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I have one large (~5" Aulonocara baenschi male, and a similarly sized female. I have been looking around for compatible fish and my LFS has gotten in a couple of similarly sized Labidochromis caeruleus "Electric Yellow" fish. I do not know whether they are male or female, they are nearly identical and nicely colored.

I'm curious to know whether these two types of Malawi cichlid are compatible?

The second question: Alternately, I'm looking at Aulonocara nyassae "Blue Peacock" to put into the tank if these Electric Yellow won't work; the only problem is that I would be ordering them off of the internet, and will doubtless end up with fish significantly smaller than my current Peacock; thus I will have to raise them in a smaller tank until they are large enough to claim their own territory and defend themselve. Am I correct in thinking this, or will 1-2" Blues be safe with my big Peacock?

I have a small school (7) of Tiger Barbs as dither fish, as well as some (4) large Silver Tip Tetras and I keep feeder fish stocked in the tank on a regular basis.


I thank you guys in advance for your advice; I am eager to put some color in the tank, but I don't want a repeat of my Red Zebra episode

Ok, the yellow labs would be alright with the peacocks however you must consider the tank setup. 1st of all how large is the tank. If you want to keep both these fish then you will have to have enough room to have alot of hiding places for the labs and plenty of open space for the peacock to swim freely.

If you go the peacock route then a 1"=lunch, 2"fish should be alright but no gaurantees, something a little larger would br preferred.

Lastly you have an odd mix of fish. The water conditions are different for the rift lake cichlids than most other ecosystems. You should be able to pull it off and have healthy fish but you might want to consider doing some research and deciding what best suites your tank.

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates-
I happen to have become a philosopher

It's a 55 gallon tank that these are going in, which I understand is a bit small, but should be fairly manageable if I keep the number of hiding places high and the number of large fish low. I think I read somewhere that the maximum should be 4 large fish in this tank, and 12 medium sized fish.

There are currently a fair amount of hiding places, mostly made from garden pots, but the only things using them right now are my apple snails and the occasional Peacock.

I am tempted to just take the large Peacocks back to the LFS and start over with all Blue Peacocks, several of them.

As for the odd mix of fish, I'm taking out the Silver Tips, as they are not the most active fish I've seen, and they stay right at the top of the tank. Dependant upon what I find that is attractive at LFS's, I may change the barbs as well.

Oh yes, the water conditions: I have around 45 pounds of aragonite in the bottom of the tank and I keep the water temperature 79-80*, and not much else worth noting. I have the filter and heater that came with the tank kit, which I intend soon to addon a nice 300W heater and an Emperor 400 filter. That should take care of inadequate filtration as well as heating.