Onze Malawi-cichliden

My first aquarium

I've started this hobby with an aquarium, measuring 100x40x40, in the autumn of 2006.

The aquarium isn't very deep, so we decided not to make the rear wall ourselves. If we did it ourselves, the wall would be too thick. I picked a red colour, because I've seen this before in other aquariums. I thought this would have a nice effect when it's overgrown with algae. After the wall and the side walls had been installed, the aquarium has been rinsed some times. After a few days, we set up the aquarium.

When we set it up for the first time, we chose to do this with wood and pvc-tubes (on the bottom a tempex plate and sand).As vegetation I chose Vallisneria. The choice for wood was easy: I hadn't found any rocks yet and I loved the sight of wood in my aquarium.
But after some time I noticed that the fish needed rocks, because wood makes the water more sour. So we decided to put rocks in. But because I liked the wood so much, I first made a combination of rocks and wood. This didn't work either, because the fish didn't have enough hideouts. So I removed all the wood and put more rocks in it.
When the rocks were in the aquarium, the fish came more to the front, and their colour became clearer. They were even starting to show some territorial behaviour.

Not enough?

One aquarium wasn't enough for me, so I decided to put another one in my room in January 2007 (40x30x30), for the younglings. I did this because all "Mbamba" females were having youngs at the same time. So I catched the females and put them in the other aquarium, until they released their youngs. When this happened, I placed them back with the other fish.

These young could grow large without any dangers, because there were no larger fish around. In the beginning, they were living from food like Spirulina and Cyclops, but after a few weeks they began to eat Artemia or a mix of shrimps and peas. After a couple of days you could see them growing. They were about 4 cm each when the gender became visible. Then I decided to sell them.

In this aquarium were some pvc-tubes and Anubias nana.
The population only existed of 26 Labidochromis sp."mbamba".

Later on, a young couple of Aulonocara jacobfreibergi "eureka" was living in it for a few months.

New Aquarium

So, I started this hobby with an aquarium with the sizes 100x40x40cm. I have a new one since July with the sizes 150x60x50 cm because the old one was getting too small (or the fish were growing too big). The rear wall of this aquarium is the same kind as in my fathers aquarium, we made it exactly in the same way.

The flagstones are replaced by bigger stones so that there are more hiding places.

As vegetation I'm using "Ceratophyllum demersum" .

As my aquarium is standing in the attic the temperature fluctuates between 24 degrees Celsius in winter months and 30 degrees Celsius in the summer.

I am focusing my aquarium completely on Mbuna and fish from the intermediate zones (from rocks to sand). Currently I have these fish in my aquarium:

4 Astatotilapia calliptera "Thumbi East", 1 male with 3 females
4 Cynotilapia sp."mbamba" Luwino, 1 male with 3 females
4 Iodotropheus sprengerae, 1 male with 3 females
4 Labeotropheus fuelleborni "marmelade" , 1 male with 3 females
4 Melanochromis johannii "eastern", 1 male with 3 females
3 Metriaclima sp."zebra chilumba" Maisoni, 1 male with 2 females
4 Pseudotropheus demasoni, 1 male with 3 females

Some pictures, from the left to the right.

With this link you can go back to my new aquarium. (New aquarium, from 2016-present)

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