new tank

[doch]

i am starting my tank up again and thought i would go for the african cichlids. any thing i should start with in particular or anything special i need to know i have a 300 litre tank with wet/ dry filter system

[diffgirl]

Hi there,

we keep a mix of cichlids and now we are into breeding convicts and jaguars, and the first thing we came upon problem wise when we were new to it was the fact that cichlids are super messy, they eat alot and in return they produce alot of waste.

The first major bit of advice we found helpful was to over filter their tank to help keep the water clean, and because they mostly like to dig we have alot of gravel for them to move around, but because of this they mix the waste up so we found we needed to combat ammonia problems in the water.

This resulted in needing a good master test kit and regular checks, now we use ammo carb and ammo chips, this helps get rid of the ammonia but beware of the ammoloc, it is a good fix but even though it makes the ammonia not toxic to the fish anymore the ammonia stays in the water and when you test it still shows up as being there so you will not be able to tell if it then becomes harmful again.

So we now try to keep the ammonia level low to nil to start, prevention is always easier and better than cure in the long run.

We also keep two Pleco in our tank so the algae doesnt become a problem, they do need to have a piece of river wood in the tank to munch on to keep them healthy, this too is a double plus because the cichlids love all of the nooks and crannies too.

I hope you may have found some of this info helpful and I would be glad to give you any more help or info if you think it may be of some use to you, feel free to PM me and I will do what I can.

I really think keeping these guys is a neat learning experience and it is always cool to talk to others keeping the same type of fish as there is always something to learn from others.

Good luck and have fun, they are just so neat to watch and own, far beter than TV.

All the best KB

[ryanjury]

African cichlids are awesome and ive found them to be very hardy and easy to keep/breed. They can be messy eaters and do best overstocked to reduce aggression so a good filter or at least a descent maintenance schedule...

Personally ive never had any ammonia problems and have never had the need to use all those products in my tank and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, if your having to do it to keep ammonia down your filter isn't cycled or your overfeeding or somethings going wrong.

You can keep the huge pleco's in with africans but I prefer the bristlenoses as they stay small and dont produce much mess, you can stick a small piece of wood in for them but not too much as it can leach turn your water brown and lower your PH.

On that note africans like high PH and hard water, you can achieve this by making your own buffering recipe or like I do use coral sand and limestone rocks.

Also although your tank may seem big there are african species that will not be suitable for it as they will get too large and aggressive for it so do your research (and ask here) before buying fish. Also bear in mind you have issues with creating hybrids (cross breeds) if you mix the wrong fish so again do your research or stock all males if you want to mix species that cross breed. You dont want to create anymore hybrids!

Hmmm well thats a huge rant if you have any specific questions fire away and maybe a good idea to direct them towards the cichlid section thats where most of us african keepers lurk..