90 Gallon African Cichlid Tank

[Mike L]

 Glad to see your enjoying. They are indeed a joy to watch. 

Got Fish sells 2 kinds of cichlid food by New Era that I have been feeding now for about 8 months and I'm very impressed with the results. I have also heard good things about the North fin products too.

I'm told that cichlids where once very popular in Ottawa and there where many keepers on this site as well. By the posts that I see it appears it is now only a handful. Everything old will eventually be new again.
Mike

[Jeff1192]

I have always liked supplementing my fish's diets with veggies or other appropriate natural foods. So in my reading I came across the fact that cichlids enjoy eating peas. So I thawed some frozen peas and shelled them. If was yet another feeding frenzy.  They loved them and devoured them.

[charlie]

I had the chance to see this tank up close, it`s a beauty, good work Jeff.
The pictures does not do it justice, especially the rock work.
Congrats

[Jeff1192]

Thanks for the compliment. I'm having tons of fun with this one. The fish are incredibly entertaining to watch and are always up to something. The female saulosi that I noticed holding a couple weeks ago is still holding. A younger female was also holding but only for a couple of days. I still can't get over how voraciously these guys eat.  Feeding is always an adventure and my 6yr old thinks it's hilarious when he gets splashed while feeding them.

[Jeff1192]

I'm way overdue for an update on this tank. This is by far the most enjoyable fish-keeping experience I've had. These guys are a blast to watch. I recently swapped out my Marineland canister for an Eheim Pro 3 2075 that I found on kijiji. This this is a beast and moves a ton of water really quietly. I've noticed an improvement in the cleanliness of the tank.

My only disappointment is that in my current house I'm not in the basement a lot so I don't get to watch the tank as much as I'd like. I'm moving in May though and in the new place I think I'll be down in the basement more often. I'm not looking forward to mvoving these guys. However I have lots of time for my move and plan on booking the better part of a day to move things. I'll try to keep a few large buckets worth of water to try and keep things as stable as possible when I move them.  But it's gonna be a lot of sand and rock to remove before moving the tank. Should be an interesting adventure.

[sas]

Thanks for the update.
Eheims are great  nice find.
I had to laugh @ your comment, about your move you're going to be down in the basement more often.............
I'm confident that your move will go smoothly what with all your knowledge of a aquaria.
Just remember to try and keep everything moist and  @ approximately the same temp..Filters included. You'll do fine.

[ajm1961]

Thanks for the updates - it's nice to know we have cichlid fans in the club. I've never kept Pseudo salousis - the different colours (dimorphic) between male-females are certainly interesting. Hope you and other fans can make it to Larry's talk next Monday.

BTW: love the Acei itungi - used to keep some, hard to find around here.

Keep us posted on the tank!

[Dxpert]

Time for a few more pictures now that you have that large Eheim cleaning the water. Great updates on the tank. Keep em coming.

[Jeff1192]

So last week was moving day to the new house. Luckily I still have my old place for another week. So today was fish moving day. The 90 was quite a bit of work to get everyone moved, tank torn down and then set back up again in the new house. I have the fish in 3 different lidded containers. Everything went very smoothly however, when I checked on the fish, one of the buckets the fish were pretty sluggish and not looking great. I transferred everyone and all survived but my dominant male Saulosi. Pretty disappointed to lose him. However, on a positive note, one of my holding females (there are always 2 or 3) spit her fry from the stress I'm assuming. I managed to save 8 or 9 of the little wigglers and have them in a breeding net within the main tank. I'm not sure what they are yet as I had 2 saulosi females holding and 1 pseudo acei intunji that was holding. Time will tell I guess.

It has been a few hours now and everyone seems quite active and behaving normally. The tank is still pretty cloudy. I kept pretty close to the same rock setup. Once things clear up I'll try to get a photo of the new setup.

I found it pretty stressful moving this setup as it was running so well. Hopefully the one loss is the end of it.

[charlie]

sounds like the tank move was more stressful than the household items
Hope you don`t have any more losses.

[Mike L]

Jus a thought. How full were the buckets and how long was the lid on. Were all the fish sluggish or just one bucket. My thinking is oxygen depletion.

[Jeff1192]

Ya Mike that's what I  was thinking too. But the lid was not on tight and the 5 gallon pail was about half full of water. Same amount of water and roughly same number of fish as the other pail. They were in it for about 2hrs. Luckily everyone is looking fine now and just ate like a bunch of pigs.

And yes Charlie tank move was more stressful than the rest of the house....haha

[Mike L]

Just one of those things. Goes to show how stress can affect fish. I always sucks to  see one of our charges die. Glad to hear the rest are well. Will they be on the same water.

[Jeff1192]

Yes was disappointing because he was my dominant really colourful saulosi. But no idea how old he was.

They are on the same water as before and I was careful to bring a bunch of old water in buckets (there were a lot of buckets...haha) and to add the same mix of baking soda, aquarium salt and Epsom salt to the new water. This morning all were super active and eating like the pigs they are!

The water is crystal clear now so if I get some time later I'll snap some shots. The rock work is pretty much the same as before but with that big saulosi gone there will be a serious redistribution of territories I think.

[Brine]

It is possible that the dominant male felt crowded in the bucket and suffered extra stress.

[Jeff1192]

So everyone seems to have settled in nicely after the move. No more deaths so that's a relief. And as a bonus it looks like 4-5 of the fry I found have survived. Quite I few of the adults have some war wounds as there has been a lot of fighting in the tank. I figure that with the dominant male gone (freeing up the left 1/4 of the tank that he had declared his) and with the changed rock work everyone is working out new territories. No one seems to have stepped up and taken over completely so I think there is still a lot of jockeying for position. I still haven't had time to post more photos but I also want to add some more rock so I might wait until I do that.