ryanjury

Phoenix managed to do a planted african tank, and YMIR also has a nice planted tank with dems/peacocks and a few others kicking around in it. I would recommend the dem/yellow/peacock (colony of one type if you want to breed) because I like it, it looks good and works well in a smaller tank. It is also unlikely you will end up with cross breeding and could breed all the fish in there. But to me it really depends what you like more than what you can breed to make money You can sometimes get really good deals off trademe I got a 250L all in one setup off trademe that came with a chiller which I sold and the whole setup including an external cost me $65..

You could do a planted dem/yellow/peacock tank hardy plants like java fern, anubais and people have even tried crypts with success, hypothetically if I were allowed to have straight val it would go very well with my tropheus and grow faster than they can eat it too. Plus if you had a 2ft tank you could easily make a few $$'s by stripping the odd fish every now and then as this mix is very unlikely to cross and would be dead obvious if it did.

Best way to cycle a tank is to steal media from an established tank and go from there

Yeah your yellows are what I would regard as nice quality fish. What is the saying? Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder..

caruleus means blue I believe they were named this because the first ones identified were actually all blue like these ones.. http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/s ... hp?id=1667 as you can see this is different to having black barring. It all depends what you want to regard it as. To me an electric yellow should be all yellow with only black on its fins and maybe an eye stripe when excited, that is what I regard a nice clean quality electric yellow and the only fish I will breed from. I gauge this from what I like and what I have seen on reputable sites or winning competitions etc.. Others have different opinions on what they like or accept and this is part of the parcel of anything I guess. Shading or barring with mood does seem to happen as does the black on the belly (but I haven't seen this come and go).

I would regard poor breeding as a yellow that has black marking anywhere regardless of mood, none of mine exhibit any black markings when dominant or breeding and neither do firenz as evident by the photos of his spawning. I will admit it is a nice looking yellow alot better than heaps I have seen out there but for a purist it is not 100%. That is just my opinion There is a good article here on them.. http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/l_caeruleus.php Yes it doe appear they all originated from a very small population (probably like alot of the fish we have in NZ) so are all inbred but it is very evident from what we see around the place that you do have to select the best from each batch as they there are clean ones around. Just for comparison there is a terrible pic of my yellows male on the left holding female on the right, male usually has more black on his fins but the flash seemed to wash it out.. http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f183/ ... ellows.jpg

Rainbow melanachromis (Melanochromis joanjohnsonae) or hybrid

I would say poorly bred for that fish, the black markings along the bottom of the body look like this too.. Some fish get like this when they get older which is why you have to grow fish out for a number of years before you can determine if you have good stock. I have found diet related blackness tends to be random spots around the fish but it can cause blackness in these areas as well, what are you feeding?

Just keep an eye out, egg bound fish usually come right but sometimes get a bacterial infection, if she starts getting fat and looking sick then you will have to treat her with antibiotics to clear it up.

It depends on how you hold your tongue as to what people will want on any given day, it changes all the time. But electric yellows and demasoni would be ones that seem to be quite popular most of the time, are you thinking of getting some malawis?

Me too

I have heard that when you stick a male with a fish that is carrying sperm from previous matings they will use the fresh sperm anyway.. Oscnz I have a few spare male gold guppies here can give you one at the meeting if you want one..

That is very cool That guy/girl obviously has way too much time on their hands..

What colour do you want?

Yep nice female guppy and sounds like a good sized one too. Believe it or not female guppies are supposed to be that big..

As everyone else has said keep the water clean add salt and it should be fine.. If the damage continues to get worse (finrot as Adrienne has suggested then you will need to treat that). Another thing is to be careful not to feed your fighter too well especially on bloodworms as fighters are pretty prone to dropsy and bloodworms seem to be associated with it.

Maybe it just died? It is pretty hard to tell and sometimes fish (like humans) do just drop dead for no apparent reason organ failure heart attack who knows

Awesome they are looking good! Well done, glad to see they are being bred and will hopefully be spread around and not die out like alot have..

If I could fill it to the top I would be tempted to do a big malawi hap tank.. 10 giraffes 10 livingstonii 10 polystigs 10 electra 10 dolphins 10 empresses 10 kadangos 10 d. comps a whole heap of the big boys But if you weren't going to fill it then something like what phoenix suggested would look alot better because you wont have a big ugly wide open space at the top..

What are the dimensions of it?

It is pretty much the height as the outwards pressure increases alot with height and that is what is likely to cause the glass to flex height wise, as we all know glass doesn't flex very well.. I think you could do a really wicked tank that has like plants and stuff out of the water at the top I think it would look really cool.

Read the article and use the calculator To help you out.. "The variability of the strength of glass due to limitations of the manufacturing process means a suitable safety factor must be used when calculating glass thickness. The factor commonly used is 3.8. While not a perfect guarantee, it will remove all risk bar that of damaged or very poor quality glass. The main damage that will cause failures is scratches and chips. Also a point load on the glass surface will cause it to fail. For this reason a soft packer like polystyrene is used under aquariums to stop the point loading of dirt and grit." So you are aiming for 3.8 which would be around 5-600 high.. However I just worked out the safety factor of my 5x2x2 (in 10mm which is very standard for a tank this size) and it is only 2.5 so not ideal either, so (without knowing enough about these things I am sure Barrie will fill you in) I would aim for over 2. Just bear in mind that the lower your safety factor the more likely it is that there will be 12mm daggers flying through your house ready to destroy anything or anyone in their path if it lets go I think it was Jimr who had a big tank let go in his fishroom and it threw glass across the room and through other tanks on the other side.

I don't get it either I suggested 6 (or even more) to thin them out to males and multiple females or 1m and 3 females..

Yeah too thin for sure enter 1800 and 900 with 12mm glass in here and see what comes out.. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/index.php?PG=glass3 And an article explaining the number it pops out.. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/index.php?PG=glass1 Just for comparison I had a 4ft tank that was 3ft high and made from 15mm glass which is probably what this should have been made of minimum..

Awesome! What a good buy.. Just a quick question though how thick is the glass?