Any fishkeepers here? Saltwater or freshwater

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Steron

Was that a golf ball in there? If so, why?

Yeah, I've got several golf balls in the tank for decoration. No particular reason other than liking golf.

[Fish]

So, about a year ago I fed my aquarium fish some fresh feeders that were infected with something, and it killed every fish in my tank within a week. Some of those fish I'd had over a decade. I've posted several of my videos here previously. Many of the fish I had were bred and born in the tank. I had to just watch all of them slowly die over the course of a week. It sucked hard....

I drained my tank recently. Cleaned all of my tank ornaments. Changed out quite a bit. Re-established the water, and let it run for over a month. Established a bacterial starter by tossing in a small cocktail shrimp, to let it basically rot and dissolve in the water. Which provides the water with the "Good" bacteria needed to maintain a nice freshwater tank. After 1.5 months of monitoring the water, I've finally introduced a new group of peacock cichlids to start my tank over.

I got 2 german red peacock cichlids, a sunshine peacock, an OB(orange blotch) peacock, and a Maingano cichlid. It's a Malawi tank. Every fish species is from Lake Malawi(Africa), and don't naturally exist anywhere else in nature. All about the same size, so hopefully none will establish total dominance. They'll need a month or so to get comfortable and start producing hormone and show more color. But I think I got a really good bunch to start. Pretty sure one of the german reds is a female, which kinda sucks since I paid for males, but maybe I'll be able to hatch some babies again... Peacock cichlids are mouth brooders, which means the female lays eggs on a rock, then the male comes by and dumps sperm all over the eggs to fertilize them, then the female gathers up all the eggs in her mouth. She holds the eggs in her mouth for about a month, not eating anything during that time. Once the eggs start to hatch, she spits them out and they're left to fend for themselves. You can see some of my previous posts in this thread to see hatchlings. They generally lay 40-60 eggs. Out of that, normally maybe a dozen survives unless you isolate the young.

Anyway, here's the new tank:

[Fish]

This was by far the best combination of freshwater fish I put together. What a peaceful tank that was. I hope I can find that tank equilibrium again some day...

[mr. tegu]

Originally Posted by Fish

This was by far the best combination of freshwater fish I put together. What a peaceful tank that was. I hope I can find that tank equilibrium again some day...

That Dempsey is a beast.

Did you get your new fish on liveaquaria or just locally?

[Fish]

Originally Posted by mr. tegu

That Dempsey is a beast.

Did you get your new fish on liveaquaria or just locally?

Yeah, I had that Jack for 12 years. He was a fat bastard. Really chill though. Like I said, he was basically the peacekeeper of the tank. He had a big rock cave at one end of the tank. He was so much bigger in size, that none of the peacocks challenged him. And he was happy to just hang out in his cave. Resulted in almost no fighting in the tank. Really cool personality. Unfortunately though, he was also the reason I fed them feeder fish. He loved chasing down live feeder fish. That and mealworms. But I got some bad ones.

Got these new guys locally. Olathe Pet Shop carries some really nice peacocks from time to time. About the only place in town that carries them. Cool pet store...