nudge

Has anyone had any issues or tried mixing alto calvus and comps. I have 4 black calvus and it looks like they may all being males and they aint gettin on so I need to move some on. Anyone had success mixing calvus and comps and does anyone have any comps for sale or trade for black calvus?

Plenty of good specimens on the way out to pataua north mate. Cheers tropheus yeah I have put a lot of work into it. They are yellow bands but I can only get a couple of them to show nice yellow bands not sure why. I am a little male heavy but the colony gets along pretty well.

Cheers david. Got them off the side of the road. Its the rock that the council use in the culverts.

Nice one cheers mate

I was kinda going off their head shape the females more sloping and the males a bit steeper if that makes sense. Whats the go with their mouths?

Thanks mate. They're gettin there only a few have the nice yellow band the bands on the others are really dull especially the males. I am a little male heavy. Colony seems to get on ok at the moment. Wondering if thinning my males may help to bring out the colour more on the rest of them. Also thinking I should leave them be and stop meddling. Whadda ya reckon?

The head shape looks wrong to the ethels kinda look like they have a beak and have really big yellow egg spots on the anal fin.

The head shape looks wrong to the ethels kinda look like they have a beak and have really big yellow egg spots on the anal fin.

Wow tank looks awesome nice job! Mate pretty sure thats not an ethylwynnae. I had 1and they are blue and green yours seems to have a lot of red?

Nice stock list and nice looking fish. I would be careful bout adding the empress with the Taiwan as they are both the same genus and the fryeri and azureus could clash. Can't wait to see this tank up and running.

some more shots Will try and get a few more close ups of trophs and calvus.

If it is 7.4 then I wouldn't worry to much that will be fine. Limestone and coral and aragonite substrate such as crushed marble are what most people use to help buffer water. It won't raise it much past mid to high 7's which is what you are after anyway.

The flow rates on canisters are with no media in the canister so once loaded with media you can expect the flow rate to be a lot less than 1400. That being said if you are starting with juvies in a tank that size I would say 1 would be fine, you can always add more filtration if needed later on. 20 dems is a good num To start with and 10 or so yellows as the yellows usually breed like rabbits so you will prob find your numbers will increase once they hit breeding age. As far as aquascaping that comes down to personal preference. Both prefer rocks so a couple of piles at each end of the tank to help define territories is usually a good start. What ph is ya water, mid 7's to 8 is what most people aim for.

I would tend to agree. There arent to many othet mbuna available that would go well in your tank. Haps would get to big, you could try a couple of male peacocks but that could go either way. They will either be fine or they will constantly fight.

We dont have acei in nz as far as I know. Labs and zebras will cross breed. Labs and dems are a great combo and look awesome def fork out a bit more cash and try and get 20 dems. Its a good combo as it looks great and you shouldnt have to much to worry about aggression wise as they will leave each other alone. They both like to hang around rocks so I you make your rock piles pretty high they should full most levels of the tank.

Would the metro not be helping if it was?

Yeah I think size wise they would be ok just the food might be a problem they are to small to eat a 1mm nls pellet in 1 go

Hmmmmmmmm. I have spare tank I could put them in just havent had a chance to set it up yet. Think I will put them in a breeding net in the main tank and have a look at them in the main tank to compare size. Thinking I might err on the side of caution and get the other tank runnin they should be ok in the net for a day or so. Cheers for your input guys

Yeah thought as much. I got these from coral onthis forum. Drop her a pm not sure if she has any left worth a shot. I think ryan picked some up bout a mnth or so ago might wanna try him to.

Just got hold of some leleupi fry around 3cm, do you think they will be ok in my tank of duboisi (8cm) and 5 calvus (5cm) or do you think they are still to small I think the bigger fish might struggle to get them in their mouths but I could be wrong

Have you added epsom salt to the tank? Its worth doing while you wait for the metro. I would only feed with metro soaked food as well if you can't get metro you may have to stop feeding and dose the tank with epsom salts for a few days.

Sorry just saw ya post greg . Good post, I agree

If the t's are still eating then soaking the food in metro for 20mins then feeding is a good idea imo. A lot of troph sites recommend this method as the metro works better when ingested rather than treating the water in the tank. If you havent caught the bloat in time and they are off their food then treating the tank is your only way. If you need to treat the whole tank then drop the water level as much as poss so you dont need to use as much metro as its really expensive. You can try dosing the tank eith epsom salts as this is a laxative and will help clean them out. 1 tbsp to every 10g i think. Good luck and keep us posted

Yeah thats it really you wont know till ya try. Looking forward to seeing it setup and running good luck with it.

My lwanda was a tyrant he had 3 peacocks backed into different corners of my tank and he wasnt the biggest. This was what frustrated me the most about all male tanks, I could never get the peacocks to settle I always had to remove 1 and then another would take over. Biggest prob I found with all male tanks was finding diff fish to add to the mix we dont have a lot to choose from and if you need to pull a few as rcon said its best to introduce a group as a single new comer will be picked on 1st, this can be hard with the small variety we have. When you upgrade ya tank in a year or so go for a 6x2x2 so you wont have to worry about anything gettin to big for ya tank