l numbers and tropheus

hi there just wondering if anyone has any L numbers in a tropheus tank?

as i would like to add some to mine. but im unsure if any L numbers can survive in the tropheuss water parameters. the P.H is at 8.2.

your help in this is appreciated

my honest and open opinion is please do not do this. The rift lakes cichlids thrive under such different conditions and hard water, that the Ls just would not like it and suffer in the long term. My arguement is, sure it might work, like putting a polar bear with a brown bear, but in the long term just not fair to the Ls as they like acidic water and different conditions. cheers jk :thumbup:
PS why not add synodontis to your tank ?

thanks for that bigbird

i thought that it would have been the case. i was just hoping that in the vast number of L numbers that atleast one would have the same or need similar water parameters to that of the tropheus.

looks like i will have to invest in a new tank then

Hi all,
Bigbird is right, the water in Lake Tanganyika is about as far as you can get from the water the L numbers live in. I'll ignore the difficulties of keeping other fish with Tropheus, and just concentrate on dKH/dGH the carbonate buffering and general hardness, a measure of the amount of alkalinity in the water.

Tropheus have evolved in water which is stable in temperature and extremely hard and alkaline, you can really think of Lake Tanganyika as much more like a marine environment than a freshwater one. It is almost infinitely buffered against pH change.

Some plecs, like L204, are collected from the Andes piedmont, where the water sometimes has a pH well above pH7, but even then the water is poor in all salts and buffering.

People keep the Common Bristlenose in with Malawi's, sometimes successfully, but the water for Tropheus is an order of magnitude harder again.

cheers Darrel

I wouldnt put any fansty plecos with trophs. I keep several colonys and I have put bushynose with them but they have eaten the bristles off my BN. I keep my trophs at 76-78 and thats much cooler than I keep most my L# Plecos. I keep mostly hypans for plecos so if your going to go with a pleco for a troph tank I would think maybe a bigger L200 might hold up but I would recomend not using pleco in troph tanks.

flash plecs have one of the highest ph environments naturally... but most plecs will adapt to their new water as long as its done slowly....

134's have been bred in water with ph > 8.... so if they are breeding in it then they must be happy in it....

never kept tropheus so i really cant advise from experience

For me it is dead simple question did nature put them in the same water answer No.
Why do you wish to do it?
Why do you wish to dictate natures choice?

:yes: agree with Bob :thumbup:

Hi all,

flash plecs have one of the highest ph environments naturally... but most plecs will adapt to their new water as long as its done slowly....134's have been bred in water with ph > 8.... so if they are breeding in it then they must be happy in it....

Click to expand...

I'm think this is true and I know it is the value that we tend to use, but I don't think that pH (on its own) really tells us very much.

The rivers flowing through the foothills of the Andes (where L204 comes from) can have a high pH, and are relatively high conductivity. There are some water parameters in "Catfish Atlas: v. 1, Hans-Georg Evers & Ingo Seidel"
.
But this water is still light years away from the hardness and alkalinity of lake Tanganyika. The problem is with what pH actually means. pH is only one measure of the water, and it measures a slightly strange parameter, that is the ratio of alkaline (hydrogen ion acceptors) and acid ions (hydrogen ion donors).

This is the important bit, pH only tells us the ratio, not the amount of ions or the degree of buffering.

This means you can have soft water with very little buffering and a high pH (this is what you get when the water companies add NaOH to soft tap water, often temporarily giving you pH8) and you can have extremely hard water that is both infinitely buffered and mineral rich, and they are very different if you are a fish.

cheers Darrel

thanks guys for the comments.

i have a couple of plecos in my tang tank that have been going really well for nearly a year now. the two plecos are a common sailfin and an albino sailfin.

so all i was wondering was if i could have any of the other l numbers out there to introduce into my display tank. i didnt hold much hope of this happening but i thought i would ask anyway

I am confused, do you now have a new display tank or are you again talking about the tang tank ? cheers jk :thumbup:

bigbird said:

I am confused, do you now have a new display tank or are you again talking about the tang tank ? cheers jk :thumbup:

Click to expand...

sorry it is still the same display tank

no room for anymore tanks that size (6x2x2) in my unit unfortunately

if i may say, why do you then still ask the question what other Ls you can place in this tank, if we all stated do not do this ?
African tanks and American tanks are different. Do not mix these up, as in nature you would not find this as well.
Why do it ? Sure a polar bear can live with a brown bear but eventually it does not work. You asked for our advice and all stated do not do it, so dont.
I honestly would feel sorry for any L that you add to any African tank, it is cruel. cheers jk :thumbup: