picture of our 150 gallon rubbermaid feeding bin, housing 6 goldfish

~ The Lone Cichlid ~

Size (US Gallons): 18 (20 gallon "long")
Material: all glass
Lighting: one 20 watt fluorescent bulb
Filtration:  one Whisper wet/dry 3000 (garage sale), and 1 very slim power filter (I forgot the name)
Substrate: dolomite mixed with medium-fine quartz aquarium gravel
Plants: some java fern, a few plastic plants also
Fish: one big fat male Pseudotropheus friebergi
Maintenance:  50% water changes infrequently (hey, there is only one fish in there...).  Filter media is rinsed in a bucket of old tank water, and gravel is vacuumed where possible.

Notes:

January 21, 2001

I "took the plunge" in 1996, when I bought my first bag of 6 little clearish fish, labelled "Pseudotropheus freibergi".  I had been thinking about starting an african cichlid tank, and we had just bought a 55 gallon tank from a friend.  I saw the fish at a TFCB auction, and looked the species up in a book during the meeting.  It looked like a pretty fish - radiant bright blue with black stripes.  I decided to go for it.

We set the tank up and added some slate rocks for cover.  The six fish adjusted to our water, and grew quickly.  After about 6 months, they had colored up nicely.  It looked like I had 3 males and 3 females.  We added 6 Julidochromis transcriptus to the tank later, and they all seemed to co-exist well.  That was the golden age, before I mastered the art of over-crowding.  Sigh!

Anyway... Of the 6, I gave two away to a friend, hoping she would breed them.. I lost one due to aggression from other fish, and I still have 3.  This male is by far the largest.  The other two are about 3" long, and are living with our juvenile Synodontis.  I'm not sure if both are female, or if one is a sub-dominant male.  I'm hoping one is a female, but she is very sickly and thin - not really "sick", just failing to thrive.  She looks as if nobody ever told her to start eating again after her last brood..  I hope she recovers.  I separated this male from the other two so that he wouldn't harass the sick female.  Alone, even the most aggressive cichlid seems to turn into a mopey, depressed and reclusive fish.  This guy eats well, but otherwise he just sits around on the bottom.  I've seen this behavior with Geophagus braziliensis, and several other species of cichlid.  They just can't stand solitary confinement.

Eventually, my goal is to fatten up the other female and coax these two into breeding.  We'll see - she's just a whisper of a fish right now.

We feed this fish Tetra Bits ("color bits") and tropical fish flakes.  Occasionally, he gets frozen green peas (shelled), or frozen or freeze-dried bloodworms.

Here are some photos of the fish.  Click on any photo for a larger view.  These pictures were taken in the fall of 2000:
 
(He is a reclusive fish and my photos all came out crummy this time around - I'll be adding a good photo soon!)

These photos were all taken with our Nikon Cookpix 990 digital camera (scaled down and compressed for the web).  Feel free to write to me for more information or with any comments. Please do not copy or use these photos without contacting me for permission first.  Thanks!