Neolamprologus Multifasciatus Tank

[kiriyama]

Aaaawwwwww!!!!
Looking good, your pictures are lovely, must be amazing to watch..... Keep the pics coming,
Nothing new to report here, just redone the rockwork to try and give "Punk"(Caudopunctatus) his own playground to keep him out of "Multi land", hope it will work, Multis been very active again lately, lots of digging and moving stuff.
Well done again

 

[ashemely]

Looking good, it will be a nice feeling to raise them til adult hood, im sure. My "pair" are getting more and more friendly and flare up when they come close to each other, so, i guess for me its just wait and see, knowing my luck, though, they are probably just 2 males

Thank you. And yes, I'm hoping I will be able to see them grow up to adulthood, or very close to. My husband and I are supposed to be moving back to the states soon, but it's very complicated, and I don't know when we'll be leaving, could be a couple of months could be six. Now that the fry are here, though, I definitely am not looking forward to leaving and having to find them a new home, and missing out on all the excitement of them growing up.

Oh and I so hope you don't have two males! After having your four before, and then getting a new pair and having them turn out to be males, argh, extremely frustrating I can imagine. Oh, I should have tried to video my female doing here little jiggity dance. I find it hilarious, but I think that's her comer hither dance. I've never seen the male actually go into her shell, but I'm sure that's a lights out type thing!

 

[ashemely]

Aaaawwwwww!!!!
Looking good, your pictures are lovely, must be amazing to watch..... Keep the pics coming,
Nothing new to report here, just redone the rockwork to try and give "Punk"(Caudopunctatus) his own playground to keep him out of "Multi land", hope it will work, Multis been very active again lately, lots of digging and moving stuff.
Well done again

ROFL...Punk for the caudoPUNCtus. I love it! Ohh yes, some say I am easily entertained, but that just made my night.

Thanx!

 

[ashemely]

No pics tonight, but just thought I'd let y'all know that the egg sack on the shell has disappeared. I don't see any tiny snails, nor any tiny fry. Whatever it was it's gone now. Although, I do think my third female may have had a batch of her own fry. She's been spending a lot of time in a particular shell, and I can see her fanning her tail while she's in there. I'm really hoping that she's got some fry in there, as this shell is right next to the wall of the tank, which is why I can sort of see what she's doing inside the shell. I'll be keeping a close eye on this female and her shell, and hopefully get some more babies. I'm gonna be overstocked with multis soon enough! Although, it doesn't seem like they have a very fast growth rate, so I should be good for a while, yet.

 

[AdAndrews]

Ive spoken to Sporen(avid tang keeper)
and she says i proabably dont have a pair so im going to add the other 4 back into the main tank, and go from there. She mentioned when she started keeping tangs that one of her males pushed all the others up into the top corners of the tank as my multie did, but she said its all about patience, they will come down eventually.

 

[kiriyama]

Can't believe you got another batch in there already, well done, you really struck gold, the pictures just get better each time, seriously considering rehoming my Julidochromis and Caudopunctatus and 1 of the BN plecs and just having a shell bed, might be what's needed, keep the pictures coming, well done again

 

[AdAndrews]

I have just found out that the 2 i thought where a pair, are in fact a different species of cichlid, lamprolous similus

I guess im going to have to re-home them

 

[kiriyama]

AdAndrews
Really sorry to hear that , very hard to tell the difference, Multis light body / dark stripes ? Similis dark body / light stripes ? But on a fish that small where does the body end and the stripe begin ? So to speak.
I think Wildwoods still have some Multis in stock, don't know if you're wanting more or not now.
To be honest I'm regretting buying the other 2 species of Tanganyika cichlid and realise I should just have bought 6 - 8 Multis, hope you get them rehomed ok.....

 

[AdAndrews]

I think it was the case that i thought becuase the new 2 were bigger, thus adults to me presumably, then thats what multies turn out like when older. The stripes thing is incredibly hard to tell as its hard to see what are stripes.

Ive taken a couple of pics to get it confirmed, i'll let you know.

 

[AdAndrews]

Heres a piccy for you guys of the suspected "similis"

 

[ashemely]

Can't believe you got another batch in there already, well done, you really struck gold, the pictures just get better each time, seriously considering rehoming my Julidochromis and Caudopunctatus and 1 of the BN plecs and just having a shell bed, might be what's needed, keep the pictures coming, well done again

Thank you very much Kiriyama. I can see why you wanted a couple of different species in your tank, to bring in some more personality and variety. I absolutely love the look of Julies, but with their aggressive behavior and not quite the 'family' type of fish compared to multis, I was put off on them, for now. Maybe further down the line, I'll give Julies a shot.

However, as I was watching my fish last night, during fry feeding time, I noticed some somewhat disturbing behavior. Well, maybe not disturbing but it did baffle me for a few seconds. Because the fry are getting a powdered flake, the adults will also eat the bigger pieces. The first batch of fry are getting more and more independent and adventurous as far as swimming away from the security of Mum's territory. But last night one of the fry got a little too close to the territory of the suspected new Mum (I'll call her #3), and she darted towards him real quick. Everything happened so fast, I actually thought she ate the little fellow! Now, I don't know if she was aggressive because she thought the little guy was food, or because she may have eggs and babies to protect. But the fry's Mum hopped all over the #3's #105### real quick and a fight broke out. The first time I've actually seen them fight, by the way, but Dad came along and broke it all up. It was very stressful for everyone, including me, and we needed a break. They all swam into their shells and I flopped onto the couch. It took everyone a good 30 seconds or so to come out of their shells and resume eating. I just had never seen anything like that before, and I was seriously thinking about putting the fry into a little breeder tank thing, but then I laughed at myself and thought, "Yeah, if you can even catch the little buggers!"

Needless to say, everyone's staying put.

 

[ashemely]

Heres a piccy for you guys of the suspected "similis"

Ad, so sorry to hear about your new pair! I have to agree that this fish looks like a similis. When I first was looking into getting multi's I also came across a pic of the similis, and had a hard time telling the two apart. But, like, Kiriyama said light with dark stripes, dark with light stripes, who's to say which is which! However, I did come across a website (and I wish I could remember which one) that pointed out the similis' stripes start pretty much right behind the eye, where as the multi's stripes start at the base of the head area, more behind the gill. Which is why I agree that your fish does look more like a similis. Too bad. Although, I must say, that's a FANTASTIC picture you took. You must have a DSLR.

 

[AdAndrews]

Heres a piccy for you guys of the suspected "similis"

Ad, so sorry to hear about your new pair! I have to agree that this fish looks like a similis. When I first was looking into getting multi's I also came across a pic of the similis, and had a hard time telling the two apart. But, like, Kiriyama said light with dark stripes, dark with light stripes, who's to say which is which! However, I did come across a website (and I wish I could remember which one) that pointed out the similis' stripes start pretty much right behind the eye, where as the multi's stripes start at the base of the head area, more behind the gill. Which is why I agree that your fish does look more like a similis. Too bad. Although, I must say, that's a FANTASTIC picture you took. You must have a DSLR.

Nah, its not a DSLR, its my Dads camera, a Panasonic Lumix TZ5, it is an awesome camera though, Im keeping the similis for now in the smaller tank, and have put the 4 multies back in the 60cm. Just wait and see really, it'll be good if similis spawn, but i'd rather the multies spawn tbh.

 

[AdAndrews]

Heres a couple more pics:

 

[kiriyama]

AdAndrews
Dang, that pic was freaking me out, thought it was a picture of one of my lot, on further inspection the stripes on my ones start after the gill, very hard to tell the difference...not so bad you have somewhere to house them, are you going to rehome them eventually?
ashemely
Hope the little fella is ok, maybe he just wandered to far, he might stick with mom for a while now, funny you saying about the Juli, I was concerned about aggression but it turns out its the Multis that dish out the punishment, especially if the Juli strays over to the shell bed area, they really are tough little guys, any more pics yet?