ryanjury

The biggest issue with trying to introduce new pool in to a line is finding good stock, over seas they have the stock to introduce new blood to lines but here you will probably do more harm than good to your lines if you tried. I have done quite a bit of reserach on inbreeding and it doesn't actaually appear to be an issue, in fact allot of populations of african cichlids originate from very small gene pools in the first place. Most of the lines I have have been in the country with no new blood being introduced for over 20 years.

I like and don't like hybrids for various reasons. My main reason for not liking them is they can resemble pure fish and often get sold as pure fish or even sold as hybrids and then someone else down the road decides they are something else (usually because they resemble one of the parents after a few generations of breeding). It is all well and good breeding a few hybrids for a display tank and culling the rest and keeping a few males but what happens to these once you are done with them? We have such a small gene pool of good fish in NZ it would be a shame for hybrids to be introduced in to these lines and ruin then. There are also many who through simple ignorance/genuine lack of knowledge or even commercial gain produce hybrids call them pure fish or some random name off google images and that is how we get many "new" and "rare" species in NZ. I do like some of the "acceptable" man made hybrids - ob peacocks and dragonsblood/gold/albino peacocks for example, these fish are very distintive and wont be easily confused with "pure" lines. But then again there is a severe lack of "pure" lines in NZ anyway and most are F1000 mass produced in asia so it is likely most of our fish are hybrids or poor quality anyway. I do know there have been imported a number of quality fish that are floating around and often sold in Pupuke but I don't believe any females are around for those so I don't really consider them a line.

Pure socolofi used to be around both blue and albino, there should be pure trewvassae, bumbleebees, auratus (abino and normal) johannii, cobalt zebras, red zebras, chilumba, afra and probably a few others around in the country. Mbuna are one fish that I would like to see more pure examples of in NZ there are soo many rubbish ones around, but I guess its the same as with haps as well. I have a few spare chilumba for sale too if anyone wants some, they are nice fish.

It sucks but sometimes it just happens, I lost all of my adult giraffes when I moved house, it sucked but I have no idea why it happened, maybe stress related? I am not sure.

You can breed peacocks and smaller mbuna in a 3ft tank but it is probably on the small side for zebras and as previously mentioned you would need a good number/ratio of dems to get away with it but it can be done. When I breed my Africans I breed the same way you are describing, I transfer the colony of fish I want to breed from a mixed tank to a breeding tank breed them and then transfer them back and breed something else. If you want to breed the bigger haps and fronts and stuff you really need a 5ft tank, you could probably get away with a 4 x 2 x 2 for a short time but they will outgrow that quite quickly.

I wouldn't feed bloodworms to any fish African or not, there are all sorts of theories about them being bad, who knows if they are true but when you can get so many good foods (NLS) straight off the shelf that don't cause issues then my opinion is it is best to use them. This is just my opinion, I know there are tons of people who regularly feed bloodworms and have no issues but to me it isn't worth the risk.

I don't think they will get eaten, food might be an issue but if you chucked a bit in they should get enough.

From the outside looking in I would say this is the standard case of someone getting some peacocks breeding them then doing a random google image search id. This is how we end up with all sorts of "new" species in the country. If you want good stock buy from breeders who know what they are doing, pupuke has a heap of good adult male peacocks as well.

That is looking awesome, well done! I am looking forward to seeing it progress..

Glad to see they have settled in well, I am sure they are doing far better in there than in a wheelie bin in my garage! I agree with smidey it can be hard to balance things when mixing fish that prefer different water conditions, however if your ph is around 7.5 then most fish should adjust.

Where in the country are you?

You aren't mucking around are you! We are still unpacking boxes I haven't even managed to make it in to the shed to start sorting that, well done, do you want to come and do mine next? What discusguru said I would be too keen on having the wiring going through touching the metal cladding like that, in reality there are gaps there and the insulation on the wiring should be good enough and it would be subject to abrasion etc but it probably isn't recommended. 60amps is tons! If you are fully insulating and not using heaters you wont use much at all, unless you run a ton of lights or something like that.

I am not sure how good that freshly cut would will be.. I don't usually do wood in tanks but it is generally not recommend to use fresh stuff.. Regarding stocking you could add all sorts to that tank it depends on what you like really, you could chuck some dems/yellows in there, I would be wary of adding too many of the bigger haps because your tank isn't huge but you could get away with it. I also have some nice brown hap fry growing out if you need some of them in the future.

+1 it is the only way to know, things like black on the fin, size etc are just indications I have seen fish with jet black markings on fins that I would have sworn were males holding..

That fish doesn't look like a powder blue although being a common name you could associate any fish with that name, in NZ 2 fish are associated with that name, these ones http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/s ... php?id=787 and these ones http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/p_socolofi.php again there is no wrong or right name because it is a common name. Either way I don't think your fish is either of these from the photo you have provided.

Impossible to tell at that size, however if you brought it with no name then chances are it is a hybrid and could probably just be referred to as a blue (or whatever colour) zebra.

Looking good mate I am sorry I haven't replied to your text we need to catch up! Glad to hear you have found a house too.. I am doing a similar sized storage room off the back of the garage which is great as I will still have my double garage to play with. Mine is in far worse shape than yours though and I have allot of timber etc to replace and get the roof sorted etc. My plan is to do a concrete floor, pink bats/gibb walls/roof and run 2 massive air pumps at either end of a common line (like I had in my container if you remember?). You must be glad you have your parents house to keep the tanks at in the mean time, moving all my tanks was a nightmare

Do you have a preference on the type of cichlid you keep? As you are probably aware there are all sorts of different types. . Also what are the dimensions of your tank?

Your tank is too small for your current fish however they should be ok in there for a while, especially with all that rock work they should have plenty of places to hide and yellows/peacocks aren't extremely aggressive. A 250L 4ft would be good and you could add more fish too.

I don't even have any community fish to help you out with

Sorry to hear about your losses, it does suck big time and I can relate to loosing large numbers of fish I hope that you can find replacements and rebuild..

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=65583&p=703851&sid=f848877fc31dfa2f68572982d04300ea#p703851 I wouldn't add anymore yellows your tank is pretty heavily stocked and it wont actually look any better if you already have 9 of them and your tank hasn't been running for very long.

Didn't you already post about this today?

I agree it is probably more to do with your media than than the amount of filtration.

I am with Smidey on this one, you are best to start with a big group of fish or add juvvies and let them grow up and sort themselves out. I am breeding the dolphins and plan to keep back a group of around 10-15 with the intention of having a nice colony of them too.