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Hello.
I've got a 55 gallon tank and I'd like to know what fish would get along well with this species. My lfs has a large selection and I've been wanting to get them for over a year now, but I'm still a little unsure about the other fish that will be in the tank with them. The nice lady at my lfs pointed out a few -really- cute whitish shell-dwellers to me, but I forgot to write down what they were. I'll probably post the name soon. I've also seen some really neat bottom-dwelling fish (don't know if they're cichlids or not) that constantly pick up sand and spit it back out. Do any of you know what these fish might be, and whether they can be kept with the fish I want?
Right now I've got the tank set up for a convict. It's got the Aquaclear filter that's made for a tank sixty gallons or larger and a Whisper filter that's the correct one for a tank this size. I'm going to change my regular gravel to sand, or maybe the kind of substrate that's used in planted tanks, and load it up with rocks and driftwood. Is there anything else I should do?


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Cake or death?

First of all, are you keeping a convict in the tank, are you? Convicts aren't very good tankmates for alto.s. They have different water conditions (SA vs. African) and convits are very mean. Also, driftwood and plants are not good ideas for an African tank. Driftwood will lower the ph and plants will probably die, although some will work. I would not worry about flouite, becasue there is not a large range of plants you can keep. Most likely, you will be using rocks as your main decorations. Therefore, I would decorate with crushed coral, or something that would raise the ph. Filters are more than fine. I'm not sure of the bottom-dweller thing. It was probably an african chichlid judging by the rock thing. They do that alot. You could probably have almost any shelldweller, as well as Julies. I'm gussing that calvus would work too. They are probably not labeled as such, so you'll have to do alittle homework to see what they look like. I have a nice thread in this foruum that could answer some of you questions.

Best of luck and welcome to FP
- DJ :88)

Hey again.
No, the con won't be housed in this tank. He's already in his own tank and I'm just trying to decide -exactly- what I want to do before I start anything.
I think I'm gonna go with the crushed coral, and I'm not gonna have any driftwood in the tank. I want to get the shell dweller cichlid (yes, after doing some research, I've realized that the fish I want -is- a cichlid) that has its older fry help take care of the new fry. I've been looking and looking, but I can't figure out what species does this. I heard about them a while ago. Are they real?
Any suggestions on what I should include or exclude from my tank, decor- or fish-wise?
Thanks.


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Cake or death?

If your going to get calvus. you should have sand lots of rocks. Some plants will wok but you will have to research which ones. Some good tankmates for calvus are brichardi, lelupli, julies, maybe cyprochromis, and some other lamprogines. You do need to make sure though that nothing you get is an agressive eater as calvus are very timid. sorry for some of the bad name spelling

Hey. Thanks for the reply. I'll post pictures after the tank is redone and then again after I start adding fish.

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Cake or death?