malawian fish

hi guys

i have had my malawian set up running for about 3 months intially i had around 35 malawi's and a walking catfish noticed after a couple of days alot of the fish were missing and caught the catfish terrorising the malawi's so got rid of the catfish now i want to add more malawi's in at the moment i have a 4 foot tank with 8 malawi's and 2 peacocks and a parot how many more could i add in and would the malawi's in the tank be aggressive towards the newer one

 

the more you stock the lesser the aggression as long as you have a good filtration

 

hi i got a sunsun 2000l/h canister filter with a built in uv light as well as the internal 1200l/h filter in the tank canopy and a 600l/h powerhead thinking of getting around 20 more malawi's to add in this weekend

 

i have 3 Malawi that i want to sell

 

@Shakes sorted lol


@cardboard, i have to agree with @Sick-lid man, once you stock the malawis a lot more heavily, you will see less aggression, alo make sure you have lots of little cave and holes where they can duck in and hide if need be, in a 4ft, i would say you should get maybe 20 malawis, maybe a little more, your filtration sounds good enough to handle the load too. that built in hood filter is a very good filter and can deal with the large amounts of waste produced by the malawis. regular large water changes are a must, i would say 25-30% minimum once a week to cope with the overstocked tank. or 15% twice a week would be even better. (15% twice a week is also easier )

p.s. just an added bit of info, expect your malawis to hit approx 15cm in a year or so.

cheers and good luck

 

I would say stock about 20 also but do 2x30% waterchanges per week

 

Thanks guys for all the help going to get me some more fish today :bigsmile: and will follow the advise given thanks a million

 

It is not always good to drastically increase the number of fish as the bacteria in your filters are used to fewer fish and a lower ammonia load. Doubling the bio load will double the ammonia load and the bacteria will take a little while to adjust and multiply. Could have a small ammonia spike. Could alleviate this if you add a startup solution like stability.

@cardboard Also, where are you getting your fish. I also keep malawis and have shopped around durban for good stock.

 

hi seth thanks for the advise i normally use a product by nutrafin in my tank called cycle it helps with the introduction of new fish and keeps my tank amonia and bacteria at a constant level will pm you the details of the lps that i buy from they are super cheap

 

it also helps with keeping nitrates down, but one of the single biggest advantages of this product is that it helps keep your ph stable.

very very good product.

 

@cardboard

Give us a list of the Malawi's that you currently have. It's not only a numbers game but also a compatibility game. How attached are you to your Parrot? Bit of a random fish in a rift tank.

 

@Boomslang not sure about the exact breed of malawi's that i have the lps had a special and called it mix malawi's so bought about 15 bought 2 more peacock malawi's and before this i had 8 malawi's also called mix malawi's 1 convict 2 plecos and 2 peacocks as for the parrot a friend gave it to me about 6 months back as he was immigrating and he had it for +/- 3 years and my wife is quite attached to it always looking if it's eating and ok lol

 

OK- maybe some photos? Mixed Malawis can, obviously, mean that you have a lucky packet of fish. Not necessarily a bad thing but you must realise that some Malawis get huge and some have much higher aggression issues than others.

 

will get some photo's tonight and post it up

 

hi all thanks for all the help added the new fish into the tank and all seem to be doing well here are a few pics of the tank

 

Cool looking mix of fish you have there. Is the whitish piece of wood real?

 

Hi thanks the whitish wood is fake think it's a fiberglass mix

 

Pity. If it were real it would have darkened up nicely. Nice ornament anyway.