Pet Forum / Aquaria / General / March 2005

Apologies in advance for the cross posting

Can anyone point me in the direction of a decent uk supplier of malawi
suitable for breeding, I've got a couple of spare 200 litre tanks and
a 135 litre tank which I have put in the garden shed

I'm still working out which species to breed,  my thinking is
currently to maintain two distinct species each of the 200 litre and
135 litre tanks and grow on the young is the second 200 litre tank.

At present I'm thinking

Placidochromis electra (light blue)
Protomelas taeniolatus (red empress)

and still trying to decide on the other two, my thinking is that if I
go for significant different colours in the males and different
species they should be able to coexist,  also by maintaing two tanks I
should be able to avoid inbreeding.

One bit of advice was that I keep two males and four females per
species, with one male being subordinate, which encourages breeding
behaviour on the dominant male, not sure how good this advice is
however.

I do not want to buy the breeding stock from a normal shop, since they
are more likely to be brother-sister, hopefully a decent dealer can
provide better quality. I live in Bristol and while there are a
reasonable number of fish shops in the area, most have a poor
selection of cichlids, if I can come up with something a bit different
and colourful I should be able to find a home for the young when they
get to a reasonable size

Any advice welcomed

Thanks

Brian