- Substrate
- Use crushed coral - about 2" is fine. You must rinse, and rinse, and rinse it prior to adding it to the tank.
- Rocks
- Try to provide as many rocks as you can in the tank. Consider saving yourself some money and buy them from a stone yard. I bought over 130 kilos of rocks for $8. There are many options for the placement of the rocks.
- Glue rock sections with silicone glue prior to placing them in the tank. This way you will have little sections you can simply lift when it comes time to vacuum the gravel.
- Or you can simply place the rocks on the bottom. Add small rocks first, then large and medium size rocks on top. This will provide a more stable base, and also give a more natural look.
- Plants
- Haps: Your main concern with haps is the fact that the water parameters of these tanks are unsuitable for many plants. I've had success with Amazon Swords, Java Moss, Java Fern, Anubias sp., and vassilenia.
- Mbuna: Plants become more difficult to keep due to their eating habit. A few hardy plants such as anubias and java fern have worked well for me.
- Filtration
- A good rule of thumb is using filtration that amounts to at least 6 times the amount of gallons your tank is. So if you have a 55 gallon tank, use at least 330 g/h of filtration. Of course, there is no such thing as "overfiltration"
- Another good idea is to strategically add powerheads in between the rocks in the tank, thus disallowing debris from settling in those hard to reach areas. In addition, having various currents in the tank mimics the natural environment of these fish.
- Lighting
- Lighting is not a factor for Malawi Cichlids, actually too much light might not be good for them. Anywhere from barley any light to 5 watts/gallon is fine. If you have 2 lights over the tank, you might even want to consider adding a blue actinic light, which will shed an interesting hue to the tank and your fish.
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