ryanjury

Always the way I might try mine with my yellow colony and see how they go, they have a 250L 4ft all to themselves.. Yeah would be nice to see descent lithobates available I know I have quite a few people waiting for them..

Yeah I found the litho males hard on the girls, I haven't had much luck with them, I had a trio and then the male killed 1 girl so I gave up on them for a while then the male died.. Now I have found a good pair from the same line to try again with.. Might just have to try them in the spare 5x2x2ft filled with rocks and see how they go I am working on pics for other people too but he is pretty shy

He's a nice fish, fancy putting something like that in a 60L tank.. Some people have no idea! Yeah lithobates will be the only fish in the tank when I do breed them so wont be any issues with dominance, last time I tried with them I had issues with the male just destroying his girls Guess you run into that when you have them in their own tank because you don't have other fish for them to pick on..

The problem is other males get excited and get in on the act too even a few hours later.. Your Trewavasae, red zebras and aurora are likely to cross. Sometimes you get lucky and mixes seem to work or fish don't cross, but it really depends on what you want to produce and how confident you are going to be when you pass fry on that they are the real deal.. I breed fish to sell so I take the effort to put them in their own tank (or only mix with fish that are unlikely to cross or any crosses will be obvious ie mbuna/peacocks), I would rather have less quality fish than just cram everything in one tank and try breed as many as possible if it was going to compromise what I was actually breeding. I know plenty of people who just wont buy fish off people who breed in mixed tanks there are just so many crap fish being produced. Anyway enough said your fish they look to be awesome quality, I really like the lithobates, I have just got a pair from a good strain back and getting another female from the same strain too to try and start breeding them. It has been harder to find descent lithobates recently. Trewavasae look good too, I was over at HFF albany today they had a few nice females holding if you were after more girls for that nice boy.

Awesome, well it looks good.. Good luck with the breeding, how do you know who bred with what? Half of those fish will readily cross breed..

What are the dimensions of the tank? It looks like it is a really tall tank rather than a longer one which might mean the fish will outgrow it, your dolphins are still babies and will get allot bigger. The fish look good if they're getting along there probably isn't any need to add any more, you would want more females if you were going to breed because you would be moving them into a less mixed tank to do that but in that mix there are enough fish to break up any aggression.

Nice looking tank, looks nice and clean, the rock layout isn't the best in terms of terriotories you have only set up one in the middle around all the rocks but you wont have any agro with fish that size. Yep looks like Jewel to me too, a bit of an ugly one shape looks a bit weird but I am not expert on them and it might be normal or just be old/poorly bred. Hard to tell how good those yellows are without a close up of the female, and no idea what the fry will turn out like without seeing the father either, but so far looks good, the fish is yellow with black fins Yeah I would say your tank is too small for dems long term unfortunately I have heard of people cramming them into smaller tanks in higher numbers overseas and apparently the large numbers and smaller territory reduces aggression, it is not something that I have experimented with or would recommend. Air pump wont be required unless you have a higher stocking level than what you do, I just treat them like a little bit of cheap insurance and try and have them running on all tanks.

lol the radio is stuck on the rock And they seem to enjoy that.. No Barry White here, they do get the mood lighting during the day, I am keen to borrow the OB have 2 girls here and can probably even sort a spare tank too if needed just let me know Sounds like a good system you run with adding multiple males to get the most compatible one, sometimes the biggest one out of a batch and the first one to colour up is the worst one to add to a mixed tank they can be too scrappy.

Sounds like a good setup some of the fish can cross but not too overcrowded. You may be lighter on numbers for the fish you have lower numbers on and if your ratios are out odd females may get some abuse. Do you have any pics?

Rock salt is from the supermarket you can get it in 1kg bags.. Good luck!

Some fish are more susceptible to certain issues like clown loaches and white spot.. Bump up the temp and chuck some salt and it should clear it up.

Salt.. Use rock salt works just as well as white spot cure and its cheap just goto the supermarket and stock up I think the dosage is 1TBs per 4L but a fish like a midas shouldn't be too bothered with salt so you should be fine.

Pretty sure you can divide the battery capacity by the output current of the charger to roughly get the charge time.. Obviously depends on a flat battery to begin with..

An FX5 would be a good start And probably be fine if you weren't going to overstock it.

What method did you use to do your water change? Did you just dump a heap of water in there, there is a possibility that you shocked your fish with a 60% water change?

You know where I am they are nice fish even the females.. These some fish from my red zebra line.. Have bred them for a while though but they are on the "todo" list.. I haven't seen any with black markings out of my lot so not entirely sure if they will grow out of it, only time will tell. Anyway back on topic

Lol I had already been up for an hour, hard work getting a 2/3yr old ready and off to daycare and to work by 730, oh and of course feeding all the fish before work Yeah crap yellows are very very common, sometimes it can be food related but generally it is just crap fish, get them on NLS and a bit of spirulina flake see what they do. I have quite a few people come out to my room and comment on how good my yellows are and want to buy some to replace theirs.. Shame that they haven't started breeding until recently, but I now have a few batches growing out and 3 females holding so they must like the weather.

Awesome glad to hear that you got the tank up and running There is no need to add the coral rock (unless you really want to because of the look etc) the coral sand will buffer the tank allowing you to source rocks from wherever if you wanted. An airstone is good back up I try and have one running as well as a filter on every tank. The filter provides surface agitation but if it fails and you have nothing else disturbing the surface then your fish can all die, this is more common in tanks with a heavier stocking so your tank will be fine now but maybe not so much when the fish grow up etc. I hope you got yellows from a good line, I know of tons of people who have got them cheap and small and ended up flicking the lot as they matured because they went black or did all sorts of ugly stuff

lol you can't get milk from Bulls Well maybe you can but it will be the wrong sort of milk..

It can be mid 7s with no issues, I think that is what most of us are keeping them in.. Hardness is another issue, but as long is it is tending to be more hard and alkaline than soft/acidic then it should be fine.. There are plenty of information on the net about hardness etc and the affects of keeping fish in the wrong conditions.. http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/hardness.php

lol electric yellows and electric blues don't try to kill each other.. Electric yellows are probably more passive than most dwarf cichlids.. Tropheus generally (there are differences between the various types in NZ) are quite agro, you need bigger groups at least 12 but preferable 15+. As long as you get a good group, feed them the right foods, keep them in harder water with a higher PH and keep the water quality good, they are generally pretty good. I think the biggest thing is starting off with a descent number of them to begin with.

Gutted mate I hope you manage to sort everything out today and have a good day off in spite of it all.. I will ask but it is a bit of a joke but did anyone see anything and did you ring the police? I don't even know if they attend burglaries any-more do they? To hurry you along on the fishroom building there are some very fat apisto females looking very interested in their males sitting in my tanks waiting for you lol

Just get some crushed coral or aragonite and you should be fine it is a large grain sand which they can easily move around etc.. I try and use something to buffer in each of my african tanks, not sure if it is needed but I figure it can't hurt, so I stick a few pieces of coral or limestone rock or have buffering substrate, either way the africans are pretty hardy. I do have a few tanks I add epsoms salts and baking soda to, it isn't a hassle really just do a water change and then chuck the hose in along with the right amount of stuff, but again it probably isn't needed.

Show off.. lol As always awesome pics and fish That OB peacock is looking great!

I think those pics are of the fish for sale there is a guy associated with one of the importers who puts up some pretty good pics on here just before fish hit the market and I suspect he took them, boban_nz is his username. Glad to hear your ikola are going well for you, I failed with mine started off with 9 (mostly females) and now I am down to 1m 3f that just wont breed, going to try again with them soon.. I notice that someone is selling them on trademe now up here, I think it was the guy I sold a spare adult male to because he had 6 big females and had just lost his male, either way it will be good to see more ikola around. Hopefully someone buys all of these ones and gets them going, I would like to see what they grow up like..