacocks but no matter how hard I tried I could never get a good balance in the tank and was always removing fish that were to aggro, usually my faves.

I have a colony of duboisi now with a few leleupi and black calvus. I am really enjoying keeping the trophs while it is not as colourful az a malawi tank the trophs are way more active and they kinda school around the tank and it is such a good tank to watch.

I think you will enjoy either option you go for imo an all male tank is alot more work and requires a bit more patience. Good luck.

What size tank?

I'm looking at a 300L ex-marine tank, so it has an overflow and sump. I'm just trying to work out if I can DIY a trickle filter for it.

I'm doing a male peacock/ hap tank at the moment and it is a bit of work, have been all over Auckland trying to get my hands on good quality fish since the start of the year and still about 4 short on my current list (changed it 3 times).

Have also done the Tropheus thing and got done with bloat, had a mate who grew 20 out for two years and came home one day to a tank of sick fish (bloat again) and ended up losing the lot!

The main differences imo are like nudge said, Tropheus are more active and awesome to watch where as with the peacocks you get alot more colour and variety but harder to get the mix right. Also depends if you are keen on breeding or not? I plan on keeping some females in another tank to have the option of breeding at some point (not sure what effect this will have on the pecking order though) but with the Tropheus you just stick them in the same tank and let them do their thing...

Personally if there wasn't the risk of bloat I would go for the Tropheus but just don't like the idea of possibly losing everything in one day. So really either way you choose to go I would recommend alot of research/ questions on here.

Here is a link to my thread if you haven't seen it already... viewtopic.php?f=13&t=66069

I have a tang community and it is awesome to watch. The tropheus populate the upper areas generally and are rarely still, always someone chasing someone.

The mid and lower areas are taken by the bright orange leluipi, altos, shellies and juvie tropheus. The dark tropheus, bright orange leluipi, golden altos and pale shellies all contrast well off each other colour wise and the blue back ground and algae covered rock piles make it an interesting setup.

There are other species around like julis as well that you can keep so not too hard to get hold of a few tang species.

If you do want to go with tropheus the tank foot print is very important. i wouldn't put them in anything smaller than a 5 foot for a single species of troph or at least 6 foot for two species (duboisi and one other species) as they won't have the space to create their own territories. I have a 2.0m tank that is only 450mm high and 450mm deep, works awesome.

I'm leaning towards the tropheus. Had some bulu points in the past with no bloat issues, but i always fed them NLS exclusively and spirulina (i think) and had metronidazole on standby at all times, lol.

May have to look onto a slightly longer tank then, this one's a 4ft.

I loved how my peacock/hap tank looked though, but dont have the space to do this really well I think

Does anyone run a wet/dry filter with their trophs?

I agree, i think you'll need more than a 4ftr. How did you find the bulu points I have read that they are pretty aggro?

Well I don't have the experience another troph colony to compare them to...but I don't remember them being particularly bad. Maybe had 1 or 2 losses from being picked on. No worse than the agro in my male peacock/hap tank

yeah i know what ya mean never had to many probs with the haps but i couldnt get the peacocks to settle. I 'd pull one out and another would take its place chasin all the others and forcing them into every corner of the tank. The corners were chokka with fish and the rest of the tank was fairly empty

yeah i know what ya mean never had to many probs with the haps but i couldnt get the peacocks to settle. I 'd pull one out and another would take its place chasin all the others and forcing them into every corner of the tank. The corners were chokka with fish and the rest of the tank was fairly empty

How big were they when they started giving you problems?

i'd say 5ft minimum for one species of troph for you to enjoy them and them do well. as far as i'm aware bulu points are similarly behaved to all the others except ikola, they are by far the nastiest tropheus in my experience.

I have found tropheus really easy to keep, never had any health issues in 6 years or so of keeping them.

Your tank is probably on the smaller side to pull of a mixed male or tropheus tank, it can probably be done but as others have suggested it would be hit and miss.

I had terrible luck with bulu point and ikola, but found the pemba and dubs from Smidey were great so I would recommend them if you were to go down that route.

As another option for your tank have you considered a dem/yellow tank with a couple of male peacocks/small haps that get along or a single peacock/small hap colony in there?

I had terrible luck with bulu point and ikola, but found the pemba and dubs from Smidey were great so I would recommend them if you were to go down that route.

laid back northlanders mate, not much stress here haha

i think it's an accurate generalisation that bulu points and ikola and significantely more aggro than pemba and duboisi.

Well I guess they do like the green stuff so no surprise they are really chilled out from up north..

Algae eaters

I'm actually looking at getting the bembas for my tank. Yellows and dems I've had together in the past, they're just not as exciting in my opinion.

good choice, i like them a lot.

have a few fry growing out to