Happy Solstice!

Sorry ive been so quiet recently – my laptop perished after ingesting an rather unimpressive 1 pint of beer. Its also a busy time with preparations for the solstice holiday. Thanks to everyone who has read this blog and thanks for all the kind emails people have sent me.

I have some exciting things to share with you in the new year including a trip to Mike’s Rifts in Liverpool where I collected a whole pile of new wild stock.

In the mean time, here is a short video on the evolution of fish in the congo river basin…

Demasoni Doom

In a previous post I wrote about one of my Demasoni’s holding eggs…well, they murdered her. Usually when I lose a fish due to agression I just say ‘lost a fish due to agression’ – and this is somethingo to be expected when you move aggressive fish with complex social behaviours from an evironment half the size of the UK into a box the size of a cello. With Demasoni I have no issues with describing this incidents with such emotive terms. They really are horrible little animals – shame they look so pretty!

In Situ

I seem to be getting a bit video happy these days, but I though I would share this as its awesome. See how many species you can spot! Comments are open

Climate change video

Found this video today and thought it was pretty funny. All the others the guys does are awesome too…

Stevenage Specialist Aquatics

Excitingly a new fish shop has opened in Stevenage which is just down the road from me. Even more excitingly, it specialises in rift cichlids! Its called Stevenage Specialist Aquatics and is run by chap called Ricky. Ricky used to run an importer of wild caught cichlids called Rivac. His new venture is a small shop but with a bigger warehouse behind to accommodate more stock as be business grows. He is also buying good quality stock so any of you breeders out there might want to get in touch…

Here are some photos of the stock:

And just in case you wondered how fish shops filter all those tanks, heres how:

Photos, photos, photos….

I stumbled upon this site today:

http://www.cichlids.com

and it has 1000’s of cichlid photos, some of which are of extremely high quality. You can add you own but make sure you own them first

*EDIT* well it seems im getting some stick from these guys about whether I really run this site – I do. My name is Dom, I live in Hitchin and post under the pseudonym Dakuan on several forums – hope that clears everything up **

Pseudotropheus cyaneorhabdos

Along with the Tropheops sp “Makokola”, I also got a pair of wild Pseudotropheus cyaneorhabdos. This is often a misnamed fish, it was recently known as Melanochromis but was reclassified along with a few others (including johanni and interruptus, more about that later). Its also known as a variety of trade names – Maingano, Electric Blue Johanni etc but these are very often hybrids.

I had some tank breds a while back but the male was very much bigger than anything else in the tank and was a dreadful bully. The new wilds are playing nicely so far but the male does now have his own territory which he enforces vigorously. The female hasn’t shown any interest in him so far but its still early days.

My fish were collected at Maingano which is on Likoma Island.

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Ndumbi Gold Female

Managed to get a cracking picture of one of my Ndumbi Gold Females who incidentally, is now holding. Here she is before holding:

Tropheops sp “Makokola”

Here are some of my first wild caught specimens. They are a pair Tropheops species collected from Makokola Reef which is right at the southern tip of Lake Malawi. The female is an Orange Blotch variety and is absolutely gorgeous. The male is more aggressive than I would like, especially towards the female but its not bad enough to warrant removing him (thank god!).

Their behaviour is noticeably different from my tank bred fish. They spent much more time grazing algae from the rocks and are yet to develop a keen taste for spirulina flake but I’m sure that will come with time. Excitingly they showed breeding behaviours with the female taking a keen interest the males display just the day after being introduced to the tank. Unfortunately it didn’t come to anything and nothing else has happened since apart from a bit of chasing. Fingers crossed for the future!

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Demasoni Delight

After all the murder and mayhem finally some good news – I have a holding female!

Here she is: