ryanjury

This is all looking alot more difficult than it has to be.. Have you had the KH and GH of your water tested? Tanks tend to go acidic over time due to the break down of waste and fish pee/poo and any uneaten food etc. If this happens fast it is usually because your water has a low KH or lacks buffering.. I would say this is your problem the solution is to add some small pieces of coral/crushed oyster shells/coral sand or baking soda with each water change. I would say your media and ornaments are fine, the media will be making the water go acidic because it has waste in it and it was rotting, your water didn't change when you let it sat because it hadn't been exposed to anything to make it change. I suspect is has a very low KH so will be very prone to having PH changes. Are all your test kits brand new most of them are only accurate for a year check the box for expiry/manufacturing dates. from http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/w ... mistry.php "KH (Carbonate Hardness) Carbonate hardness, also known as “buffering capacity” or “total alkalinity,” is a measurement of carbonates and bicarbonates in the water. It is best described as water’s ability to keep the pH stable as acids or bases are added – almost acting like a sponge for those additives so they cannot affect the pH. Without adequate buffering, the pH in your aquarium will eventually drop because the end result of the nitrogen cycle is nitrate (nitric acid), which slowly builds up between water changes. With sufficient buffering the pH remains stable. For a Rift Lake aquarium, KH is ideally in the range of 180 – 240 ppm, or 10° – 14° DH. "

10 months old should be around 6-7cm fully coloured and breeding.. Depends on genetics and how they have been raised etc.. They don't get as much food and the water conditions are generally not as good in a community tank compared to a bare bottomed fry raising tank. I am unsure if they will start growing but 25mm is very small.. Please update us as it is something I would like to know as well, I doubt they would reach the 9-10cm long males that I have seen

It is possible there might be too much going on in a 200L tank with those fish for them to breed, 200L is fairly small for hap species that like a bit of room..

Agree with firenzenz there, a good change helps, moving tanks or dropping temp with a big water change or turning heater down a few degrees then back up again.. Sometimes they just stop for no apparent reason and it is when you forget about them or give up that they breed for you.. What are you feeding and are their any other fish in the tank?

I just treat until it clears up depending on how bad it is it should only take a day or 2 before you start seeing improvement.

There are different schools of thought on the stripping, I strip at between 2 and 3 weeks, this is the stage where the fry are most likely to survive and the female isn't too run down.. I have found sometimes the fish hold for a full month which runs the female down alot and also the fry come out half starved which cant be good for them. The biggest issue for me in letting the female get run down too much is that you have to remove her to fatten her back up again and then reintroduce her to the colony again which can be alot of stress as she has to fight for a place in the tank again. If the eggs are fertile you can make what is called an egg tumbler google "DIY egg tumbler" they are pretty simple to make and work really well Good luck and I am sure she will get it right with time.

Yeah this is very much the thing with insurance companies, the person on the phone can do as little or as much as they want to help you out and can make thing alot cheaper if they like you (ticking up a few no claims etc). Ring a few times and talk to different people being as well spoken as possible and explaining you have a cheap car and are very responsible etc etc etc helps as well. Insurance through family can help, sometimes your family member (who has a few policies and puts some good $$'s through the company) can give them a friendly call and ask on your behalf and also mention the other companies he might be transferring to if they can't help. We also found that going into the insurance offices can help obviously being well presented and well spoken etc. I ended up paying $1000 a year with state for a GTIR pulsar (2LT turbo etc) when I was 21 and still on my restricted by shopping around, alot of mates were paying up near 2k with dodgy companies.

50/50 over if it will fix itself I don't leave it to chance anymore as I lost a few fishes eyes when it didn't come right.. Water changes and salt in the water helps. The best way I found to treat the fish is to drop meth blue directly into they eye once or twice a day, this is basically to stop fungus getting into the damaged eye before it can heal otherwise the eye rots out.

It is very hard to judge the quality of the tank or how clean it is by looking at the water. Yes it can be brown, but they maybe having phosphate issues or as someone else said maybe they just stirred it up. Maybe the photo makes it look worse, maybe they have some brown algae on the tank front (alot of people leave this as its actually good food for the fish). Brown manky tanks can be just as good as crystal clear ones as long as filters are cycled etc. Alot of good breeders I have seen have had filthy looking tanks deliberately as the fish actually grow better and alot of the fish poo etc is perfectly harmless

Sounds like you are onto it with what you have already done.. You most likely wont see the eggs/fry unless you know what you are looking for, the best description I have had of the fry is like a grain of sand with a tiny piece of hair coming out of it wriggling on the glass.. Best to wait a week or so and shine a torch through the tank and see if you see any swimming around, chuck your java moss etc in there as it contains tiny little stuff they eat when small.

Blue x gold should be better than gold x gold and blue x blue as one would assume the blues and golds are not very closely related and you should get some very strong fish come out of it which you can line breed for both strong blues and golds. It will take a few generations before you start seeing golds though (Depending on what genes blues carry). Good luck do you have anymore pics of your gold females?

I would be careful when trying to home him into an existing colony they may well not take too well to him, but I have also seen a few male fronts being sold because they are too aggressive towards other fronts, and they were sold on the proviso that they never went into a front tank as they would probably kill all the others..

Awesome good work

Male and female electric yellows can both have egg spots, I have seen fish I would have sworn were males with jet black fins nice vivid egg spots but they were holding.. As with all mbuna egg spots are only one of the considerations when sexing them.

lol now you guys are on the same playing field as the rest of us Not that I have ever or will ever treat my water for chlorine before using it

Congrats on the spawn and sorry to hear about the female At this stage I would be removing the eggs, unless you are confident of finding another girl, to me it would be more worth trying to grow out some of your own to breed from than risking it. These guys will be heavily inbred and rams usually make bad parents so to me the odds are stacking up for him to eat them. Let us know how they go, at this stage do the eggs look viable?

To me line breeding is breeding within the same line (ie same group of fish) for a desired trait? Someone once said on here that pretty much sums it up, it is called line breeding if it works, inbreeding if it goes wrong...

Do you have johannii males? Be very careful with what you pick up on trademe as johannii as alot of the melanachromis males can very closely resemble each other but be different species.. An example is the "blue melanachromis" on the wholesale lists, if you saw a tank of them you would automatically think it was a tank of male johannii (hence the blue melanachromis bit) but I have seen females holding which are just as blue suggesting they are another species altogether. Who knows what though it has been discussed on here quite a few times with no definitive answer. Same can be said for the "golden johannii" on the lists, the males seem to mature with very heavy vertical barring so much so they don't actually look anything like johannii, again who really knows what they are they are being sold as johannii but I have never seen an example of a pure one on any profile that looks like them. Overseas sites have suggested that there are just as many problems with hybrids in the melanachromis species as their are in peacocks as they are all so very closely related and alot of them appear very much the same. Have you got any pics of your fish? Here are my breeders I purchased them as Johannii from a breeder who they have bred true for a number of generations for, they have also bred true for me for a few years too.

Awesome good work, they are very nice fish

lol yes they sure hence the Al. Stuartgranti "maleri" in their scientific name, sorry had a brain fart.. I do think it is an interesting discussion, most would argue that because our fish haven't been imported with a variant only a name that they could (and most likely are) a mix of alot of different variants anyway.. I do wonder what the introduction of new blood would achieve? Going on Scientiffic name alone will cause issues though all these fish are considered "Aulonocara Stuartgranti" and most of them are very different fish, although technically by some crossing them wouldn't be an issues as they "are they same species". Placidochromis stonemani Aulonocara stuartgranti (Charo) Aulonocara stuartgranti (Chiloelo) Aulonocara hansbaenschi, Red Shoulder Aulonocara stuartgranti (Chilucha Reef) Aulonocara stuartgranti (Chilumba) Chilumba Peacock Aulonocara stuartgranti (Chinuni) Aulonocara hansbaenschi, Red Shoulder Aulonocara stuartgranti (Chirwa Is.) Aulonocara stuartgranti (Chiwindi) Blue Neon Aulonocara stuartgranti (Cobue) Aulonocara stuartgranti (Gome) Aulonocara hansbaenschi, Red Shoulder Aulonocara stuartgranti (Hai Reef) Blue Neon Aulonocara stuartgranti (Hongi Is.) Aulonocara steveni Aulonocara stuartgranti (Kande Is.) Aulonocara steveni Aulonocara stuartgranti (Mbamba Bay) Aulonocara steveni Aulonocara stuartgranti (Mbowe Is.) Aulonocara stuartgranti (Metangula) Aulonocara hansbaenschi, Red Shoulder Aulonocara stuartgranti (Mundola Pt.) Aulonocara hansbaenschi, Red Shoulder Aulonocara stuartgranti (Ngara) Flametail Peacock Aulonocara stuartgranti (Ntekete) Aulonocara hansbaenschi, Red Shoulder Aulonocara stuartgranti (Ntumba) Aulonocara stuartgranti (Sanga) Aulonocara stuartgranti (Undu Reef) Blue Neon Aulonocara stuartgranti (Usisya) Flavescent Peacock Aulonocara stuartgranti (Wikihi) Blue Neon Aulonocara stuartgranti (Zunga) Aulonocara sp. "Stuartgranti Maleri" (Chidunga Rocks) Sunshine Peacock, Orange Peacock Aulonocara sp. "Stuartgranti Maleri" (Chipoka) Sunshine Peacock Aulonocara sp. "Stuartgranti Maleri" (Maleri Is.) Yellow Regal Aulonocara sp. "Stuartgranti Maleri" (Nakantenga Is.) Aulonocara sp. "Stuartgranti Maleri" (Nankoma Is.) I had the same discussion once with someone who bred a few fish but was also very keen on his plants (they have the same issues/views on hybrids). He had bred some wild cockatoos with some triple red cockatoos and was referring to the resulting offspring as hybrids (as he would with no issues when he crossed 2 different coloured plants) but to me they would still be cockatoo's as the triple red variant is just a line bred wild.

I would say not technically a hybrid either.. The gold and red maleri's are supposed to have different locational varients but the same sc name, in saying that would you breed any of the stuartgranti complex together? I have been tempted to get some "rubins" to breed with my maleri reds to get some unrelated blood and hopefully get some redder fish.. About the only problem I have with doing this is I cannot guarantee the maleri reds I have and any rubins I would get would actually both be maleri's so wouldn't know what I would get out..

lol I was going to say the same thing smidey but couldn't for the life of me find the pic.. I had one of these in my 5ft mixed african tank and he ate my entire adult colony of demasoni while I was overseas so definitely watch your smaller fish, fronts are deep water fish so have better vision than others so apparently they wake up early and cruise around eating all the smaller fish while they are still sleeping.. Poor fish being kept in a 3fter though that is what saddens me about seeing them all being sold on trademe with no reference to their potential size or recommended tank sizes or anything, I bet alot of them have gone to unsuitable homes/tanks

Fair enough then I think Scottie was the only other person who drove up here for the meetings from down those ways.. If you can get them here I can hold them and take them to the meeting if it helps.. I wonder who is coming from the Hawkes Bay? That is awesome..

I wouldn't stick a pair of angels in a 20L tank I would say it is too small for them, especially if the pair have a bit of a tiff like these ones seem to do occasionally.. Min tank size I would use would be a 2fter preferably a tall one.

You will have to make it to a meeting soon Tracy! Have you tried Scottie?