Pet Forum / Aquaria / Cichlids / November 2005

The rock was already dried out when I bought it so organisms weren't an
issue - although washing the dust off of 35Kilos was - lol. I did a dry
run on cave building so that I wasn't messing around too much when the
water got in. On the advice of my LFS (who have a similar set up in one
of their display tanks) I didn't add the substrate until I was happy
with the rocks. Maybe, foolishly, I didn't stick anything together -
actually this works quite well when cleaning or re-arranging the rocks
to sort territorial bickering. I filled the tank with water and left it
running for a week or so and then bought the first fish and seeded the
filter with a sponge from another tank and a stocking full of gravel. I
had to build up the stock quite quickly because of the nature of Mbunas
so there was lots of water testing going on - I think I only registered
0.1 nitrite during the whole process and never saw any ammonia.

The nice thing about using the ocean rock is the number of cavities
within it and the way that larger caves and crevices are created without
much effort when stacking it. The fish lodge themselves into places I'd
never imagined when I set up the tank. I have quite a high fry survival
rate which I'm sure is down to the number of very small pockets in the
rocks.

As the tank has matured the rocks have a very attractive covering of
algae although I do get very vivid bluey/green algae carpets from time
to time - pretty sure this is because plants aren't really an option in
the tank....I'm trying again and have put in 2 Anubias and some floating
lettuce.

The tank itself is a 4 foot, 47.5UK gall. I have a Fluval 304 and a 4
Plus running on it. There are 10 adult Mbunas, 2 OB Peacocks and one
Plec in there along with copious juvs and fry all at different stages of
development. Interesting fish to keep but sometimes a little too violent
for my liking - we have had a number of murders in there :-(

In terms of cichlids the Malawis are happy with the hard water/high pH
but you are quite right about the more acidic conditions for other
cichlids - I have had a few attempts at keeping Dutch Rams in my water
and these have mainly ended in failure (currently have one that is the
sole survivor of 3 that I bought a few weeks ago). I guess the answer,
as ever, is always to research the fish and the optimum environment
before going out and buying them - easily said, I know, but we all
impulse buy from time to time :-) - I actually opted for the Malawis
because I didn't feel I could spend the necessary time for a marine set up.

Hope this helps.

Gill