It is not easy to know if you have a good population or not depending on the literature available. For this we offer a small table to locate you and make you a good population in terms of the number of cichlids.
The ancestors are excellent cleaners and coexist very well with cichlids think about it. Be careful not to confuse ancistrus and plecostomus or “window cleaner” which do not clean anything and have an enormous adult size (minimum 30cm adult size).
In addition, the ancestors are not detritivores either, they will help you by feeding on algae and food scraps if there is (you still have to feed them with pellets for groundfish) but in no case they will not feed on your aqua waste. You still have to clean your bin normally.
The historian. excellent ally for your bins
There are charts that are made for the African Cichlids from Malawi (which generally measure about ten centimeters, the haplos can measure more than 20cm therefore divide the number by two for the haplos knowing that a minimum of 500L is required for the haplos. 1 cm of adult size fish for 2L of water.
- For other species, we also offer the general table of littering according to the size of your fish, which really gives you the number of fish according to their size, and therefore for any species.
- For the compatibility between the species, it is especially necessary to be careful not to put species that are similar in order to avoid hybridizations.
For the soil, we recommend fine sand (particle size from 0.5 to 2 mm) , because they are fish who love to have fun with sand and yes, if you look closely, they take sand in the mouth and go throw it elsewhere most of the time to make a cave under a rock. Beware of Quartz sand which can hurt the mouth of your fish, prefer fine Loire sand or filtration sand for swimming pool pump, cheap and in large quantities (rinse well).
Also take care to leave a nice sandy beach without rock so that there is a nice place for swimming space.
Water parameters:
Regarding the water in the tank, Lake Malawi has a pH of 8 (which can be reproduced in an aquarium using tap water (to be tested beforehand and good oxygenation) and water at 26 ° C. These parameters must therefore be maintained for the well-being of your protégés. Cichlids are not afraid of hard water, so even if you put limestone, there is no risk with these fish even on the contrary.
Otherwise you can use our method:
Our Method In Picture:
For our part, we recover the female after having wet our hands well in the aquarium water so as not to remove the protective layer on the scales of the fish.