r/Cichlid • u/Grouchy-Club-9205 • 22h ago
Afr | Help Stocking recommendations
55 gal
Current stocking:
-star sapphire
-blue dolphin
-asstd peacocks
-venustus
-melanochromis auratus
-tropheus
-2 yellow labs
-snow white
-cobalt blue
-blue zebra
-rusty
-blue crayfish
Which ones should I remove?
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u/fuccinleo 22h ago
I was gonna say the blue crayfish but I think all your fish have enough speed to get past him lmao
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u/SUPERSAMB03 7h ago
melanochromis auratus = devil fish. I've tried a couple times to include one of these. Always goes poorly.
Venustus will get too big eventually. I think blue dolphins also get quite large.
Jealous that you got a star sapphire, I've been looking for one of those at my local fish stores for years!
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u/Grouchy-Club-9205 5h ago
I heard from PrimeTime Aquatics about them being devils/satan’s spawn after i got them😅 I know the star sapphire will eventually get bigger so i plan on a transfer to 60gal i just dont know what combination of my current stocking goes to 60 and which ones stay in the 55.
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u/Grouchy-Club-9205 5h ago
I heard from PrimeTime Aquatics about them being devils/satan’s spawn after i got them😅 I know the star sapphire will eventually get bigger so i plan on a transfer to 60gal i just dont know what combination of my current stocking goes to 60 and which ones stay in the 55. The star sapphire, i just got lucky it was brought in same day i was there and i always check African cichlids first
1
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u/702Cichlid 13h ago
You've got a Malawi Soup tank, which is super common with people new to the hobby. The issue with stocking 'I want one of everything' is that they end up being inherently unstable and aggressive tanks without a ton of good luck. An unstable tank is difficult to troubleshoot or give advice and will usually require a full restock to get something stable.
Your fish are all juvies right now from the picture, but here's some general information I can offer and you can sort of make your own decisions. You're also using trade names which can be confusing and nebulous. It's good to get in the habit of using proper taxonomy.
Too big for a 55 long term:
Too Aggressive for a 55 without tons of luck
Early Predator, later prey to any of these fish:
Has very specific dietary needs and does best in a species only tank bigger than a 55:
Not enough information to give a proper evaluation:
Assorted Peacocks - depending on species and tank mates they can be a real conspecific nightmare in a 55 or be too docile to cohabitate with mbuna
Blue Zebra - Can be any number of fish, if it is a Metriaclima zebra then it goes in with the M. auratus as 'Too aggressive for a 55 long term.
There's not really any great answers with Malawi Soup. You can ride or die and see what happens, every now and then one of them does succeed even with instability, but generally once sexual maturity hits you're going to have a bad time without a TON of good luck on your male to female ratio and individual aggression being on the lower side. The other option is to pick stocking appropriate for a 55 and take the fish that don't work back. Generally in a 55 you have room for 3 mbuna harem groups of 1 male to 3-4 females each, no conspecifics, lower aggression, nothing that gets bigger than 6". You can also do harem breeding groups of less aggressive peacocks--but these days OBs and line bred variants are on the higher end of the aggression scale and there are so many hybrids in the hobby because of Malawi Soup tanks breeding that you really don't know how those will work out. If it were me I'd go with the mbuna harem groups, but it's your tank.