Thinkfish.co.uk

Posts: 9

Hi all,

So my Malawi tank of 25 has been reduced to 1. I'm not sure what happened, I don't think they liked the house move although I thought I had done everything right. I think changing from crushed coral substrate to sand may have had an impact even though I cleaned it as well as I could Sad

I've decided that I don't want to keep Malawis anymore (too expensive and too much effort) and wondered if there is anything else that would be compatible with my one remaining fish to keep him company until it's his time...?

Any help would be great! Thanks, Louise

Posts: 1881 Location: Teesside

When you changed your coral substrate for sand, did this cause changes to the hardness and pH of the tank water? Coral gravel is used to push them both up, so if your tapwater is lower on both hardness and pH than malawis like, this could have resulted in the conditions changing. Did you increase the amount of rift lake salt added to the tank to compensate for the loss of the coral?

Whatever the cause of the loss of the fish, the problem with mixing malawis is their need for water that few other fish can tolerate. If you chose new fish that need, or at least can tolerate, the same water conditions, it would restrict the fish you could add now, and in the future when the last malawi has died.

I have never kept rift lake cichlids (as my water is towards the soft end, and it's too much hard work to alter the hardness and pH) so I don't know how a single malawi fish would go with fish like mollies - this is one of the few non-rift lake species that are quite happy in hard alkaline water.

One other way round it would be to find a shop that would trade your last remaining malawi for other fish. How exactly you changed over would depend on exactly what you are doing to the tank water to make it suitable for malawis.
If you do nothing, just relying on your tapwater being very hard and alkaline, then you could go straight away to other types of fish that like your tapwater eg livebearers.
If you add salts to make the tank water suitable, you need to remove the salts before getting more fish. A complete water change would do this, preferably a couple. But it would mean you couldn't get more fish straight after taking the malwai into a shop, so you'd have to add ammonia to the tank in the meantime to keep the filter bacteria alive.

Whether you go for a complete change, or keep the malawi and get compatible fish, don't add a lot at once. Your filter bacteria will have dropped to the number needed for the waste from one fish. The first addition should only be one third the size of the malawi to be safe from this point of view. Or the size of the malawi plus another third if you take the malawi out.