What Goes With What?

[pippin35]

Hi All
I have kept tropical community fish for a number of years with very little effort on my part and after recently letting the stock run down I decided to change over to cichlids. I carefully raised the PH to 8.2 and introduced a Firemouth, convict, neon jewel, balloon ram, and a sunset/sunrise cichlid. The balloon ram didn't make it however the others settled ok.
In order to create caves etc we used slate and bogwood which proved costly as we had to ditch the bogwood due to leakage of tannin making the water look yellow no matter how much we boiled or soaked it. We removed the bogwood and had a heck of a job cleaning the filters of the bogwood gunge. Anyway we then used Lava rock for hide aways and this weekend introduced a dolphin cichlid. However today it can't swim upright the nitrate levels are high and the other fish have become agressive. Any suggestion on how to rescue the dolphin and bring calm back to the tank?

Thank you in advance
pippin35

 

[Ferris]

Do daily water changes until the nitrate levels reduce significantly starting with 50% asap. You also need to re-think your stocking - the only fish that will be happy in a Ph that high is ironically the Blue Dolphin and possibly the Jewel.

The Ram never really had a chance with that aggressive mix of African's and New World. You really need to go for one or the other, mixing African's and NW takes a lot of experience and even more luck.

Sounds like the Dolphin has a Swim Bladder infection probably caused by the high nitrates - you can get meds for this but it is a difficult one to cure i'm afraid.

How many gallons is the tank and what dimensions?

 

[pippin35]

Do daily water changes until the nitrate levels reduce significantly starting with 50% asap. You also need to re-think your stocking - the only fish that will be happy in a Ph that high is ironically the Blue Dolphin and possibly the Jewel.

The Ram never really had a chance with that aggressive mix of African's and New World. You really need to go for one or the other, mixing African's and NW takes a lot of experience and even more luck.

Sounds like the Dolphin has a Swim Bladder infection probably caused by the high nitrates - you can get meds for this but it is a difficult one to cure i'm afraid.

How many gallons is the tank and what dimensions?

The Blue Dolphin has just expired. I was told to keep the PH at 8.2 for these types of fish?? I have informed the LFS of what we have had in the tank at the time of purchasing any newbies and they have said the only one that could be a problem is the convict? Could you tell me from the previous posted list of fish which are African and which are NW? Which are the easier to keep?
The tank size is 80cmx30cmx35cm
Many thanks

 

[Boids-n-more]

The firemouth and convict are central american , I am not sure on the neon jewl but there is a african jewl cichlid and a central american jewl cichlid , The sunset is a south american cichlid that get about 2.5 inches and will eventually end up being food for the convict if it lives long enough to get eaten. Also your tank is too small to house anything with the convict they get 6 in and are very aggressive. your ph would be fine for african cichlids but its too high for south and central american cichlids. What kind of cichlids do you want to keep.