Catfish for malawi tank?

[Tomk2u]

I recently picked up a 200ltr tank with 90ltr sump and decided to go Malawi as I've heard about how you should over crowd them to a certain extent and thought due to the sump this tank would be perfect Ive got so far
2x yellow labs
2x maylandia zebra
2x placidochromis Electra
2x Nimbochromis venustus
All sexed pairs
+ few fry

Wanting a few catfish to clean up uneaten food / algea
Also something that will tackle the snail problem I have ended up with but I don't really want anything non-lake Malawi want to keep to some sort of bio-tope

 

[BillD]

Synodontis of some sort

 

[Mogurako]

In my opinion thats to many males with to few females. If memory servers me 200 ltr is roughly 50-55 us gallons, in that size tank you'd want 1 male to 4 females of 3-4 species to prevent aggression.

The stock also needs to be looked at for instances Nimbochromis venustus is a Hap gets to roughly 11 inches and needs allot more swim room than a 4 foot tank.
In that size tank I would stick with the smaller dwarf Mbuna like afra cobue.

As for the bottom dweller some form of Synodontis catfish would work. However they wont eat algae or snails, if you are being overrun by snails and algae that means there is to much extra nutrients in the tank. I would cut down on feeding and that should help those problems.

 

[joel618]

I have synodontis petricola in with my mbunas. They are awesome. Hard to feed because of how crazy Cichlids are durring feeding time. I have to take pinches of food and stick my arm in the tank to get food to them. Lol

 

[Lady_Alia]

Mbuna will eat snails, I found that out the hard way....I actually wanted the snails, turns out so did they, for a snack! In my mbuna tank I've got a pleco for algae and a feather fin cat for left overs.

 

[Mogurako]

My lake tang. cichlids leave my rams horns alone. If you find you have to much algae/ left overs just feed less. I feed sparingly once a day and don't have any algae/left overs issues. I actually have to feed the snails wafers.

 

[Tomk2u]

I've got hundreds and I mean hundreds of trumpet snails algae isn't to much of a problem just the snails. Am going to try and find some petricola synos I think. Had a quick look online at them and they look really nice

 

[Lady_Alia]

Yeah, I got a handful of snails from a guy, put em in my tank and within a week they were gone. All that's left are shells. lol and when I say a handful, they were small ones so it wad prolly 50ish snails.

 

[Mogurako]

I've got hundreds and I mean hundreds of trumpet snails algae isn't to much of a problem just the snails. Am going to try and find some petricola synos I think. Had a quick look online at them and they look really nice

Just sift through the sand and give them away, people always want MTS. Otherwise you'll still have all the empty shells.

 

[Lady_Alia]

Like me lol

 

[joel618]

Yeah, I got a handful of snails from a guy, put em in my tank and within a week they were gone. All that's left are shells. lol and when I say a handful, they were small ones so it wad prolly 50ish snails.

In a blue spectrum light their white highlights glow.

 

[Ausfish]

I have a 55g and my clown loaches keep the snails in check while my plecos care for the leftovers and algae.