# Why do I have such bad luck with Cyps??



## crazyravr (Sep 11, 2003)

I got a colony of Utintas lats year (20 fish) and after a month I was only left with 5. Last week I decided to give it another go and got a colony of 35 Utintas, I am today left with 30. They are in a tank of their own (125G). There is nothing in there to stress them yet they hang with heads down, only couple of males swimming around and the ones that dies turned very pale and I find them on the bottom of the tank... what gives ?!?!?!? I have kept many many different types of fish and Cyps are the only ones that are giving me problems. I currently have 3 - 125G tanks going, doing the same water changes, same system, same water, everything is the same. The water params are similiar in all my tanks.. I dont understand.

Anyone else has similiar luck? Anyone knows what i could do? There is nothing in the tank but white sand (as in all of my tanks) couple of plants and the cyps.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

In these cases, the devil is usually in the details of how you approach this fish.

E.g. in the 125g, what other species is in there and describe the layout of rock in the aquarium. If you have nothing but plants and white sand, then I would look no further (honestly).

IME, Cyps drop dead if you try to keep them like minnows. When I add slate to the back wall of the aquarium (huge pieces that run from floor to near the top) and they are placed at a 60 to 75 degree angle, the Cyps go crazy and breed me out of house and home.

When there is no rock, I get jumpers and mystery deaths.

If you have good vertical structures, then what does your water change routine look like? What other fish are in there, etc.


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## crazyravr (Sep 11, 2003)

There are no other fish in the tank... NONE just the cyps.

I had two rock piles in each end of the tank all the way up (thats how I cover my eheim intakes) but I took that out after I saw most of the fish hiding behind them next day and after having to fish dead fish out of there.

I change my water like in any of my other tanks once a week about 40%.

Seems that tropheus are easier to keep than these guys.


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## triscuit (May 6, 2005)

Some fish are more sensitive to chemical variables as well. Do you use a dechlorinator? What are your water parameters? What do you have for filtration/aeration? What frequency and methods do you use for water changes? 
I agree with #6 that you do need more structure in the tank if there is none.


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## triscuit (May 6, 2005)

crazyravr said:


> I had two rock piles in each end of the tank all the way up (thats how I cover my eheim intakes) but I took that out after I saw most of the fish hiding behind them next day and after having to fish dead fish out of there.


Alright, I'm going to pick on you a bit: Your fish were hiding and showing signs of stress, so you took away their hiding spot? :roll:


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

Triscuit, I used to live in Mississauga as did many Cyp owners and although I insisted Prime was necessary, I knew of one guy who never used that... so I agree that we could look into some details about water chemistry, but I'm going to go with my gut and knowledge of Mississauga tap and jump ahead 

Crazy... yup... the fish hated the tank and were hiding... rock piles aren't good. Head out to one of the local landscaping places and get the really thin big pieces of slate at 20 cents per pound. No more lost Cyps...


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## crazyravr (Sep 11, 2003)

And just lean the slate on the back glass?

I use Prime as my dechlorinator. I use python no spill... from the tap into the tank and add prime, just like all my other tanks. I added the rock back into the tank for now and monday I will get some slate and see what that does.


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## Demasonian (Oct 23, 2005)

Hey - Just to cover all the bases here, is your tank completely cycled? Adding 35 fish is quite a large increase in bioload if all you had in there previously were five fish...What are your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate readings?


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

crazyravr said:


> And just lean the slate on the back glass?
> 
> I use Prime as my dechlorinator. I use python no spill... from the tap into the tank and add prime, just like all my other tanks. I added the rock back into the tank for now and monday I will get some slate and see what that does.


I wouldn't have bothered with the rocks and just waited for the slate... the chaos of rock placement is not worth it IMHO.

Add the slate asap and then leave the tank alone. Pay close attention to the water movement and oxygenation of the tank and they should be fine.

IF the filtration of the tank does not break the surface of the aquarium, add a bubbler... other than the rock shelters, the other Cyp killer is insufficient water movement/aeration IME.

Hope this all helps.


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## aroussel (Mar 5, 2003)

Demasonian had a good point. 35 fish is alot to put in a tank at one time. But then again, we are talking about a 125g tank. What if you you had put in 10, wait a week or so, then added 10 more, and so forth? Just reaching here, but thought it was a good point.


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## crazyravr (Sep 11, 2003)

The tank is well cycled. Its been set up for over 3 years and untill the day before I got the cyps in there I had a colony of 13 WC Mpimbwe fronts.

Again.... I have never have any problem with any of the fish I keep or kept in the past except for these ****** cyps lol.


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## punman (Oct 24, 2003)

I don't consider myself an expert but I have kept Utintas for one year. I started with juveniles last fall and they started breeding at Christmas.
I started with 13 and lost three or four along the way. I don't really have any advice other than to say that they are temperamental.
Mine spawn less often than most cichlids and the infant mortality rate seems higher. The group may seem fine and then a fish wastes away suddenly and is gone. Luckily I have not had massive deaths.
I have had tropheus, frontosas, featherfins, but these seem the most challenging so far.
I seem to get a high proportion of males in my spawns too. I'd like a few more females.


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## goldoccie21 (Jun 15, 2008)

whats the ph and the gh, *** had my cyps for about a year and they seem bullet proof. have malasas and utintas, sometimes nitrates get a bit high but you could never tell, the cyps dont seem to care. i've bred delta guppies that if the nitrates went above 5ppm the finnage would melt.
my point is that everybody says lower gh and ph are ok. my water out of the tap is 8.6 ph and gh is above 300ppm. see if one of your parameters is off its ok but then everything should be perfect. like an equation balance has to be perfect. let them hide its sucks to lose expensive fish, ur case i would say at least 10 bucks a fish. and one thing i was told is don't drip acclimate,
more undo stress, float 15 and net out its less stress than sitting in a small container for a while.
not saying you did that. im no expert on cyps but i have bought 40 this year and no loses, except for them eating their babies.


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

I'm curious to hear how the slate works. I'm doing cyps in my 125G later this year and had not realized they need structure near the surface. Paracyps, yes. But never heard that about cyps. It seems to me if you lean slate against the glass (like a lean-to?) at a 60 degree angle, it will take up half of the substrate?

I'm working on the aquascaping now, so it's good timing to include this in my plan.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

60 will eat into the tank some, so do 75 degrees if it works better for you.

Males take up residence in front of a bit of slate to show their stuff and females get to escape behind... both Jumbos and non-jumbos seem to really appreciate the vertical structures. 
Holding females always shoot behind the rock work for shelter!

You can get the gist of my Cyp setups from my avatar. I overlap the slate some and it creates a neat surface for the Cyps to use.


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## triscuit (May 6, 2005)

I've had excellent luck with both my WC Chituta Bay cyps (4 years now) and their many generations of offspring. The wilds are in a 55 gallon tank with a concrete DIY background, a massive colony of multifaciatus, and always a pair or pairing gobies. It's an active crazy show tank, but they still breed like crazy.

I started with 10 WC, and after 2 years, the outcast male died... he'd be chased behind the filter too many times I guess. After 3.5 years, my largest female didn't recover her weight after spawning, and died a few weeks later. I suspect old age. I still have the other 8, and I've added back in 6 of their offspring.

I have a 40 gal growout for cyps that I can't keep from breeding prolifically, and a 40 gal long tank that I have a specific breeding project involving 10 F1 cyps. All three tanks have lots of bottom structure, but the 2 40s have nothing taller than half the tank height. None of the tanks have slate.

So, my best advice is:

1. Stop assuming that if one fish is fine, that so must the next one be. Look for water parameters that fronts may be totally fine with, but will adversely affect cyps. Do a full suite of water tests: pH GH KH NO3 NO2 NH3. Report back with the numbers. 
2. Keep using Prime. Municipalities can change their water treatment regime instantly and will not warn you if they decide to add a bunch of chloramine to combat bacterial growth they've just discovered. 
3. Check your cyp source. If you are getting bad stock from 1 supplier, , it might make sense that you've had trouble twice. Fish raised in non-ideal conditions will be more prone to stress and disease.

HTH


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

I do use the Pangea in-tank backgrounds that give a rock effect with nooks and crannies. The one in the 125G is very "3D". But really nothing for the females to "get behind" up at the surface. I'll see what I can come up with. Maybe some slate propped on the back ledges of the rockpiles? To go from middle to top? Hmmm.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

If you are going with pangea backgrounds, those will work absolutely fine.

I'd hate to wreck the look of that with slate... instead I would give the females shelter down below in the form of tall rocks.

As triscuit mentions, you can give Cyps a restful set of structures without even going as high as half way up the tank. With a pangea background behind, I doubt the Cyps would need much more.

Triscuit, I've bought repeatedly from the same source. It's not the source... of that I'm positive.

It may be some obscure water parameter as you mention, but I really think it comes down to incorrect tank layout. Even that's no certainty though as I've heard of Cyps breeding in absolutely bare tanks...

the devil on this one will be in the tiny details!


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## Chestermere (Mar 24, 2007)

I have to agree with Triscuit my group of 30 or so are doing fine in a tall 65 just a little sand on the bottom, 2 fake plants and a couple breeding huts for the synondontis if they are not suffering from aggression I would make the water parameters a top priority


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## crazyravr (Sep 11, 2003)

Here are my water params...

nitRITE - 0ppm
nitRATE - 20ppm
ammonia - 0.10ppm
PH - 8.0

This is what I more or less (other then the PH for soft water fish) I get as results of all my tanks with weekly water changes. Could it be that the person who had the fish before me had the PH way lower then this?

Should I try to do a huge water change tomorrow when I get the slate and take out the lime rock and maybe put in some drift wood to lower the PH a bit? I dont want to stress the fish even more...

I already lost 10 fish... this sucks.


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## goldoccie21 (Jun 15, 2008)

Lower ph? why would you do that? leave the ph, alone plus dont lower it!! get your slate and why don't you try an ion exchange resin to scavenge the Nitrogenous waste while your filters catch up, put it in after the bio media as insurance against ammonia. Lake Tanganyika ph averages 8.4. small water changes till nitrates drop. After everything cools off then worry about the ph. My opinion. :wink:


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

Where did that ammonia reading come from? Maybe that's your problem?


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## prov356 (Sep 20, 2006)

> ammonia - 0.10ppm


The smoking gun. Why is your ammonia elevated in a well cycled 3 year old tank? Even .1ppm can kill fish. My focus would be on taking care of that and leaving the decor and everything else alone, especially the pH.

You'll probably ask why only the cyps? Some fish are more sensitive than others.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

Mississauga uses Chloramine and when you dose with Prime, quite a few test kits will give you this sort of false positive. 
Had I posted test results on any of my Cyp tanks back up there, they would have read the exact same.

I don't think we should stop looking based on the above posted results. My gut says there's still a problem to identify.

Just my thoughts...


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## Longstocking (Aug 26, 2003)

This is a large tank.... I know this goes against eveything I say and many people on this site say....

But, sometimes it's just better to leave a tank alone for a couple weeks, when first getting fish in. Let them get used to things etc....

You can usually get away with this in large tanks. I find more sensitive species do better this way.

DId you do massive water changes after removing the fronts? If so, this can cause an imbalance in the tank.


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## crazyravr (Sep 11, 2003)

I removed the fronts, did the usual 40% water change and next day in came the cyps. They seemed fine for that one day. Next morning they did not look happy at all. I had the same thing happen the first time I tried cyps. I have no idea what it is and i cant pin point it at the moment.

I will try the slate and see what that does. I will report back if this fixes any problems.


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## Longstocking (Aug 26, 2003)

Sometimes ... and this is nothing against who ever you bought the fish from..

Fish don't do well going from one tank to another. I have found some people I have bought from.... the fish do TERRIBLE! My guess is that the water chemistry is too different for them to adjust smoothly ( the seller did nothing wrong... water can be VERY different from one area to another, I'm not talking about ph etc ). Another possibility... the person kept them at 9.0. This is ideal but the problem comes in when selling the fry to people that keep their tangs at 8.0-8.2 Sensitive tangs don't do well with this and often die.

What is your kh at?


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## fiupntballr (Jul 7, 2004)

I have a 180 with with some cyps and other fish.. i find thatthe cyps hangout onteh right end of te tank where i have a VERY LARGE rock lots of faces and they really like the cover... once the lights go out the seemd to get stuck to it like velcro...

I think the suggestion of large flat rocks is pretty good....

My prblem is that they breed like mad but they dont hold the eggs past 1 week


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## mcfish (Mar 30, 2007)

If your water parameters are all good, I might suggest much smaller water changes. While I have changed 50% of the water in my Cyp. tanks, I find that they seem to do very well on smaller changes, 10-20% for example. Cyps are not huge waste producers and mine do fine on smaller changes. They seem to resume normal activity sooner with a small change vs a larger one.

Also lots of surface aggitation is a great suggestion.

Good luck..... Mark


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## crazyravr (Sep 11, 2003)

Today I got a test kit for GH and KH. Its a kit from API (one drop at a time, shake, repeat till water changes color) kind of a thing.

KH - took 5 drops which means 89.5ppm

GH - took 28 drops which is off the provided scale (I re-tested this three times) Anyone knows what this means? Could this be the problem with my dieing fish??

BTW... I move the remaining alive cyps to my SA tank with Geophagus... within hours they were back to normal.... I dont understand... do these guys maybe like soft water and 6.2PH ???


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

No, but it certainly speaks to their being something toxic about that tank...

Time to suspect substrate, filters, faulty electrical equipment, etc.

I've heard of fish acting really odd if there was stray voltage in the tank from say a shorted out heater...


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## crazyravr (Sep 11, 2003)

Okkk just for **** and giggles I threw in there few yellow labs, pair calvus, male comp, and few giant danios (which I have for years and use them as testing objects). They are all doing just fine in that same water. I will leave the tank alone for a bit more.... empty with just the sand and the two plants. I will re-test this thing in a week and see what results I get then.

I am really confused right now and I have no idea what to do.


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## Barbie (Feb 13, 2003)

That general hardness seems really high. While Cyps come from hard water, it's a specific type of "hardness". Have you added any salt to the tank? Could you find someone with a refractometer to see what that reading would be? (reef tank store should be able to give you a very accurate reading).  I don't have a scale to compare it to here, sorry. It seems strange that the labs and what not would be fine. I know this sounds strange, but have you checked for stray voltage? Different fish will definitely react while others act totally normal. How warm was this tank getting? I swear I read the thread, but I probably missed it. I know my cyps don't see the humor in temps that are much over 82.

I keep Cyps in big tanks, smaller tanks, overstocked tanks and tanks set up for them specifically. I've only had one group that struggles and it started out too small from the beginning when the shipment was delayed and I lost most of them. My Kitumba are starting to make me think they're more rabbitfish than cichlids . I've got Utinta in with plecos I'm spawning, with about 40 fry in the tank with them. They get big water changes to encourage spawning from the plecos and simply to try to keep their water quality up in a tank that's really not big enough for them all. They've taken quite a bit of abuse and only had losses when a powerhead failed to restart and all of the fish in the tank were at the surface gasping for oxygen after a power outage. I wish any of that was any help to you, but I'm sure it's probably not. Good luck figuring out what's causing your issue!

Barbie


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## leongeo (Feb 20, 2006)

Get the ammonia to 0 and I mean ZERO. I have to assume that that is the problem. Vacuum your substrate and make sure there are no pockets of ammonia in it. You said you moved the rocks, there could have been trapped gas bubbles of ammonia under them. How often do you vacuum the substate. Cyps thrive in Lake Tanganyika it is far from soft water.

I keep Mtoto, Microlepidotus Kigoma, Tricolors and Specklebacks and they all thrive at 8.4 ph.

Good luck


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## TorontoRaptorsFan (May 20, 2005)

Cyprichromis are one of my favorite fish!

I've found the secret to success with them is really clean water (they thrive on regular water changes of 50% a week), lots of filtration (on my tanks I use a Eheim canister with a couple of sponge filters), and use cichlid salts.

Tankmates play an important role as well. I usually put mine in with Featherfins or Sandsifters. Anything more aggressive will cause them too much stress.


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## Markolodeon (Nov 4, 2007)

A few thoughs on Cyps based on personal experience:

1) They prefer community tanks with other mellow fish that won't eat their babies.

2) A reef/rock-like structure that spans the width of the tank(lace/grotto rock is my hands-down fave), yet with at least 4" in water height at the top for the cyps to hang out. A bare/minimal tank is not the way to go.

3) One male. many, many females (like a 1 to 8 ratio). If there is more than one male they seem to fight it out to the death or the submissive one hides all the time. If you buy fry doubling the planned amount may not be a bad idea.

4) Use Seachem's Tang buffer and their thier lake salts. You have to measure the pH/kH of your tap water to really determine correct dosage but for me it's just a 1/4 teaspoon of each per five gallon pail. Mix with dechlor and pour in tank for water changes.

5) Use Stresscoat and instead of Prime. I know people love Prime in a Ehemish devotional kinda way but I say the stuff is unnatural and it stinks. I was experiencing unexplained fish deaths using it and once I stopped not one fish has died. On my 75 gallon the Brichardi's are breeding like mad (which before they were not with the Prime, and yes I was ridiculously careful about the amount used). And my 55 is a mix of multi's and cyps and it's like they are on some sort of fertility drug since following this formula. One group ("The Cyps") took up one side and the other ("The Multi's") claimed the other side of the tank. It's almost like they are in some sort of contest to see who can breed the most. One seems to egg the other on. This is a great combo imho, neither interfere or eat each other's fry. I just wonder when they'll stop! I have the best filtration on that tank so it can support a pretty heavy bio-load. Fun!


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## myjohnson (Dec 28, 2007)

Any updates on how the cyps are doing now?


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