Sumpin's Fishy

[Darkness]

quote:Originally posted by Tubby Rower

I have 2 types.. one is vegetable-based little mini-wafers. They're more granules but look like algae-wafers that are ~ 5 mm in diameter. The other is a pellet type food that they gave the fish at the LFS. It has brine shrimp in it and some other stuff. It comes in bulk so it didn't have any ingredients on it, but I trust the girl that recommended it.

I initially gave them the 2nd type, but have transitioned to the veggie granules.


So in your opinion should I be able to add some acei's later this week. Sherry didn't like the rusties so I might skip them.

Considering the fact that you have only Mbuna, I'd recommend giving about 70% vegetable stuff and 30% brine shrimp. So, something like vegetable stuff on monday, tuesday, thursday, friday and saturday and brine shrimp stuff on wednesday and sunday.

BTW: Is this baby brine shrimp of adult brine shrimp? I'm asking because baby brine shrimp is great food, but adult brine shrimp is to fish what junk food is to humans.
Brine shrimp may also be the cause for the lighter excrement.

About adding Acei: Absolutely. Just do a waterchange before you add them and keep monitoring the waterparameters. BTW: With Acei it is especially important to keep the vegetable food percentage high, because Acei have the nasty tendency to grow very big (up to 6 inches)if they are fed a lot of protein. But they are very mellow fish. Make sure you hand select them. Go for good purple bodies and yellow tails (if they have the yellow tail variant that is). Males ate brighter in colour, but venting is the best bet to get a good male-female ratio.

This is a good example of a quality (adult) Acei:

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A bit more blueish body is also very well possible...

[Tubby Rower]

I'll need to ask about the brine shrimp things. They aren't completely brine shrimp though.

[Darkness]

quote:Originally posted by Tubby Rower

I'll need to ask about the brine shrimp things. They aren't completely brine shrimp though.

For further reference: The problem with adult brine shrimp is that they are basically protein bombs. They contain nothing but protein. No fibers, no vitamin, etc.
And considering the long intestinal tract of Mbuna it means that adult brine shrimp can start rotting in their bellies, which is one of the biggest causes for the worst disease of them all: Malawi bloat (als known als Tropheus bloat)...

[Tubby Rower]

ok I had one of the 2nd 5 die this afternoon. It made it a week, but there was always one fish that wasn't eating. I could tell what was wrong with it, but the skin looked really thin and I tried to press the gut area and before I could even put any pressure, it's guts squirted out. There was a little white patch about the size of a pin tip behind it's gills on one side. I just chucked it. I'm a little leary about putting the acei in there tomorrow. The other 4 are boisterous and all 4 feed very vociferously. 3 of them always have, but the 4th is starting to gain vigor. The dead fish was floating and it looks like the other fish had been nibbling on the corpse. Freaking zombies !!! Anyhoo... nitrites steady @ 0.5 ppm; nitrates slightly increasing @ 5ppm; ammonia @ 0ppm; pH @ 8.0; KH @ 6-7°KH.

So what's the cocensus on me getting new fish for the tank? I have two theories as to what killed the fish. One was that the fish was being intimidated so much that it never ate and died of stress and starvation. Two is that the fish died from a fungal something or other. And I guess there is always 3... my stupidity killed it just for spite. If it's 1. then adding more fish should alleviate stress on any individual and thus prevent future losses. If it's 2. then adding more fish would jeopardize the new (more expensive) fish and tick me off. If it's 3.... well all of the fish are doomed!!

[Darkness]

Considering the death of the fish, I'd wait a week and observe carefully. If you see all remaining 4 eating and behaving actively then you should be fine to add a new species next week.

[Furiey]

Sometimes just the stress from the move from the shop to your tank can be enough to lose a fish. Best to make sure these have settled and wait another week before adding more though. Patience grasshopper!

[Tubby Rower]

I still think that my stupidity killed it. I'm going to be a little more patient than I was last week as my tank at least has live fish in it as opposed to about a week ago.

[Tubby Rower]

Ok.. I got some decent pictures of the other 4 fish...

Here is the fish that Ana calls Bumblebee. he's a mutt, but he's the dominate fish in the tank. As you can see in a picture or two there is some blue iridescence.

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Here is bumblebee with one of the yellows

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The yellows are a little more shy and they seem to be peeking at me at times to see what I'm doing.

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This fish sleeps here I think. He didn't budge for quite a while

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Here are some pitures of the yellows that I could get. I'm not sure if they are duplicate fish or different ones as the 3 under Bumblebee look similar except for one that doesn't have quite the black on the dorsal fine as the other two do.

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[Darkness]

"Bumblebee" is a cross between a Labidochromis caeruleus and a Labidochromis sp. "perlmutt"...
The others look pretty OK to me.

The one without the black dorsal, is he smaller than the others? The black dorsal sometimes comes a bit later in some fish, or he might just be a bit further removed from wildcaught fish.

[Tubby Rower]

he is a bit smaller. not much though.

What's neat is that they typically will be displaying throughout the day but if they see you walking by, they'll all go hide. Except when I come home from work. Then they hear me going into the cabinet below to get the food and they'll all 4 run about like mad.