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i was wondering what is the best lighting i can use to bring out the best color in my african chiclid 55g tank i have 7 of them and can i add more?

If you are refering to the tube lights there are some made especially for enhancing the colouring of fish but these are certainly not at the bottom of the scale as far as cost is concerned.
Sera do make a good variety but at a cost they are good lights and last up to two years when they should be replaced.
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Keith

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In my experience, the best way of bringing out colours in fishes is to feed them with a good variety of foodstuffs. In the case of my fishes, intermittent live foods plus colour enhancing foods do a sterling job of making my fishes look good regardless of what lighting they're under.

Now, before I can advise on what food combinations would work best with your fishes, I need some details. After all, the phrase 'African cichlids' covers a LARGE remit - something like 1,200 species at the last count!

So, are your fishes Rift Lake fishes or non-Rift Africans? Are they Malawi or Tnganyikan? Mbuna, Utaka or something else?

Details like this are important, because Mbuna need vegetable matter in the diet in quantity, while Aulonocara species (Malawi Peacocks) are more carnivorous, while Malawi Haps are piscivores in the wild and probably won't eat carotenoid-rich foods unless they're parcelled up in meaty pellets.

If you're keeping Mbuna, then one good way of boosting their colours is to prepare some fresh vegetables for them to eat, with minced carrot and a small amount of paprika included in the mix. If they're already used to eating celery tops and similar items, adding the minced carrot to the mix won't be problematic. In fact, minced carrot and paprika are two of the ingredients that used to be used in "colour flakes" because they're rich in carotenoids.

More carnivorous fishes can take their carrot and paprika either as colour flakes such as TetraRuby ColourPride, or wrapped up in a nice home made pellet of frozen Bloodworm.

Here's another factor to consider - is the lighting system at the front of your hood or the back? This has an effect upon fishes too. Mine is situated toward the front of the hood, and consequently my fishes are viewed by reflected light, which is the way that fishes should be viewed in my opinion if you want to see them at their best. If your light is situated toward the back of the hood, this is going to compromise their appearance no matter how much money you spend on expensive, specialised tubes. Try it as an experiment - set up your quarantine tank to receive a couple of fishes for the purpose, and compare their appearance when lit from the front of the hood and the back of the hood.

A combination of colour feeding and correct placement of your existing tube will probably improve your fishes' appearance considerably without you having to spend unnecessary capital on a tube that won't necessarily deliver the goods if it's sited incorrectly to begin with. Worse still, if this so-called 'colour enhancing' tube has the wrong spectral balance, it could cause more problems than it solves. I learned the hard way with this - my nursery aquarium for the Panda Corys was originally lit with an Aqua-Glo tube that was rated at 18,000 K. It looked good to start with, but then the problems started - first the dreaded cyanobacteria, then blanket weed. When I switched to a 6,500 K tube that was correctly rated for freshwater aquaria, the problems in this regard came to a halt. The 18,000 K tube, on the other hand, will come in handy if I am able to set up a marine aquarium, because that's the kind of spectral balance that keeps marine organisms happy.

I'd skip the 'vanity lighting' idea, move your existing tube to the front of the hood if it's currently stuck at the back (design of hood allowing of course - one of my gripes is the number of manufacturers who seem to think that the light should go at the back, and make their hoods without ANY provision for putting the light at the front - GRRR) and increase the variety of foodstuffs administered to your fishes. Certainly cheaper in the short run, and possibly so in the long run too.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Before we can answer if you can have more cichlids we need to know what is in there and how many of each species.
Keith and Cali have given you sound advice about colour of your fish.

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