Malawi Tank and it's residents

[Shakes]

Hi all

Thought I would post some pics of how my malawi tank looks at the moment. Took Nirv's advice on taking photo's with all the lights off and experimenting with the camera settings.

[Shakes]

Some more

[TankMaster]

Interesting indeed :)

[fishypro]

Nice mbunas

[WaRn00b]

Very nice tank!!

[Slojo]

Just a quick suggestion.
Setup a small nano with crushed corral,lots of light and dosimulated feeding.
That way you'll get lots of Brown-green algae that you can scrape and feed your Malawis.It is after all their staple in their natural habitat.

[Luis]

lovely fish Shakes, how big is ur tank ?

[Shakes]

Thanks for the comments.

Slojo I will definitly try that cause I have crushed coral and a small 30lt tank. They really enjoy grazing on the algae on the rocks especially my mjeni red top's.

Luis its 840lt's and I bought that tank at a bargin price of R500.00.

I would like to get a better camera now, even though the pics have improved a bit they no where near the quality of some of the members photo's on this forum.

[acidburn]

very nice setup you have there

[Polla]

Hi Shakes,

sjoe! I really like your setup... I have a 500L that I am trying to fill with malawi (am getting some this afternoon in a swop for the resident oscars)...

Any advise on how many fish (only malawi, a rope fish and plec) for the 500L tank - some google'd table tells me 140 and some others tells me 50... If 140, it is going to take the budget some time to fill the tank, 3 times longer than the 50...

[Double-D]

Shakes I found that my malawi's digg the algae blend pleco wafers. Might be worth looking into

Sent from my BlackBerry 9530 using Tapatalk

[scotty]

Hi Polla, Shakes runs about 5500l/hr filtration on this tank. FX5 - 3500L/HR AND 2X hailea hl-bt 1000 internals - 1000l/hr. This will determine, ultimately, the number of fish you can keep. I suggest you buy your fish from Aquaterra, Bottleray road near the Kuilsriver Golf course. Remove the rope fish and anything not a Malawi.
PM me if you want more help. Ken

[Corne]

Lovely tank and fish ,My contentness just flew out of the widow and MTS and BTS just set in
What lights are you running ? Please

[Charles]

Hi
Very nice tank and fish!

[Polla]

Lights - Corne: at the moment natural light as the lights broke just before I collected the tank (photo's was just with camera flash - also surprised me with color brilliance). I am taking the lid thru to our Electrician tomorrow -to replace all corroded light fittings and installing some LED lights and hooking the lot up to the external switches on top of the tank lid. Electrician also offered to give me LED Red, Blue and Green on loan to test once all fish are in to see what is best light combo.

One thing I dont play with is "diy electrical job" if it goes wrong it makes more than your hair curl and being that close to water - no go zone for me.

Filter update: Penn Plax Cascade Canister Filters Models 1200 & 1500 - not sure which exactly, so for now will assume 1200.
Found a manual of the 2 filters - but it is ruined by water damage. Tried to contact prev owner - will keep trying. Also have emailed the Penn Plax Customer Care to see if I can source a manual from them.

[Corne]

Polla thanks for the reply and specs That tanks is a keeper

[Shakes]

Hi Polla

Thank you for the nice comments on my tank. Currently the tank has a stock of 120 fish, of which I try keep 6 of each species, 2 males and 4 females. I've got species like P.mpanga and P.chalorsi in the tank and if there isn't sufficient males and females you could end up with cross breeding. I can only tell you my experience that a heavily stocked tank does stop a lot of aggression but variable growth among the fish not species. I've found some growing exceptionly well and others take a bit longer. My train of thought is that if you go diving in Lake Malawi you not going to find only so my fish to per square cube of water.

The general rule for malawi's is not to mix mbuna and haps together. I have 3 species of haps with my mbuna of which the males are always coloured up and females have carried eggs.

I'm lucky enough to live near a beach and all the rocks come from there. Its sand stone which serves as a good buffer for the water. I estimate there's about just over 100kg of rock in there on a very well built, actually call it an over killed stand. You could drive a military tank over it and it would still be okay.

The canopy has 6 40watt 1,2m daylight tubes which encourages a lot of algae growth on the rocks. Also once a day they get a mixure of flake, granule and certain recipes I've made. The mix is around 80% vegetable and spirulina withe the other 20% containing proteins.

Malawi's are just fantastic.

[EnvironmentalBro]

Very nice! I love seeing aquariums that are well thought out. Well done! Now all you need to do is make a video :tongue: