how many water changes do ihavto do bevore my phosphate comes down 3 days a go i did a 30% yesterday i did a 45% and took plants and assasories out cleandt the algi out and my phospate is still high maby time to cean the pump again i went through the rocks to? ill do my pump today after work.
I wonder if spirulina tablets would be good for cichlids? Trader Joes has bottles for about $3.50. I don't know if they'll dissove too quickly, but if spirulina is good for cichlids that might be a good source.
lol thanks ya one of his eye is all wierd when i hade nitre and amonia in my water he or she scareshed his eye out u can kinda see it from the side mioror pic , i love the red zebra one
Yeah, red zebras are nice as long as you don't put two males together without proper space. I have seen one absolutely terrorize the subdominant male and nip his fins clean off. I mistook the second male for a female and the damage was done before I caught it. They don't tend to be aggrsssive towards other species though so if you have one in there, you should be fine.
Yeah, he is a male. Dominant males will usually have black stripes on their anal and pectoral fins (look at your pic and you will see that yours has this. The females will tend not to have any black on these fins. Also, the males are more likely to have a black bar running through their eye. I think I see the black bar in your picture. They also tend to be bigger, but you have no females in there to reference that with.
It is difficult to sex them when they are younger, but yours is old enough that he has colored up and gotten his markings.
The red zebras are a little more difficult to tell. Both males and females have egg spots so that doesn't work. The females will tend to be longer and thinner while the males will be much more like a football type shape (thicker vertically). This may be hard for you to determine since you only have one. Also, my dominant males will get a great deal of blue sparkles in their fins, but this is only when they are getting ready to mate. Since you don't have any females in there, you probably won't see this. I looked at the pics and it is difficult to tell. If you could get a straight side shot, I probably would have more luck. Also, I would be surprised that he is full grown. It could just be the camera playing tricks on his size, but they get to be 5.5 inches and yours doesn't look that big (again, could just be the pic).
In nature the two sexes are easy to tell apart as the male is blue and the female is orange, but orange males are much more common in the aquarium trade than the blue ones. In the aquarium trade, both sexes tend to be orange so the blue-orange thing doesn't work.
pk i think the spirulina would be a good purchase for mbunas as well as other small plant eating african cichlids and for that price i wouldn't think twice about buying it at least just to try it out and see if they like it.
just a question to miami, why do you think that is that the males that are tank bread seem to all be orange instead of the purple blue color they have in the wild, do you think this has to do with the dominance as well as the specific amount of trace elements that are in the african lakes? there are several species that have this same characteristic however in the tank world they seem to be the same color as the females... just makes me wonder that if you set your tank up for the specifics of the lake water perameters that they would revert back to the natural color phases?
Brandon - well with the red zebra, they were first imported in the 70's. At that time only the red males were taken from the wild. I do not know why this is as it is estimated that 99% of the wild males are blue and 1% are orange/red. Whatever the reason, only several orange/red males were harvested. These then formed the base for the entire trade. When you mix a red male with the female (that is also orange/red) you get red males and females. You can see how starting with only red males made them the standard in the hobby while they were very rare in nature. Now I believe there is one specific bay or cove where these guys live and I think that cove was off limits for a long time due to a civil war (I think I am remembering this correctly). This meant that no new wild ones were caught until the ban was lifted in the late 90's. Since the late 90s, some wild ones were caught and you can now find blue males, but as you can imagine, the red males had almost 30 years of a headstart so they are much more entrenched in the trade. plus the fact that the blue ones have only recently been caught means they tend to be more expensive which drives down their availability. Anyway, I think you are getting the picture I am painting. So, in a nutshell, it is all because the relatively rare wild red males were used as the base for trade breeding for 3 decades.
To my knowledge, the tank parameters are not a factor in cases like this. I know many cichlid species were based on one or a couple of initial breeding pairs. These breeding pairs could be a minor morph of the more abundant morph found in nature and this would cause all of the tank raised ones to take on the less common morph. I think this is more of the reason. If you look around though, you can now find the blue red zebra male.
now that's what i call a detailed answer, you certainly have done your research into the mbuna's i am actually going to start reading some more about this as i love to learn and knowledge is power. i find it extremely interesting that the out of the percentage caught they only caught the oddball morph and used that for the trade. i find that the blue are much nicer as they contrast with their mates, i use to order my cichlids wild caught but the expense was much more than even a 7 inch full grown male discus... LOL so now am into a cheaper phase of things and i love the calmness of my tank, however this doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that i wont in the future set up a tank of Tanganyika fish..... lol my partnere is dreading the idea at the moment, however this wont happen for quite some time, as i have a super amount of money in the tank i have running now, along with the plant quarantine tank and the fish quarantine tank and the 55 gal pearlscale gold fish setup in the kitchen..... thanks for the response.
Brandon
Yeah, no problem. I have read pretty extensively on cichlids and especially mbunas. When I started keeping them, I wanted to know everything as I'm sure you can appreciate with all of your research.
That would be cool if you start up a Tang. tank. I know you said it would be a while, but let us know when you start.
Yeah, I don't really know why they picked the red males. It seems wierd with the blue males being so prevalent. I personally would have preferred the blue, but I know alot of people put stock in the two sexes looking the same. For instance, one of the major reason the demasoni cichlid is taking off is because the males and females are indistinguishable. I guess it is all preference. I am actually going to do some digging to see if I can see the reason why they chose the red ones. I'll let you know what I find.
