If you’re a regular reader of the blog, then you know I built a couple of new tank stands a few months ago. I posted about building them here and here. One of them has been is use for some time, but the other one was waiting for me to do some rearranging.
Continue reading this post…A little separation and rarranging
Ok, so you’re new to cichlids, maybe even new to fish keeping. You’ve joined a few Facebook groups to get some help. You ask some questions, answers flood in, and now your head is spinning. Why? Because you’re getting a dozen different answers. Worse than that, your post in the Facebook group has devolved into a virtual shouting match, pretty much eliminating further help there.
Maintaining a community tank that successfully houses breeding pairs of multiple species can be done, and it’s not really that difficult. I’ve written about doing so in a previous post.
Back in 2017, I posted about the potential for a sand shortage in the future. In that post, I pointed to an article that discussed some of the uses of sand, which are probably way more than you realize.
Fast forward to today, and this article about the possibility of a sand shortage came out in Science, which is the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The article cites a United Nations (UN) report that highlights the political aspects of sand, specifically that sand is a resource and thus a commodity. As such, there are sustainability issues.
The article is a very interesting read, especially when it claims that sand is second only to water in human usage (by volume).
Do you have a fish that is behaving differently or looks different than it did the day before? Maybe its color is different. Maybe it’s hanging out in a place you’ve never seen it hang out before. Maybe it’s something, maybe it’s nothing. How do you determine if there is a problem or not?
That’s a tough question to answer, but the place to start is with elimination. You’ve heard “the process of elimination” before? Yep, start with trying to determine what the problem is NOT. As you eliminate possibilities, you’ll get closer to determining what, if anything, the problem might be.
What happens when you apply eyeliner to a cichlid, specifically a Neolamprologus pulcher? According to some researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, you can make the fish appear more or less threatening to an unfamiliar conspecific.
If you keep shell dwellers, you probably have a large number of shells in your tank(s), especially if the tank(s) contains multiple dwellers. That’s a good thing and a bad thing.
Females of some cichlid species can be very judicious about where to deposit eggs. Their preference typically revolves around multiple variables – other tank occupants, decorations, amount of available cover – just to name a few. If you have a breeding pair of cave spawning cichlids, the orientation of the cave(s) may also be one of those variables.
In that original post, I mentioned a company, DiscusGuy, that sells these fish online. I knew very little about them when I wrote that post. However, prior to writing it, I reached out to the site hoping I could interview someone there.
It’s been two months since I posted an interview but don’t fret. I’ve got three of them in the works right now. I’m always reluctant to say much about interviews in advance because I’ve had too many fall through at the last minute. However, assuming all three of these materialize, here are some hints on topics covered:
I’m not going to say much about the interviewees, but I will say two are industry business owners and one is a well known, respected hobbyist.
Stay tuned!