African cichlids disappearing?
i have a 55 gal. african cichlid tank with plenty of hiding spots. i currently enjoy 7 mbuna all about 2-2.5 in long and a striped raphael something like 5 in. long...i started out with 10 cichlids and i noticed they be slowly diminishing in numbers until there were merely 6 so i bought 3 more only to find the numbers drop again. this happened about 3 different times, under the weather see a fish swimming around healthy one day then it will be gone. its not other the newcomers and i have yet to find one body. i thought it may be the catfish until simply today i bought a 4" clown loach, put him in the tank, go to work and now hes gone...the cichlids i have arent too aggressive at all toward eachother and i checked adjectives around the tank for any jumpers but after losing about 5 fish and never finding a body im getting frustrated..please serve!
With a catfish and Cichlids its a very real possibility that the fish are getting eat and that's why your not seeing any body's.
Fish will all eat dead fish particularly the catfish.
But still even if that is the case you stipulation to find out why they are dieing. Is your water ok ? ammonia - 0.0 nitrite - 0.0 nitrates below 20 ppm. Your ph should be from 8.0 to 8.5
The Raphael catfish at 5 in could very smoothly eat a 2 inch fish. You would notice the giant bulge in his stomach though. Did you check lower than and in all the caves and rock work ? rob out all of it and do a head count. Good Luck
Edit : Ok if you of late put in a clown loach and he was gone within hours I am immediately convinced you just haven't checked anything. A loach wouldn't get eaten that brisk so I say again check all you decor for hidding fish
My cichlids would eat each other. Look for their carcasses (if any) down those rocks!
Answers: No this is a very clear case of your Striped Raphael being a carnivore. That's your answer. Most Mbuna do not capture large enough to avoid any catfish with a big mouth and a catfish sort of act like an Oscar in many ways, that whether it can fit in it's mouth, it thinks, food!!
I had a defence like this happen just faster this year. I had a red tailed Asian Catfish along with an Albino channel cat. I kept them completely placated in terms of food, but go on leave and someone that isn't as familiar with feeding your fish.translates into eat fish. When we got back from Indonesia, I found all five of my prized juvenile Ps. Flavus gone, adjectives three of my very nice looking OB Malawi Peacocks gone, and a few cory cats too. Didn't take much to figure out how they go missing.
Just in case it's not the Raphael doing it outright, you enjoy to consider this too. You say Mbuna, but what species? MOST Mbuna are highly aggressive, but there are a few not so aggressive species. Without index or naming the species, it's hard to figure this out. Granted, a 55 gallon is a decent footprint to maintain the numbers you have, but if you don't know the gender of what you own, you have to remember this much. Males do not tolerate other males very well at adjectives. They are going to fight in a footprint that size, IF out of those 10, say you have 5-6 males. In a group of 10 like that, with a 55 gallon footprint, you could probably support 2 dominant males. Any other males that are weaker may not survive, so you can very in good health have a case of fighting, which cause stress and the weaker fish couldn't cope with that and died.
You take a tank resembling that, and have dead fish in the middle of the hours of darkness, that Raphael is going to devour that right away. As to the Loach, that doesn't sound like a luggage of the Raphael doing it, but clearly I think the reason your Africans are gone is the Raphael. The loach just may all right be hiding. You'd be amazed how they can hide and even play dead really good. Make certain you take all your decor out. Everything. And make certain it's really gone. If it's gone, I can only say this. Clown Loaches are a fish that does well surrounded by groups of it's own kind. It's possible the Loach, being a solo loach got stressed contained by your tank with Mbuna in near and didn't make it. How long did you acclimate the new fish and what is your water chemistry close to?
spooky! how is your tank covered? do you own a cat? is there enough room for some kind of other pet to get on top of the tank and catch fish?
otherwise the cichilds may be ingestion them.sure they don't SEEM agressive towards each other but u can't watch them 24 hours a daytime, u should research cichild behaviour, maybe they get agressive at hours of darkness (when your sleeping) or something. are the fish that have gone missing smaller than the rest of the fish? they are more likely to draw from eaten if they are the smaller ones.
also how's your filtering system set up? any providence the fish could accidentally swim up and get caught in your filtering system?
