danben
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Hello all,
First off, just so you know what we're dealing with here, I've got a 55 gallon cichlid tank (all mbuna from what I can tell... store sold them as "assorted cichlid" and many of them are too small to see any difference) and a 20 gallon planted tank that I just started up about 10 days ago that's a shrimp tank in progress (right now I only have 5 RCS's in there, will get more and hopefully they'll breed too).
Thing is, I have a holding female and she's pretty much ready to spit 'em, but I don't have a grow-out tank for the cichlid fry, and my holding female is only in a small diy breeding container I made.
So, with this in mind, my question to you guys is would it be alright to use the shrimp tank as the grow-out tank for the cichlid fry? The plants in there are pretty hardy so I'm not worried about those, and the shrimp should be too big to eat until the cichlids would reach about 1.5" to 2", at which point I'd move them to my main tank.
I've got a HOB filter in the 20 gallon with pantyhose over the intake, and an airstone as well (no CO2 and barely any ferts). I'd need to still get a heater for them as I didn't get one for the shrimp.
So yeah, good idea, or bad idea?
TL;DR : Is it okay to keep mbuna fry in a 20 gallon tank with a few red cherry shrimps?
Thanks ahead for all your awesomeness!
First off, just so you know what we're dealing with here, I've got a 55 gallon cichlid tank (all mbuna from what I can tell... store sold them as "assorted cichlid" and many of them are too small to see any difference) and a 20 gallon planted tank that I just started up about 10 days ago that's a shrimp tank in progress (right now I only have 5 RCS's in there, will get more and hopefully they'll breed too).
Thing is, I have a holding female and she's pretty much ready to spit 'em, but I don't have a grow-out tank for the cichlid fry, and my holding female is only in a small diy breeding container I made.
So, with this in mind, my question to you guys is would it be alright to use the shrimp tank as the grow-out tank for the cichlid fry? The plants in there are pretty hardy so I'm not worried about those, and the shrimp should be too big to eat until the cichlids would reach about 1.5" to 2", at which point I'd move them to my main tank.
I've got a HOB filter in the 20 gallon with pantyhose over the intake, and an airstone as well (no CO2 and barely any ferts). I'd need to still get a heater for them as I didn't get one for the shrimp.
So yeah, good idea, or bad idea?
TL;DR : Is it okay to keep mbuna fry in a 20 gallon tank with a few red cherry shrimps?
Thanks ahead for all your awesomeness!
