ryanjury

Our fish came in with no variant so that is how they should remain, however it does appear they are the pombo rocks variant.. However I recently purchased in some fish from an unrelated source to mine and found they have 7 stripes but are just as vibrant as the 6 stripe ones I have that I have been breeding from so it would appear we have both strains here or ours are a mix of the 2..

Yep sure is, it would be a dominant male of the strain we have here under strong maybe blue lighting.

If he came over regularly then I would just chuck him a fish or 2 each time and let the tank cycle itself.. As long as he doesn't overfeed it should be fine in a 3ft tank.. Obviously you would have to be careful with what you give him african wise for a 3ft tank, and younger fish or fry would be more ideal as they would create less bio load and also be less aggressive when new ones were added..

I would say africans would definitely be hardy enough to cycle a tank. How big is the tank deno? Generally once you have one tank running you should never have to cycle a tank because you can just steal some media from existing tanks filters..

It is very hard to say what will happen or what has happened so far, are any other fish looking beaten up? You can usually tell when they have been severely beaten as half their fins are hanging off and they tend to sit up at the water surface looking sad.. Have you seen any major aggression from any of them? I re did one of my african tanks that had my young dems in it and they all decided to hide, that was when I noticed they were their most aggressive for some reason. But once I moved them into a tank they were happy in it seemed to settle down, I think it may have been fighting in amongst the rocks for hidey holes maybe? I would also say your tank is probably too small for them, they really need to be in a large 3ft tank especially when yours are reaching breeding size as that is where they start getting aggressive.. As these fish get easier to come by I think people are just going to have more and more problems with them, people selling them in smaller numbers and not recommending descent tank sizes etc. I have heard (and would never recommend it) of people keeping 20 dems in 2ft tanks in an attempt to overcrowd them and give them so little space they have none to fight over, apparently it worked but doesn't sound ideal to me.

What are the dimensions of the tank and how big are the fish? As above did you rearrange the tank and do a water change when you introduced the new fish? Is it just the smaller fish that have been killed, and did they exhibit any other symptoms before they died (ie are you sure they were bullied to death?).

Yeah if you want to breed from them then it is best to start again and get some known good ones from a good source then at least they are worth breeding.. I would probably wait until you get the bigger tank and then you can use the 80L for a breeding/raising tank and it gives you the ability to buy younger fish cheaper from breeders to grow out for your big tank.

Its a 100L tank and only 4 platties, unless the temp is like 35C then I doubt it is an oxygen issue.

I have to agree, the fish generally wont exhibit symptoms like you have described from being changed from 6.2 to 6.4 I regularly do this with most of my fish in the fishroom with no ill effects.. Gasping at the surface is usually a sign of poisoning or lack of oxygen in the tank sometimes caused by the tank being too hot or overstocked..

I thought you had to prove 10 babies from 1 spawn and identify the parents when they are first sighted and then identify the same parents and fry at 30 days? This would be very hard to do in a mixed african tank or is that taken into consideration..

Generally all mbuna have it in them to be agro, ice blues are particularly nasty, I have seen an ice blue male take over half a 6ft tank to himself before so I would watch them as they mature the 180L tank may not be big for them.. Also giraffes can and will get to 15-20cm long, are your lumpheads blue dolphins? As they get pretty big too.. What type of peacocks are you looking for?

The tank is too small for those fish if the smaller ones are 5/6cm.. I would say there is no one main culprit probably a combination of all the fish picking on the smallest/least dominant ones the female peacocks would be the first to harassed as they are quite submissive the male peacock would give them a bit of a hard time by himself then all the others join in the poor fish get harassed to death... Just for a guideline I do 1m and 3+ female peacocks in an 80L tank and some of the females still get a hard time that is just with one male in the tank.

Tank size would be a biggie here.. Ice blues are probably the most agro fish you have in your list but you do mention they are young, are the males coloured up at all? I am not surprised the peacock females got it first alot of people in the know do not recommend mixing peacocks with haps/mbuna as they are too aggressive for them and kill them.. Also are you positive the fish were killed by the other fish and not just sick and were picked on or eaten as they died?

Nice looking tank and fish I tried to fix your photos but they are too big for this site, it is a real pita but you have to make them really tiny to be able to post them here after the site upgrade.. You can also post the "clickable' link and it will put up smaller versions of your pics that you can click on to make them bigger.

As I said above your media etc will be fine there was no need to replace it.. Just add some crushed coral or something to buffer your water it will be fine, or just live with a ph of 6.2 if its stable

Geeze that's a good drop congrats

Awesome photos Is there 2 holes in the coconut shell but one of them blocked up with mesh or is it something else that I can see?

Yeah 10mm for a 600H tank, if the tank was 380H and 600W then you might get away with 8mm.

Sounds like you have the same golds as me But I am getting a large number of the long finned females coming along, and also longer finned males to put back to them..

Yeah I heard about Robins ones lol I wonder if he still has them.. I found out where they came from and tried to get some ordered in but the supplier had sold out

I had the doxycycline from when I was prescribed it and then found out later it was good for fish so kept a few left over tablets apart from that you have to figure out what you need and try and convince a vet to prescribe it to you. Have you tried posting your pics on any other forums? Apistogramma.com or something like that might be good.. Those agassizi are very nice, he is almost a dead ringer from the one I got from redwoods (photos here http://fishkeepers.co.nz/forums/viewtop ... =18&t=1256) unfortunately I only managed to get one batch of eggs off them which hatched but I killed them, then I lost the male, have you bred yours at all yet? It is very hard to find ones that nice here, there seem to be alot of really boring ones coming through the wholesalers, our local animates had a heap in a while ago but alot of them had lumps and random things like what your ones have and they had no colour..

Wouldn't they fly trap just eat the frogs food? Anyway here is a link to more info on the nz ones http://fishkeepers.co.nz/forums/viewtop ... f=30&t=980

Yeah I would go for bacterial, maybe the furan is the wrong sort of antibiotic to use? Have you got access to any other antibiotics, I have used doxycycline previously for a bacterial infection and that cleared it up.. Where did you get your agizzisi from?

lol I have one here its an LG one with remote etc only issue would be getting it to you if you wanted it..

Do you have any pics? I have no idea what is affecting your fish but would guess bacterial as well pics may help..