Severum mama, that's a nice idea - you'd think there's be enough fish around San Diego and the OC that I'd never need to order online. Somehow, though, as I did my research for the first time on African cichlids I became very picky on who and how many I wanted in my tank. And then of course a lot of what I chose turned out to be pretty hard to come by.
It might also be a personality flaw that I quickly got turned off of "regular" species of Tanganyikans like brichardi (no offense folks - they're real cool too) when I saw that they were the most easy to come by. With my compressiceps I didn't want a "gold head" because they seemed to be slightly more common. So I opted for an Mwela, which has amazing yellow and black striped coloring. For my shellies I didn't want the gold occelatus - I got 'pearly occelatus' instead. The rarity of these guys has become a problem since all the females didn't survive both times a bought a few. I've had a hard time finding more and I wanted them to breed! With the cyps, I didn't want just plain Neon heads. I wanted an unusual locale and chose the Mvuna for whom there are maybe two pics in ALL online. Truth be told I'd be happy with any of these fish, and I know I can sometimes be pigheaded about these things but it's kind of been fun shopping around for real specialties.
