nudge

congrats, now the fun begins

I agree with "bigfishhead" overall footprint is better than litres. tank 1 would be my pick. As far as stocking goes the length of both tanks are similar and prob a bit short for the bigger open water haps but tank 1 is way deeper(front to back) so will give you more fish variety for your stocking. I have found that africans seem to be fine with a little less hight (top of tank to bottom) but definately need the width (front to back) IMO it is better to sacrifice a bit of length and volume to gain a bigger footprint

nice one thanks guys

whats the best way to clean out an internal filter so i dont transfer any parasites/disease when i change it over?

cool thanks might have to clean the filter out and start again then

My daughter has lost interest in her goldfish tank and i want to change it to a cichlid grow out can i just add a heater to the tank, will the bacteria in the current filter adjust to a heated tank?

try mycoolmc hes a member on here he usually has a few cichlids for sale good quality fish, as well as likoma from "fish2water"

agreed, real nice fronts, how many calvus have you got? i have 2 males i would like to swap a male for a female or get a couple more males to spread the aggression out if you know of any for sale

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!

Wow , planted tanks arent my thing but that hardscape is perfection, nice work

Yeah dude anytime, will look like a goldfish bowl compared to yours though Thanks mate appreciate it

yeah they do have bigger lips and they seem to have a steeper forehead as well

Defineately my alpha male. I had just watched him spawn with one of the smaller females might just be the angle of the photo it was kinda taken from behind his head as he was turning away

A full tank shot Dominant male

Thought I would post a few fish pics, been a while. Have a colony of about 25 duboisi now and a trio of malawi dolphins, 6 leleupi which all seem to be male and I started with 5 calvus, all turned out to be male, lost 2 and sold one so have 2 males left. Thinking about upgrading to a 6ft x 2ft tank, think they would enjoy the extra space. Sorry bout the picture quality, they are from my phone,but it seems to take a better picture than my camera.

Thats not good, stop feeding and keep up with the water changes and epsom salt. Because they are in a 40L you could try removing the infected fish when you see them. Really need to get hold of metro if poss and fast.

That sucks sam. Sounds like it may not be bloat, if they are eating well and you don't see any white poo sorta makes me think it's not bloat. Not eating is one of the 1st signs of bloat. I would recommend gettin hold of some metro if poss even if it's not bloat now and the deaths have been bought on by stress, stress can lead to bloat. If you are feeding the same food as what they were eating before you got them I would doubt that it was the food that was causing the problem as well. I feed NLS to and think it is a good food but changing to something different now might cause more issues, i would stick with the food you have and slowly add small quantities of a new food after a couple of weeks and slowly ween them off the original food if you do want to change. That pretty much leaves ph shock from different water parameters as a possible cause and the stress of a new enviroment. Unfortunately it's pretty much guess work at the moment. I would keep up with the epsom salt and water changes being careful to make sure the gh and kh of the water you are replacing matches whats in the tank already. Have you had anymore losses?

I think I just need a bigger tank, that'll fix it

I have a cutting in my troph tank its a decent size and had a lot of roots when i put it in the tank but over time the roots were munched by my trophs. I have since put the roots in a piece of fx5 tubing to see if they will come back. I'm struggling to keep my nitrates under control. I change about 60-70% every week with a good gravel vac, run 2 filters a fx5 and a cf1200. The tank is 350L and has about 40 fish max. I do a wc every tues night and my nitrate readings were I would guess about 60ppm as it is so hard to tell between 40-80 on the colour card. I miss a feeding on weds and tested my water tonight (thurs) and they are around 20ppm already and i have only fed them twice since tues. I feed pretty light twice a day and enough food that it is all gone in about 40 secs per feed. So i guess my question is that because of the lack of root system on my pothos plant could that be the reason I am not really seeing any benefit in nitrate reduction since I introduced it to the tank?

looks like an albino

looks like a dragons blood peacock, albino if it has a red eye, not sure if that is from the flash or not

looks like a dragons blood peacock, albino if it has a red eye, not sure if that is from the flash or not

If you are wanting to add peacocks are you thinking of a single breeding group or are you looking at multiple males? If you want the auratus you would prob want to go for a single male with multiple females, say 1m to 6+females.

I'm with camtang on this one, I'd start with 15 to 20 dems and less of the BB pref single male with multiple females.

nice work mate lookin good