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I would really appreciate anyones help. I have my 2 electric Yellow labs Arfrican cichlid (not sure on the rest of the specied type so lets just call him franklin) so Basically I have 4 cichlids. . . I just a 47 Gallon Tank on monday and I am ready to transfer over but I am afriad of my little guys being stressed and dying. can anyone help with this transition.



Heres my new tank. I am soo Proud!!!
or click here to view
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankvarela/136274490/

Hi..welcome. For starters: Believe me when I tell you, that I have moved my fish more times than I can count. We have a very large cichlid tank, with alot of "personalities" so, moving from time to time is a must. They are very hardy, and dont get very stressed, from what I have seen. It's the capture that is the hard part. If you use two nets, one to catch and one to "lead" then you should be ok. Move them one at a time, allow some time for the first to get acclimated, then move the second, and so on. They breath heavy for the first hour or so, just turn up your air supply. They will do fine. If the tank is established, and the readings are good, then you should have no problem. I usually throw in some food right after the move and that seems to quiet them down. At least they know they are not being hurt. Good luck, and let us know what happens.

Originally posted by juanvarela
. . .I am afriad of my little guys being stressed and dying. can anyone help with this transition.

Hi juanvarela, welcome to the forum!! Thorsmom's response is excellent, so I won't make it redundant by repetition; just wanted to drop a "welcome" note. Beautiful new aquarium! --Mark:cool:

i use to have dozens of african cichlids. They started in a 55 gal. - 3 yellow labs, 3 orange leleupis, masked brachardi, regular brachardi, red empress etc etc..- well the orange l's and yellow labs bred out of control so i had to move them to a 125g as i would have 100+ grown fish sooner then later. The way i made the switch is i had a plexi glass divider (home depot) to corner an x number of fish to catch instead of chasing them with nets for an hour (which is very stressfull) i also made sure the water quality and temp. were as accurate as possible in both tanks, added half of the recommended dosage of aquarium salt to the new tank(not saltwater fish salt) to ease the stress and left the light off and turned on a light in the room so the tank was very dim but they had enough light to explore. I brought most of those to the pet store after a year, kept my favorites for a 40 gallon tank, and switched them the same way, never had one die on me.

First thanks for the welcome. second and most of all my worries are a bit eased enough to be confident. thanks for the advice stories. it helped alot. I'll keep you posted. Tomorrow is D-day.

hi there! well, if u cant get the temps and hardness right, theres always another way of acclimating ur fish. the usual way i move my devils. put them in a nice clean clear plastic bag with ofcourse aquarium water then let it float on top of the new aquarium for 20-30 mins, open the bag and bleed some new aquarium water in little by little until the water in the bag doubles in size. then carefully releasing the water in the bag with the cichlid.

(on a side note, well this is the way i move my cichlids around. it causes a little stress but helps them get acclimated a lot. iunno if its a proper way or sumthing but it works out fine and never have i killed any of my cichlid.)

monday morning and everything is great. I even added 2 parrot chiclids and 2 oscars. i will post pic later tonight.

agian thank for the advice.