New fish arrived! Yay!

[karma_llama]

My new tanganyikan fish arrived via courier this morning. Safely packaged in a big polystyrene box were 4 lamprologus ocellatus isanga 'Blue', 3 lamprologus ocellatus 'gold' and 2 neolamprologus leleupi. They're all juveniles with the shellies being varying sizes.
The man i ordered them off was extremely friendly and gave me an extra blue shellie free (hence 4 blue and only 3 gold), he was also going to give me a free gold one too but he couldnt get it out the shell!
I'll see if i can get some photos for up for you. They are stunning fish

Sadly he didnt breed multies but i think i'll have to get another tank for them in the future.

 

[seastaar88]

i don't know much about cichlids.....but what's teh deal with the shells? do juveniles like to hide in them?

 

[karma_llama]

tanganyikan shell dwellers live in the shells, using them as a safe protective den and to lay their eggs and raise their fry. The ocellatus i have are shell dwellers hense i refer to them as shellies.

I just visited the tank to take a few shots - they're not great photos as the tank has wierd glass that tends to distort the image a bit.

This is one of the leleupi and a blue ocellatus

This is one of the smaller gold ocellatus - hiding behind this shells

Before any one says - yes some of the shells are small but there are loads of the larger ones, but the fish seems to have adopted whichever shell they happened upon, no real house hunting has occured yet!

 

[Orion]

Wow Congrats Karma! Those are some good looking fish.

Few things. The occies most likley will interbreed (The blue and the gold) if you want to keep the strains pure, then they will need to be in different tanks. Personaly I wouldn't mix them, but thats me. No harm will come to them from interbreeding like that.

Leleupi are known for being tough on shellies. The occies have the numbers, but I would keep an eye on lelupi and be ready to move them else where if need be.

Congrats again! One of these days I would really like to give the occellatus a try. Such spunk in a tiny fish.

 

[phOOey]

cool looking fish you got there karma, are these your first shellies?

if you really want some multies you could try www.trimar.co.uk thats where i got mine and they were great!

 

[karma_llama]

Thanks for the tips Orion, I was hoping the blue and gold ocellatus would set up homes at either ends of the tank, but of course they dont adhere to my tank planning and have all intermingled. They actually look pretty similar anyway so i'm not too worried about inter breeding, i'm not plannin to sell them under the pretense of a money making breeder, just a fun hobby.
The leleupi are only small for now and the breeder said they should be quite calm as they're tank bred etc but i am goign to keep an eye on them as they grow, especially as it's a male and female!

Yeah these are my first shellies Phooey - fingers crossed they do me proud.
I looked on trimar but they are expensive on there, and i know of another breeder locally where i can pick some up, so hope to have some in another tank some time.

I paid £39 for all 9 fish making them just £4.30 each, not bad for nice quality Tanganyikans

 

[phOOey]

wow, multies have gone up tp £6.99 each

i got mine for £4.99