Just wandering around looking at all my fish after doing the rounds of tank cleaning. Grief some of them are turning into monsters :D
The Gibbi was always the biggest fella on the block but we have some contenders getting darn close now.
Our male Northern Blue is 4 1/2 inches (11.5cm) long and looking spectacular with the girls coming in at 3 1/2 inches (9cm). These guys get to 6 inches (15cm) so he is almost fully grown.
Next in size is our Aulonocara Stuartgranti (Cobue) male who is 4 inches (10cm) and has coloured up well though I wonder if his ventral fins are going to get the red colouring they are supposed to get. If they don't colour up I will suspect that he isn't really a Aul. St. (Cobue) but one of the others like...well I don't know which one because he has no red or orange or yellow at all and the closest he comes is Aul. stuartgranti (Chirwa Is.) though even Chirwa have yellow in their tail. Hopefully he colours up properly though and the red is just slow to show up.
All the Bristlenose are growing large with the biggest being the marbled ones in the 4' tank inside. These guys are getting BIG and bristley. Next in size of the BN's are the Albino's in the little 30L tank, they keep growing like that and I will have to move them outside to the Tropheus tank to give them some room. The 2 common BN that I got originally are catching up in size to the Albino's and are about 5mm shorter. One of these is still in the 30L tank while the other is in the 5' outdoor tank. All the newer BN I got to clean up the outdoor tank (4 and then another 8 little baby BN) have all shot up in size and almost match my original BN for size (okay they are 1/2-1cm smaller but they were only 2.5cm to start with and now they are 4-5cm). The outdoor tank is now absolutely green free so the BN are now wandering around in the open, scrounging any particle of algae they can find (I love these guys !!!!) the tank had been completely disappearing behind a wall of green but now the entire tank is like it has been scrubbed clean :D
A bit of a surprise was the size of one of the Pictus catfish we have in the 4' indoor tank. I finally spotted the two of them side by side and wow has one gotten big! He (she?) is almost an inch longer than the other one.
My two rusty babies also continue to grow with the pair of them starting to really venture out into the main swim area of the tank. Easter 1 is the bigger (just) but Easter 2 is growing well. I hope both of them turn out to be females as as far as I can work out all the other ones except their mum are male. No sign though of the new babies that Mum dropped a while ago so I don't know if they are alive or not. Easter 1 is swimming with one of the Clown Loaches (I have not seen the other 3 Clown Loaches in some time and I think they may have perished) :( but with no bodies I cannot tell for sure and as we have the Pictus and the Pakistani Loach we may never find their bodies. If the poor little things have passed into the great fishbowl in the sky I won't replace them again with yet more Clown Loaches as I hate to lose fish and they really are the Canaries of the fish world. The one swimming around seems to enjoy being with the baby Rusty so I will leave it be.
Strange
The outdoor tank has the biggest fish in it for some reason I cannot fathom. They all get fed the same food so it isn't like they get extra treats or anything. The only significant difference is the outside tank is 5' instead of 4' and it is outside.
If I compare the Pseudotropheus sp. "Acei" (Msuli) indoors to outdoors there is a sizeable difference to the indoor one (3 inches) vs. the outdoor ones (3 1/2 inches). They were all bought at the same place at the same time and grew the same until 3 were put in the outdoor tank. The outdoor ones are now 1/2 inch larger. Obviously natural light suits the fish better than indoor lighting.
Strangely the Yellow Labs that are outdoors are both bigger and smaller with the biggest being very big and bright and colourful with an excellent black dorsal marking while the smaller of the two is very small, bright and has only a very fine line of black on the dorsal and no black anywhere else. Big male/small female perhaps? The ones inside are between the two from outside with average size and nice colouring and with moderate black dorsal lines.
Colour of Cobalt
Despite the Metriaclima callainos (Cobalt Zebra) supposedly being monomorphic (males and females look the same) I have noticed that the males are generally the lighter and brighter of the two, while the females are darker and more like a navy version of the male. This may be due to them colouring up for breeding but is something to look for if keeping them.
Colour Changes
My Pseudotropheus saulosi have finally decided that they will colour up and I appear to have one male and 3 females at this point. They are still changing colour and so at the moment the boy is sort of a bit muddy looking with occasional times when he goes into a nice blue coloration and other times he washes back out again. All the Ps. saulosi and E. Yellow have decided to swim as a school and do laps of the tank together.
The Cynotilapia afra (Cobue) male that I have in the indoor tank has been one of the alpha males for the entire tank for some time. He really is a bantam as he is a dwarf mbuna with the audacity of a shark. This week I noticed that one of his siblings has also started to colour up and so of the four we got, we have 2 males and 2 females. Luckily his brother is in the outside tank so we won't have to move him out.
New Kids- Line Breeding
The new kids on the block that I got (the 2 Aul. Stuartgranti Maleri Gold, 2 Aul. Jacobfriebergi Firebird, 2 Protomelas taeniolatus Red Empress and 2 Aul. Dragon Blood) are all doing well and growing as expected. I wish they would colour up some more though the colouring on the Firebirds is pretty good already but I want to see how the Red Empress and the Dragon Blood colour up (especially the Dragon Blood to see if I got two nice coloured ones).
Each one of these fish are slightly different to my other fish. Generally I do not go for fish that have been overbred or crossed like Flowerhorns and so on but the Red Empress is a line bred fish as is the Maleri Gold and the Firebird. The Dragon Blood is argued amongst people as to it being either line bred or a hybrid. Now I do not see the issue with a fish being line bred or even to some degree hybridized providing care is taken to not feed them back into their natural habitat but I know many fish societies will not allow hybrids to be sold either on their site or at auctions etc. My belief is that cichlids are diverse because they have made themselves diverse so humans doing a bit to help them along is neither here nor there. We are not talking of chicken-fish or cabbage-sharks after all but enhancing aspects of a fish to make them more attractive by using the best colour from one of that species with another of the same species. If a fish can breed naturally with a similar fish owing to their shared genetics then chances are these fish may breed naturally anyway. Do those resultant offspring look attractive to us? Maybe, how many fish are in Lake Malawi that are not being exported because they are not as attractive as others? If you aren't sure as to whether line breeding is ethical ask yourself the following question:
How many different distinct species started out in Lake Malawi when it first became a lake about a million years ago?* 10, 20, 50, 100, 500? Don't know? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopatric_speciation if you want to start your own research.
Quote:
| Mbunas are thought to have evolved from riverine Haplochromis and Tilapia species. As a result of the reluctance of mbuna to cross open, sandy regions in the lake, different population tend to develop isolated from one another. |
*Oh and there is thought to be in excess of 500 species in Lake Malawi now.
Tropheus
The Tropheus are all doing excellently and growing well. None of the Orange Bemba have gotten any more colouring and I don't think they will at the moment. Maybe if I break them up into pairs they might but otherwise I think the colour is going to stand as is for a while. The dubosi are all looking cute still with them still retaining their spots but also getting a bit of barring to them so they look a bit funky for now. I weaned them off from the Spectrum food they were being fed and all the Tropheus now eat the Veggie Flakes and Pellets I give to all my fish. They don't get any of the bloodworm I feed the other fish though as I don't think they need the protein of the worms.
I used to feed each tank only 1 frozen pellet but lately the two tanks of cichlids have had 3 bloodworm pellets each and they were definitely happier after not having to fight quite so hard to get a bit of the treat.
Outdoor Tanks and Weather
Nights have been a bit cold here in Perth but only erratically so when it drops down past 10C I have started to put doonas on the outside tanks. This has worked excellently and it stays nice and cosy for the fish the entire time.
The big 5' tank has had both heaters put in it now with one at each end of it and the tank is staying nice and warm all night. The smaller Tropheus tank still only has one heater in it but the temp on it has been raised to 27C to assist with keeping the water temp up and as the tank is divided the fish can swim around in the warmer tank or move to the cooler one if they want to. I will be putting a heater in the centre tank soon though in order to make it more comfortable for the Tropheus.
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