ryanjury

It may stop just keep a good eye on them you have plenty of hiding places so hopefully the new fish will hide until it decides to stand up for itself and fight back.. This of course may never happen, or if they are both males or both females then they may just keep scrapping, maybe try and build some rock work up in the middle so that it divides the tank and means that the bullied fish can have one side of the tank without being seen and chased off by the existing fish.

Again research is your friend.. When adding new cichlids to a tank the existing fish will be aggressive towards them because you are introducing new fish into something they had claimed as their own.. Always best to completely rearrange the tank and/or remove the existing fish and add them together so that they are on a level playing field. It is also recommended to add them in groups so that there are multiple targets for the new fish when you add them.. And even though this thread was for advice on food I believed from the research I had done that it was a bad mix and had to tell him, I figure that it is better that way than having him loose fish without knowing. It is hard for a shop to pass on 100% correct information all the time and this is a difficult one that I only know because I own the fish in question, the nano tank thing is all relative and doesn't really matter at all

It will cost you like $2 to get the rubber and cut one yourself and probably $20-30 for the proper diaphragm (if you can get one as I have had issues with this in the past) plus fitting it would cost you probably more than your pump is worth if you had to pay someone else to do it.

I just picked up some terrarium type tanks for someone else from Greg and he did a really good job sliding doors and all that stuff.. I would just call him 021900727 or 092734121 and see what you can work out..

I learnt something the other day, glass weighs 2x the thickness per square m.. Ie if you have a piece of 10mm glass that is 1m x 1m (1 square meter) then it will weight 25kg. So to figure out how much your tank would weigh you would need to figure out how big it is and how thick the glass is. 2 medium guys can carry my 5x2x2 in 10mm glass which is 540L that is just a simple lift and drop if you want to do things like go up or down stairs around tight corners or carry for a long distance you would need more people.

Yeah they tend to lock themselves in places so a bit hard to get them out, if you really want to get him out I would probably position the wood so the opening of his hole is just at the end of the water so when he does come out he will go down to the bottom of the tank and hopefully not be able to swim straight back in there.. Do you have a group of clowns or just the one? They are typically quite out going when they are kept in groups.

Dems would probably go well with shellies but dems wont go very well long term in a 90L tank..

Cool fish Hopefully you can breed them!

It is probably to be regarded as a nano for african cichlids, but you can keep smaller africans in it probably either a pair of jullies/leleupi/brichardi or a small colony of shellies.

Good work! Fingers crossed the eggs hatch and you can raise some fry..

You could probably do some yellows in there with the shellies they might use the rocks... Eventually they would outgrow the tank but a 90L with that sort of footprint would be ok for them for a while. This is why we usually do lots of research before buying fish, if you had a bigger tank then you would be able to do the jullies/shellies.

It could have just been having a stressed out day or just a random sick/dead one sometimes these things happen and you can't win them all Haven't tried the fly maggots either but would be careful feeding too many of them if they are quite big compared to the fish. Either way it sounds like you are doing things right if they are still there and growing so good work!

+1 just go to para rubber and ask for the diaphragm rubber, cut out some new ones and install them. Or you can go to your local shop and try and get the proper diaphragms in, I have tried this and found it very difficult and also expensive when they do arrive. The pumps are really easy to take apart, just go for the front 4 screws (not the middle ones) and then you will have to pry the front bit off and the inside bit, then you can see the 2 diaphragms and should easily be able to see they are worn out. Another thing to check is that all the screws on the pump are tight some of them work loose and this would cause a racket too but probably more of a rattle not what you are describing here.

Roughly 240x470x470 from memory It is a nice big tank..

I have a 250L tank and kept my jullies with my shellies when they jullies reached 3-4cm long they started beating up the shellies so much so that within a day the shellies went from being happy and colourful to cowering in the top corners of the tank so I had to remove the jullies. Phoenix44 is is no difference to HFF if he returns the lelus and gets the same value of shellies or swapped them with me they would get no extra money through the till, doesn't bother me I was planning on buying leleuli from there anyway just thought I could help.

Either way would work, I would also like to say well done to HFF for coming to the plate on offering a refund/exchange, not many shops would do that

I said if you decided to keep the shellie and wanted rid of the leleupi I could do a swap.. If you decided to go in completely the different direction with peaceful community fish or just keep one shellie or wanted the $$'s back then just take them to the shop

I hate quoting myself but I am moving to Auckland next week all my fish are currently living up there, at this stage 'Lamprologus' ocellatus (Gold) are the only shellies available in NZ that is what I am breeding/keeping.

If you want a peaceful community tank then you should take the shellie back as well and all the coral and stuff then stock up with guppies and stuff, other shellies are probably the best thing to keep with shellies, the offer is still there if you wanted to move the leleupi to swap them for some shellies off me if you wanted to do that.. I have also kept long finned rosy barbs and tropheus with my shellies in the past also Columbian tetras, I wouldn't recommend tropheus for your tank it is too small they are pretty expensive and you really need to get 10-12 to make them work, but would recommend finding a big hardy robust schooling fish and adding a school of them if you wanted to have more than the one species of fish in the same tank.

TBH yellows are more likely to work in this setup than what you have. If the leleupi is cowering or hanging out up the back top of the tank it is probably because he has been bullied, these guys are actually quite agro and it does get worse in small numbers (no I am not suggesting adding more there at all either). I know you got advice from the shop, most shops do give terrible advice though alot based entirely on making sales and not the welfare of the fish.. HFF is one of the better ones but it always pays to do your own research on things before buying anything, you may have got a new staff member or someone who doesn't know alot about africans you can't really expect people to know everything about every fish when they keep so many in a shop and rely entirely on their advice. Generally it is good advice to stick with tangs in the same tank but in this case leleupi are known to kill the shellies so it is hard to know end of the day it is your choice and your money so do what you wish. I breed and sell alot of these types of fish and have been told by plenty of people what will or wont work and they have stocked their tanks against my advice, they continue to come out and get fish off me they continue to brag about how it is still working, 9 times out of 10 a year or so down the track they come back and sure enough as the fish have grown overnight something has snapped and all hell has broken loose. It is all case by case though and some things do work long term depending on temperaments of individual fish involved. Google will help you with advice if you need it from other people and their experiences.. http://www.google.co.nz/#hl=en&source=h ... 02fb102c48

Fish sometimes need a break too, I think it would be very hard on the females to be breeding constantly.. I am unsure why they do it but it does appear to happen in cycles. Sometimes a good way to kick start them back into breeding is to change things, usually a big stress will kick them off, or a change in tanks or something like that.

I don't think he intends on taking any advice firenz, he might be one of those ones that has to learn from his own experiences/mistakes. I think he is making a big one here especially in a tank this small but only time will tell that. The problem is that they will get more aggressive as they grow the tank is not big enough for them to have their own little turf around a pile of rocks and not go on a mission looking for food and potentially suck a shellie out of its shell and kill it. Does that leleupi usually spend his time cowering in the top corner of the tank like that?

It does come down to what you are prepared to risk.. If it is a 2ft cube tank then there is some floor space but I think you are running a risk. Sethg from what I have read on other forums you are either very lucky or waiting for things to go wrong, as with everything in fish people can sometimes get away with it, but from what I have read and experienced cichlid-forum articles are usually spot on it can just take sometime before things snap and go wrong. I will be living in Auckland soon and I am breeding shellies (have a whole heap of babies of various sizes up there atm), if you would like to do some more of them I would happily work something out for your leleupi if you did decide you wanted to move them on.

How big are these fish? Things do change dramatically when fish mature..

Wicked, I saw this tank with a handful of scatty scrounged up plants when it started and now they look amazing it is crazy to see how fast they have grown and spread in such a short time. Well done