Auratus cichlid

[nitin1986]

Finally understood that these are African Malawi lake cichlids. The retail store sold me saying that those are zebra danios. My bad, I had a very clear intention to cycle my 6 gallon fish tank with live fishes and after reading some blogs I understood that zebra danios are the perfect ones.
These are also the hard ones. I don't have any option to check the water quality neither does the retailer where I brought those. I use the hard water i.e., well water for the tank. The fishes are well and fine. I bought 14 of those. Only one secumbed since 3 months. I could not identify which are male in the school. I think I have to wait. They are always hungry but I feed them only twice a day with quarter spoon once. The food which I give is what it's available over here where I live, is kind of mustard seed size. Very seldomly I fed them with mosquitos and small earth worms.
On further search online I got to know that they are algae eaters and dwellers.. so I changed the gravel substrate to River sand substrate. And tried to feed them a slice of zucchini but they did not touch at least once.
I know that the tank is over crowded but I was not aware at that time when I bought. Either I will change the tank or give back some fishes to the retailer once the sex of the fishes are identified. Even though the talk is over crowded, the fishes are surviving. I strongly feel that it's because the two live plants and one pothos plant. I think it's really balancing the nitrates. And constantly running the filter pump.. I do check the forum every day so that I could learn something new. Anything about these cichlids that I could learn and need to understand. Please educate me. Thank you ppl.

 

[V227]

I really don't know where to start. You successfully cycled a 6 gallon tank using 14 Mbuna, only losing one after three months, in a tank with live plants. That is quite an accomplishment.
Auratus are primarily vegetarians and it's surprising that your plants survived. Your well water must be unbelievably awesome to have been able to pull this off.
It normally takes great skill to keep a large colony of Mbuna alive in tanks 10x the size of yours. I'm not sure what advice I can provide other than buy a much larger tank, with an appropriate sized power filter. It should be easy for you to instant cycle your new tank with the aged filter media in your current filter.

 

[nitin1986]

I really don't know where to start. You successfully cycled a 6 gallon tank using 14 Mbuna, only losing one after three months, in a tank with live plants. That is quite an accomplishment.
Auratus are primarily vegetarians and it's surprising that your plants survived. Your well water must be unbelievably awesome to have been able to pull this off.
It normally takes great skill to keep a large colony of Mbuna alive in tanks 10x the size of yours. I'm not sure what advice I can provide other than buy a much larger tank, with an appropriate sized power filter. It should be easy for you to instant cycle your new tank with the aged filter media in your current filter.

Thank you V227. Please suggest. The table which I have is 40x20 inches
A tank with 40x20x20 (length*bredth*height) in inches.. will this suffice?. In that 4*20*20 in inches(same) attached filteration biological and mechanical..

 

[V227]

I'm thinking a 65 gal. Tall tank would probably fit your table. An Aqua Clear 70, or A.C. 110 would be great. The 65 tall is 3 feet long, not sure of the width "18 or 20 inches". Remember a decked out 65 gallon will weigh approx. 600 lbs. Make sure your table is sturdy enough.

 

[Tbox]

Hey Nitin, where about are you from? Was it a big chain pet store that sold you the auratus?
are you in a situation to start up a 55gal or larger tank and fill with your magical well water? If not, take back those disgruntled "zebra danios". There's still a lot of fish other options available for your tank. Rasboras, tetras, killifish, pea puffer, betta, shrimp...
*continue those weekly 50% water changes.

 

[coralbandit]

I think you scored on the fish $..
Like V said you have done well.
Not sure about tables?? Look into a proper stand if you go over 30g.

 

[King Fisher]

Just get a bigger tank. I don't know how big those will get as I don't know what exactly they are. I'm guessing you will be in the 90g range on tank size with 13 of them. You got a nice group of fish on the cheap. Use that 6g as a QT tank.

 

[King Fisher]

I guess they can get over 4" in a home aquaria. So your tank will be on the larger size especially if you want to keep other fish

 

[nitin1986]

Hey Nitin, where about are you from? Was it a big chain pet store that sold you the auratus?
are you in a situation to start up a 55gal or larger tank and fill with your magical well water? If not, take back those disgruntled "zebra danios". There's still a lot of fish other options available for your tank. Rasboras, tetras, killifish, pea puffer, betta, shrimp...
*continue those weekly 50% water changes.

Hi Tbox, am from Hyderabad, India. We do have full fledge fish enthusiastic pet stores but far away from where I stay. The pet store which I bought these fishes is a local stores. As said earlier that am beginner, I bought this tank. Neither the pet store person told nor I checked online. I do have a plan to upgrade the tank. The above dimensions gives some around 65gal and 2 gal included filter. These fishes will grow na, till then I will try to get the large tank. If not I will give those fish back to the stores and get some other school.