keeping and breeding malawi's

for me these cichlids from lake malawi are easy to keep and breed but if you are just starting out in fish keeping and want tokeep malawis i would say do your homework and read as much as you can on these fish.the cichlids in lake malawi are made up of groups you have the haplichromis these fish live in deep water they also have diffrent shaped mouths that have evolved over millions of years to adapt to the prey they eat,e.g. hap venustus is a predator so has a big bucket like mouth for sucking in young fish and fry.hap.super vc10 has big rubber like lips for hunting fry and young fish between rocks in the lake,then you have hap linni these fish have a scoop shaped mouth for sifting through the sands for pray like insect larve and crustacans,then you have the rock dwelling cichlids the mbuna,these cichlids also have adapted diffrent methods of feeding as well as the haps.so keeping these cichlids you get diffrent behaviours and colours which is why i keep them.i find keeping these cichlids in an aquarium is quite easy and straight forward,to star make sure you have a good filter as they can be messy eaters but in saying that in my tanks the food dosent get time to hit the gravel!i would reccomend as a substitue using coral gravel as coral sand can irritate the gills of the fish in my experience,this also for me buffers the water and keeps a constant ph of 7.6 to 8.0 which is perfect for these cichlids.if you are keeping alunocara speicies aquarium sand is best as in the wild these fish also sift through the sands for food and pray,on the otherhand if you want to keepmbuna use some smooth boulders or ocean rock pilled up to form caves as these fish feel more secure and at home like this and if you put them in a tank thats just bare they will get stressed and not show any natural behaviours and with mbuna the more fish you put in the less aggresion and bullying you will have.as i do clean water is the key to successfully keeping these cichlids,every week regardless i always do 30-50% water changes in all my tanks,making sure i pick up any uneaten foods and derbis also it does really help to use a gravel cleaner to get rid of muck without sucking up gravel sand etc.these fish are also straight forward when it comes to feeding,a good diet of spirulina flake as this is what they eat on in the wild,on weekends i give mine brineshrimp as a treat do not give your malawis froozen freeze dried or live bloodworm as this is not good for them at all and can cause a condition known in the hobby as malawi bloat,this will result in death of your fish.the cichlids also love glassworms and black moscuito larve but only feed them as a treat again or when conditioning the fish for breeding.
brreding malawi cichlids is pretty straight forward as long as you start off with tank bred fish as they are already adapted to life in a tank,its a lot harder to breed wild caught fish as they have to adapt to tank life and acclimatise so only wild fish for experienced malawi keepers thats my view anyway.you can have great success with breeding these fish in a malawi comunity tank aslong as there is lots of hiding/breeding places for the females that are holding the eggs (hence the name mouth brooders)to keep out of the way.make sure if you have malawi tanks that you dont put fish in with same coloured species as this will result in mixed breeding and will hybridise with males or females of the same colours,and there is enough hybrids in the hobby to start with.if you want to breed malawis without hybridisation thenpick a species you want to keep and breed them only in the tank when doing so make sure you have around 3-4 females per male as this stops the males from over harrassing the females.if you have an african comunity tank and you have females holding if you want torear the fry then i would sugest stripping the females,stripping is when youcatch the female that is holding young keeping her in a net and gently squeezing the gill plates on the female and the young fry should come out into the holding pen/net then you can rear them yourself in a fry tank this will save them from getting eaten if been left holding for over the holding period in the main tanks.if you feed your fish plenty of brineshrimp and good quality foods and do plenty of water changes keep the water between 25oc-28oc and the ph at around 7.6-8 and you will have young in no time providing you have a pair or trio of specied cichlids.i find breeding these fish from the lakes very rewarding and putting quality fish back into th hobby is what it is all about for me.when the fry are free swimming once they have absorbed the yellow yolk sacks i keep all my fry in a small holding pen or tank for around 3-4 weeks in this time i feed them up on baby brineshrimp and zm baby fry foods then after this time its time for them to move them over to thhere own rearing tank.this should be around 2foot and be bare with nothng in itbut a mature filter sponge filters i find these work great, if you have to use an internal filter the fry usually get sucked into it and die so a sponge filter is best in my opinion.i do 50% water changes every 2 days to keep the waters fresh make sure to get all the uneaten foods and derbis out as this will pollute the waters and the nitrite levels will become high and stunt the growth of the young fish,so water changes are very important i also try to feed my fry 3-4 times a day.also a good tip is to keep some young plecs such as bristlnose nose plecs in the fry tanks will help to clean thebottoms of the tanks of the uneaten foods whilst feeding the plecs at the same time.when the fish are around 2 months old i then put them all in to a 3 foot rearing tank to give them more space to grow by this time you will start to see colourations and in some speices diffrent sex's in the young.i hope this is ok infomation to malawi keepers new and old just starting out thanks for reading.

Good peice of info mate.

hi mark thanks just a quick bit of info towards the site hope i can help out with info on malawis etc

Am sure you will mate. My self I dont know much about Malawis so your experience is always welcome