Erik's Aquarium

I got a 55 gallon tank from my girlfriend Carrie this Christmas. I spent a lot of time agonizing over what exactly to put into this tank. Ultimately I decided to house African cichlids from Lake Malawi. I chose them because they are brightly colored and they like a high pH---my tap water has a pH of 9.8. Anyway, I currently have eight "mbunas" (an African word for the fish that live in the shallow rocky areas of the lake). Four of these are bright yellow fish of the species Labidochromis caeruleus. These fish are very rare in Lake Malawi, but due to their bright yellow color, they are very common in aquariums. Right now mine are about one inch, but their full size is around four inches.

These fish form a hierarchy. We've named the leader, who shows the most black, Jim. The others, from most dominant to least dominant, are named Sunny, Dobby, and Winky. I'm a little worried that Jim won't tolerate Sunny, whose definitely a male, once they get older. Adult male mbunas form territories, which may include the entire tank, and they don't usually tolerate other males of their species in their territory. Maybe I'll be okay though, because yellow Labs are considered one of the most peaceful mbunas.

I also have four more mbunas of the species, pseudotropheus socolofi, also known as "Powder Blue Cichlids", pindanis, or Eduard's Mbuna. These are a little bigger than my yellow labs. Here's a picture with all four of them in it.

The leader of these is named Mic, whose the highest fish in the picture. The other's are named Newman, whose the furthest right; Sam, whose on the left; and Violet, whose the blue fish at the bottom center. These fish do have the drawback that they're more aggressive than my other fish and even bite my arm sometimes when I work on the tank. They haven't drawn blood or anything, but they do have teeth, so they kind of hurt. These fish are also vegetarian, which means they are very hard on my plants.

Aside from the mbunas, I have two bristle-nose algae eaters Brutis and Spot. I think this picture has Brutis in it:

I bought these algae eaters to help keep the glass clean. The mbunas eat algae too, but they will not eat it off the glass.

Finally, I bought seven synodontis petricula, a.k.a. dwarf cuckoo catfish. These fish are about half the length of my cichlids. They are all hiding, so I don't have any pictures of them, yet. Here's a picture I got off the web, of a member of this species.

These guys are hard to find in aquarium stores. I bought mine directly from a breeder off the internet and had them shipped here from Hawaii, I plan to sell half of them once they get bigger. These catfish are from Lake Tanganyika, which has similar water chemistry to Lake Malawi. They are unique in that most catfish in the lake are about a foot long, but these only get to about 4 inches. These catfish also have a unique breeding technique which involves stealing eggs from the cichlids and replacing the cichlids' eggs with their own. This way the cichlids end up raising the catfish instead of their own fry. Mbuna's, by the way, are mouth-brooders, meaning that the mother raises the fry in her mouth.

Anyway, here are some pictures of my tank. First, this is what the whole tank looks like from the front, you can see two of my powder blues pretty clearly.