African Lake tank

[Phoenixphire55]

I've been reading about the rift valley lakes like Lake Tangayaka or whatever (lol). I really like the idea of a rocky aquarium with little or no plants and a nice sand substrate with a whole heap of rocks in the back ground. I know I'd want to have several of the species of cichlids that naturally live in these conditons, but could my mollies and corys ever be ok with that set up? If not, what would be a happy medium?

My dilema is that I have 4 cories, 7 mollies and a pleco and I need to have the right set up for them, but I also want to have cichlids (and not just a ram or two).

I'm moving to Denver where I beleive the water is pretty hard so I'm looking for hardwater setups.

 

[kimo]

For a Rift Lake setup you don't want anything except the type of fish that come from there. The water requirements are too different.

The cories and pleco will not take the salt.

The only ones that "might make it" are the Mollies but they will look out of place. They don't mind the salt but the specialized minerals for that kind of tank... they may not like it.

 

[Phoenixphire55]

I'm not sure what minerals are require and idk about salt, but I wasn't planning to add anything extra to the water. What cichlids do well in a tank of standard hard/alkaline water? I know mollies and cories are fine in hardwater and my pleco seems perfectly fine. The setup for the african lake tank would have a lot of stones in it but I was planning to use granite, slate and other metamorphic rocks so the water chemistry wouldn't change much. I'm more thinking about compatible tankmates for an african lake setting tank without additions to the water.

 

[haykay]

additions are really going to depend on your KH and GH levels.. Rift lake cichlids like some really hard water... harder then just about any other freshwater fish