December - Hill Country Cichlid Club

14
I acquired my “group” of fish in November 2007. I
say group, but it was only four individuals. This is
a species I had been chasing for a number of years
and was always near the top of my “must have” list.
I was appreciative to obtain them, but will admit
only having four individuals made me feel a little
nervous. I was unsure of how to maintain them so
this really didn’t give me very much room for error.
The fish had just been released from the mother
about 7 days previous to them coming into my possession
and were extremely tiny. When I first gazed
into the bag I couldn’t even see the fry at all. I
poured the contents of the bag into a coffee cup
hoping it would be easier to see them. I made out 4
sets of tiny black eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.
I am not a scientist and the idea of playing chemist
with water parameters had me a bit anxious. The
key factor I was trying to determine was the salt
content of the water. I had a couple of weeks to
prep and enrolled the help of my fellow fish geek,
Nick Andreola, to figure out how I was going to set
the tank up. The actual physical setup was easy. I
prepared a 113 liter long as I would for any other
cichlid I had maintained. I used a slightly oversized
hang on the back filter and because I knew the fish
were small I used a sponge over the intake tube to
keep from siphoning them up into it. I employed
pool filter sand as the substrate and dotted it with
several medium size pieces of holey rock and tied in
some artificial silk plants. These fish are accustomed
to warm water, so I submerged a heater into
the tank and set the thermostat for 23C. I filled the
tank with water and looked at the volume of water
and said to myself, “now what?” I had done as
much research as possible on the specific waterways
these fish were found and as I mentioned earlier it
varies wildly. Even if I had exact readings, I had no
idea how that would actually be executed in the
tank. Nick was on the case though. I had total confidence
he would figure this out for me. He called
me to discuss and after listening to him explain in
great detail; I had no idea what he was talking
about. I don’t think Stephen Hawking would know
what he was talking about! He had a mouthful of
equations and numbers and you need this measuring
device and oh by the way do you have access to an
electron smasher? Maybe I added the last part, but
this was giving me a headache. If these fish can’t
survive in my tank how in the heck will they avoid
disappearing in the wild? I hung up with Nick and
told him I would call him later after I absorbed his
information. Hopefully he isn’t still sitting by the
phone. It took a little longer than it should have, but
I decided to reach out to the few other hobbyists I
knew of, who had kept them to uncover their maintenance
secretes. I asked three people and got three
different answers. One of them kept them in pure
freshwater, another said a large soup spoon of salt
per gallon, and the other said a small palm worth
per gallon. Great, what are your local tap water
conditions, what size are the soup spoons in Europe,
and how big are your hands? After fretting over
this for a couple of weeks I decide I will use a soup
spoon worth of salt per gallon. I went to grab a
spoon from the drawer and my wife asked what I
was doing. I went into great detail to demonstrate
how smart I was and I was using this spoon to salt
the tank. “You are not using one of my nice spoons
for your tanks” was her reply. She handed me a tablespoon
from an old cutlery set and said I could
have that one. So after weeks of research and discussion
I am using a tablespoon per gallon of salt.