# 75 gal. salvini tank



## bernie comeau (Feb 19, 2007)

Some pictures take of my 4 ft. 75 gal. tank, nov.10, 2008. Inhabitants are: a pair of breeding sals, 4 kenyi, 2 auratus and 1 pleco.Tank will be upgraded to a 5 ft. 120 in a month or twoand more auratus plus blue gouramis will be added. 75 is to become a fry - grow up tank.









Male sal, 3 yrs old now, born nov., 2005. Measured at 7 5/8" at the end of last march. Been a slow grower compared to his father and grandfather.










Walmart female sal, purchased early march, 2008. Around 4". Was in the "dog house" at the time this picture was taken; chased away by the male after I re-arranged the whole tank to do a very thorough water change. She promptly claimed space in the upper right corner of the tank against the male kenyi and larger auratus.










Male kenyi. 5"+. Purchased early feb., 2008 and grew very fast. One aggressive A-hole. Always wants to scrap female sal, but runs away as soon as the male sal comes near.










Auratus. Around 4". Purchased aug., 2008. Think it's a female but could be a subordinate male (?). The smaller auratus, purchased in oct., 2008 is also unknown as far as its sex. Auratus are very quick to bite in the tail; the chunks missing in the female sals tail, I'm pretty sure the auratus did it. A kenyi, IME, is much more willing to go face to face.









One of 3 subordinate kenyi, purchased early oct. 2008. just noticed the egg spot on the fin, unlike the other 2 blue kenyi. maybe that means it's a subordinate male? If so, I might end up moving him or feeding him to the dovii.








Another one of the smaller kenyi, hoping for it to be female.


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## bernie comeau (Feb 19, 2007)

A few pictures taken this afternoon, nov. 21, 2008, of female sal in her cave with a big clump of wrigglers:



















The big clump of wrigglers is in the front bottom left corner of the cave. She has big batches of fry but so far this pair hasn't held on to free swimming fry for much more then a week, so I haven't bothered to remove any. They breed every couple of weeks or so, but I am in no hurry to take their fry as I want the parents to raise them for at least a couple weeks.










Another picture taken today of the pair in their adjacent caves. Male sal is sort of lazy and doesn't do too much to help out. Occasionally he will sneak over to the other side of the tank and try to suprise the male kenyi. The male kenyi is very active and almost always keeps his distance from the male sal.


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## bernie comeau (Feb 19, 2007)

A few more pics of male sal, taken 11 days ago. Not an easy fish to take a picture of. Not scared of me, he swims around now and then, but as soon as I pull the camera out, he goes running for his cave.


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## NORMAND (Oct 27, 2008)

very nice man just picked up a salvini today


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## gage (Feb 7, 2007)

tsk tsk tsk... mixing new world and old world, but mbuna do make decent dithers if the main fish are aggressive enough to push them around.


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## CiChLiD LoVeR128 (Mar 22, 2006)

Wow awesome bernie! Beautiful Salvini! :thumb:


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## bernie comeau (Feb 19, 2007)

CiChLiD LoVeR128 said:


> Wow awesome bernie! Beautiful Salvini! :thumb:


Thanks for the compliment, Cichlid lover.

Another picture I took yesterday of the female sal. She came out of her cave to threaten me as I came close to the glass with the camera. But just before I snapped the picture, she got reluctant and started to retreat to her cave:









When the fry start free swimming in a few days, I"ll take some video footage. She really has very bright and intense yellow when she has free swimming fry; moreso then other female sals I have had.


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## bernie comeau (Feb 19, 2007)

bernie comeau said:


> Auratus are very quick to bite in the tail; the chunks missing in the female sals tail, I'm pretty sure the auratus did it.


Actually, now that I think of it, my speculation is almost certainly wrong here. The little chunks missing from the female sals tail fin in this first picture of her, must have come from the male sal when he gave her the "boot". Salvini teeth take chunks of fin, when they bite.

In her breif period in the upper right corner of the tank, she had numerous scraps with the auratus, and got bitten in the tail a number of times. That's what an auratus always does --- bite in the tail. But the kind of damage it may have inflicted would be splits in the tail; not likely little chunks missing. Of course the little female sal can dish back as good or better.


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## bernie comeau (Feb 19, 2007)

Well, here's the sals this week with their fry, somhow dwindled down to less then 20 fry in a matter of a few days :lol: 
Nov, 25,2008:



















Here's some video with my 11 yr. old daughter's attempt to sing "Hannah Montana": actually the sound is much worse then really is but of course that has nothing to do with fish.

http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z116/Bern-C/?action=view&current=nov25200875gal004.flv

2 days later, Nov. 27, with about 20 fry left:

http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z116/Bern-C/?action=view&current=nov27200875gal3008.flv

A minute later, not much happening in the 75; me telling my daughter, 9:00 that's it for the family channel, the Calgary vs. Vacouver game is on :

http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z116/Bern-C/?action=view&current=nov27200875gal3009.flv


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## bernie comeau (Feb 19, 2007)

A few pictures I took of the sals today. They have about 10 fry left. Not too sure wether the mbuna are snagging them ( never seen them get close enough to the fry to eat them) or its due to predation amongst the fry themselves. My male sal comes from a line of sals that has a super, super high rate of fry predation. Out of numerous, numerous spawns only one sal ( on a couple of occasion 2: one male and one female) would remain but the number of fry always dwindled after they were removed from the parents, never before. Of course for my purposes, all I would ever want from a batch of fry is MAYBE one or two fish.


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## CiChLiD LoVeR128 (Mar 22, 2006)

Wow very nice Bernie! :thumb:

Keep up the good work! :thumb:


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## Ctrl_Alt_Dlt (Sep 3, 2008)

very nice sals! Its very very hard to come by males with that color. I sold a pair a year ago and I still regret it.


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