PlanetCatfish.com

I am going to be setting up a 300 gal. tank of African Cichlids & would like some advice as to what different species,& how many of each catfish to introduce to this tank.

you could get a shoal of african glass catfish. they are really... Cool looking.
or, you could get upside down catfish. 300 galons is alot of water!

Ooooor, you could be adventureous and try a Red tailed catfish. They grown upwards of a meter but they are super cool.

Are planning a Malawi or Tanganyika set up? Also, what water parameters are you aiming for?
-Shane

good thinking, Shane.

when people are talking "African cichlids", nine out of ten times they talk about Rift cichlids.

I am planning a Tanganyika setup.I already have frontosas,calvus & cyp.lepto's that I might want to start with.I was thinking of maybe adding synodotis(not sure which ones yet) I think it would support more varieties of cats but I would like some interesting or uncommon types .Any suggestions would be helpful.It would also be nice if they were types that have been bred in aquarium situations as this is the end of the hobby I am most interested in.

I would rethink your wishlist if I were you!

you got a natural predator-prey combination in there: Cyphotilapia frontosa and Cyprichromis spp.

90-95% of the prey eaten by frontosa is Cyprichromis (!!), and you can count on it that this instinct will not be suppressed in captivity......

now you might think: how does slow, lumbering frontosa gets to catch one of the fastest fish in the hobby? simple: just wait till it sleeps and suck it up like scaly spaghetti noodles.....
frontosa's are truly magnificent hunters and extremely good at sneaking up on prey during dusk and dawn. when almost any other cichlid is still torpid or getting so; it's frontosa rock-hour.
they'll glut themselves and empty your wallet while they're at it.


As for Synodontis:
is this a showtank or a breeding tank? you can't have both.
either you breed Syno's in wich case you can keep hosts if you want to breed the multipunctatus or you set up a speciestank with marble-traps and separate egg- and fry-tanks if you want to breed petricola's or "polli White" from Zambia. those 3 are the only Tanganyikan Syno's that are bred on a regular base. The Goldeneye is a variety of the multipynctatus and breeds as such, the granulosus is AFAIK bred once by an English guy and he uses many tanks. not with other fish in there according to Graham. just tanks with grany's. separated individually.

so it's a showtank.
then you might think about getting a more mellow type of Syno instead of those "shallow water hyperactive types" like S multipunctatus. this species is THE most active Syno in the Lake and also the one that lives closest to the surface.
wich makes sense: all its' natural hosts live in very shallow water (1-3m/3-9ft); Ctenochromis horei, Simochromis spp, Ophtalmotilapia spp, Astatotilapia spp.

S petricola, S polli, S "polli White" (= S sp 2) and even better S dhonti (a bigger very easy going fish) and the famous S granulosus share habitat with C frontosa.

seds wrote:you could get a shoal of african glass catfish. they are really... Cool looking.
or, you could get upside down catfish. 300 galons is alot of water!

Ooooor, you could be adventureous and try a Red tailed catfish. They grown upwards of a meter but they are super cool.

Yeah, that'll do for the first couple of years, and then the owner will be looking to get a 3000gallon+ pond that is able to keep a minimum temperature of 20'C/72'F... They grow to a meter.

300 US gallon = 1140 liter - if that tank is 2L x 1L x 1L, which is a fairly common way to do it, it'll be: 165 x 82 x 82 cm. A 100cm long fish would be VERY large in that tank, don't you think? [But it's more likely that it's 210 x 70 x 70 cm - which makes it worse, as the short side is further to short...]

--
Mats

Thanks for the heads up on my wish list. Right now I have 5 fronts (6in.), 15 Cyps.(4-5in.)all in the same tank with no problem but the future looks like it could be dangerous for the cyps. if you are correct.
As for the idea that you can not have a display tank and a breeding setup at the same time depends on your perspective.I am heavily into my clubs breeders award program,in the program you only need to have a few successful spawns of a species to be awarded the points.So my idea is to set up a breeding tank,work to get a few spawns then transfer the appropriate # of resulting fish to the display tank when they are of a safe size(sorry if I did not make this clear at the start).Do you think this aproach sounds OK?
As far as the larger fish are concerned I prefer to stick with smaller sizes & larger #'s if that will work.The largest being my fronts.provided I can find enough interesting & breedable tank mates.