Earlier this year I attempted to create a 20 gallon long aquascape for these six Neolamprologus
multifaciatus or mulities that my co-workers Zenzo gave me and today it looks like this
so let's talk about the pros and cons I've learned since keeping this fish for the past
six months and whether or not they're worth it now Zenzo mailed me these fish from his personal
collection at a time when next day shipping was ridiculously high so I would say the cost and the
stress of sending live fish to the mail was just like straight up not worth it and actually a few
months later I actually happened to see them at my local fish store dope and they think that I think
they're currently retailing about 15 to 25 each which is still really high if you want to get a
group of six of them so maybe if the cost is like lower or you're able to get them on the cheap from
a local aquarium society like auction yeah I would still consider getting them appearance wise they
don't have a lot going for them in my opinion I mean yes they do have that really pretty blue eye
and that classic cichlid shape but otherwise that light light gray body with the vertical striping
doesn't really contrast much with the light color substrate I have them on which is aragonite sand
so you know of course we all know that I'm not getting these for their appearance though but for
their awesome behavior where to start I would say they were a little bit shy at first in fact they
kind of hovered around their shells didn't seem to do much but then as the population increase
they became more and more outgoing and now you can see they're ouch all the time so I guess
it says the adage goes the more the merrier they are of course territorial you know guarding their
shells and their babies but not too aggressive like I've seen them go after each other but not
a lot of actual fin damage resulting from that definitely lots and lots of construction like
they're constantly all the adults are taking these giant mouthfuls of sand or whatever debris and
then spitting it out elsewhere where they choose and in fact for most of the time when I've owned
this tank they had this giant hill on the left side that blocked everything uh from view from
the front which is why I did some redesigning of my own which we'll talk about in a second
um but the surprising thing to me was I needed the adults would do a lot of construction but
I had no idea that juveniles actually they will they can't pick up very much sand so they'll pick
up one grain of sand and then spit it out and I was like oh my goodness they're already getting
into interior decorating so I thought that was super cute as for food I think they prefer mostly
slowly sinking foods that eventually lead up on the ground but as you can see I just fed them and
so they have been trained to go up to the surface and really they'll eat almost anything so I kind
of rotate them through a diet of frozen mini blood worms brine shrimp and daphnia prepared foods
such as freeze-dried versions of those community pellets fish flakes I mean they'll eat anything
it's really the fry I'm mostly concerned about where they prefer the tiny foods that will kind
of gently waft into their shells while they're too small and not brave enough to come out so this I
just fed easy fry and small fish food really any kind of powdered fried food Hikari First Bites
Repashy gel food in its like raw powder form as well as frozen um rotifers live baby brine shrimp
all that they'll be happy to eat I would say once they become juveniles yeah that's when they'll
become braver about leaving their shells and then they'll eat just like the adults will the adults
tend to I would say hog all the food so again that's when the smaller foods spreading around the
tank really really helps with grow their growth as for breeding I think I have one alpha male and
five females or maybe there's a beta male hiding in there somewhere but it's pretty much like live
bears at least in my experience you just add water food and in their case shells I've never actually
seen them do the deed but basically apparently the female will lay her eggs in a shell she'll
kind of do this shimming courtship dance to the male entice them in he will fertilize the eggs and
then at that point he's kind of done and she is mainly the main one responsible for defending the
eggs and the fry as well once they come out once they hatch and are starting to eat which is really
really cool I think for me it was about probably a month after I first got my uh adults / older
juvenile fish from Zenzo and that's when I saw my first batch of fry and they were probably there
even earlier but again the population was so small that they were mostly staying within the shells
but I can't even imagine the exciting enjoy I felt when I saw this cloud of baby shell dwellers just
everywhere I was like so amazing and yes the moms will um defend their fry and their batch of shells
that area from other moms and the dad so try to keep the shells kind of further apart as far
as possible just so that they feel kind of more comfortable and there's a little less bickering
now because they don't like to predate on their own young I was really worried about population
control because like what happens if I make hundreds of these things and then I don't
want to flood my local market with shell dwellers because I feel like they're not that popular of a
fish compared to guppies let's say and what do I do with all these extra fish but really it ended
up being um the case kind of like pest snails you hear of that where the population stabilizes
once you only feed a certain amount of food and the population will grow to that amount right
so when there's not enough food to go around I think the adults are less likely to breed and
then not all the fry are gonna survive because they're going to be out competed by the adults
and the juveniles going after the food so once the juveniles grow bigger and then I net them out and
give them to my local fish store or whatnot then then the adults are more likely to breed again
the newborns more of them are going to survive and the cycle just kind of continues on and on
now probably what all of you have been waiting for me to talk about is what in the world happened to
the aquascape so I clearly underestimated their construction abilities like they weren't strong
enough to move the heavy rocks themselves but they would dig near and then like right next to
the rock and underneath them and then that would cause the rocks to shift and sink and then move
basically and so what I decided to do is take all the rocks put them in the back of the tank and
then really bury them all the way to the bottom uh touching the glass of the tank just so now
they can't dig underneath and move the rocks that way and that's why all the rocks right now look
like they're a lot shorter than they were before but hopefully that will prevent them from moving
the rocks again secondly I really didn't like that giant mountain of sand on the left side
that was blocking my view and that's because I had on the left side of the tank some shells
in the back so they would dig around that and spit up all the sand in the front versus on the
right side of the tank where I had the shells in the front of the tank they spit the sand toward
the back of the tank so that's why I ended up moving all the shells so they're in the front
of the tank and hopefully that will prevent any more visibility issues I'll let you know
as for the plants all of my beautiful floating water sprite died and I think they just didn't
like the high pH and GH and the conditions of a Lake Tanganyika cichlid and so when they melted I
got you know an infestation of blue-green algae which I ended up having to treat in this other
video but yeah I ended up just taking everything out and then I put pothos in it which where the
stem and the roots are growing in the water but then the leaves are outside of the water
so then I didn't have to have the aquarium light on as often and that meant a lot of the algae in
the tank ended up dying which was really good I've recently started putting in some of the
excess red root floaters from my 20 gallon high into this tank so I'll let you know how it goes
I definitely am enjoy the challenge of owning my first ever African cichlids ever and then
now that I've kind of rearranged things a little bit hopefully now I'll actually be
able to see them and enjoy all their quirky little behaviors if you missed how beautiful
this tank used to look definitely check out the previous video over
here otherwise take time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see in the next video