# Metriaclima sp. msobo



## AquaDigi (Jan 31, 2008)

Metriaclima sp. msobo

http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0015
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0014
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0013
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0012
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0011
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0010
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0009
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0008
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0007
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0006
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0005
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0004
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0003
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0002
http://www.aquadigi.com/aquarium.php?ph ... msobo-0001


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

We have much the same taste in fish, I see!

Another set of great pics of an equally great species...

Those males sure make the colour transformation slowly, don't they? How many do you have?

I have a group of 6 - 1 happy male and 5 females!

Kim


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## AquaDigi (Jan 31, 2008)

Thatâ€™s one happy male 

The males seem to take forever to transform. I have a group of 12 in a specie tank. Still need to vent them, but I am pretty sure there are 3m/9f.


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

The males are beautiful once the transformation is complete, but can look quite strange in between!

Gorgeous group you have there! I'd love to see a full tank shot.

Kim


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## gbleeker (Jul 31, 2007)

I have a question regarding Msobo; I have 6 right now, definitely 1 male, maybe another in a 55 gallon. There are also 6 Cobue. The 2 male Cobue are brightly colored up, and seem to be more dominant than my male Msobo. Will the male take a lot longer to start changing? Right now, the front edge of his dorsal fin is blue'ish along with the tips of hte small ventral fins. He also has egg spots. I am just curious how long until he starts to change!


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## nikelodeon79 (Nov 27, 2007)

Wow, awesome pictures!!!


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## S4surf (Oct 18, 2006)

Very nice pictures Aquadigi of one of my favorite Mbuna. the female are just as beautiful as the males with their dark solid orange yellow bodies.

My male went through the change in 2 weeks at about 2 1/2". He took on a brownish hue where his blue mask will be and mottled brown throughout the body with the yellow base. Everywhere the brown was became the electric blue area and the yelow became dark blue. The next week he was spetacular like the pictures of any adult. Some of them are tough to sex until they are full size. This does not hold completely true because there was a reply to my orginal thread that had females with egg spots. but I can state that every single one of my females ahd none, and every male had them. There was one that I thought was female with the egg spots at 3 1/2" and solid yellow, but as soon as I removed the subdom and the brown mask appeared I knew I was wrong. He looked almost like a darker blue Edwardi with almost no detectable pattern until I put him in another tank where he was the only male.

This was my male when he first turned all blue. Notice the male behind him thats bigger than he is that still all yellow. I don't have any pics left of the change when he was yellow/bronish but I do have 10 juvies growing out 
Please excuse my lack of camera skills compared to your pictures.



















Kim, I had no idea you ended up getting some of these. You are really going to like them.

Steve


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## skraeling (Jan 30, 2004)

It is amazing how they transform from this









To this(yuck)









Finally this 8)


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

Steve, you know me...I've got a bit of this and a bit of that! :lol:

I guess the transformation of my male took a bit longer because he didn't have any real competition from other Msobo males...I'm thinking it took him about a month to come into his own, but it was worth the wait.

gbleeker, mine are still young, just thinking about spawning over the past couple of weeks. I have them in a tank where they are somewhere in the middle aggression wise and this seems to work well. (Mine are housed with a large group of Cynotilapia White tops and a trio of L. trewavasae Mpanga Reds, but I plan to move out the trewavasae today - the male is absolutely brutal and interfering with the others spawning.)

Kim


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## AquaDigi (Jan 31, 2008)

Great fish and pictures everyone.

Kim here is a pic of the tank, itâ€™s a bit dark though. I plan on adding more rocks in the future. Itâ€™s a 40 breeder.









S4surf some of my females have egg spots, although not as prominent as those on males. Well at least I hope they are females, otherwise I am going to be stuck with a whole a lot of males. :lol:

Yes skraeling the transformation on these guys is pretty amazing. Youâ€™ve got a very nice male too.


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## vanBuuren (May 24, 2006)

Very nice pictures!

I have tryed lots of mbunas (pseudotropheus, labeotropheus, iodotropheus, labidochromis, metriaclima, melanochromis, cynotilapia) and the msobo is among one of my favourite to keep.

I have currently 3m / 4f wild in my tank and in a smaller tank about 35 F1 juveniles.

I have had in the past 2 males / 2 females wild and it was hard to keep them, the dominant male tend to be aggressive against other males and the dominant female (which can turn a kind of brownish colour when dominant and have blue on her dorsal) can be aggressive also on others females.

For this, in my opinion, keeping msobo must be with a ratio of 1 male / 3+ females or 3+ males / 3+ females.

The only downside having msobo is that althought the dominant male is so beautiful to watch, the others males are not very nice because they hide their colors. With my 35 F1 juveniles, I wonder if more than 1 male will display his colors. I will know in a couple of months...


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

I find the Msobo females to be pretty aggressive among each other...Has anyone else found this to be true?

Kim


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## vanBuuren (May 24, 2006)

That is why I said you should have 3+ females. When I got my 2 first wild females, one of them just kill the other.


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## gbleeker (Jul 31, 2007)

Not to hi-jack this thread.. but I have a Msobo question:

I have 11 in a 55 gallon right now.. the largest males are about 2'' maybe 2.5'' 
I have one clearly starting to morph, and I think another 2 that could be males. Definitely a 2nd to be sure.

So that is 2 maybe 3 males.. out of the remaining 8 fish, I think 2 of them are males also possibly.. this is my question.. they are kind of "dirty" looking and not pure pure orange like some of the other supposed females. They have some blue in the dorsal fin, but not much.

Are those sub doms or females?

Ultimately my ratio may be 5m:6f but I am hoping i'm wrong and have more like 3m:8f


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

vanBuuren said:


> That is why I said you should have 3+ females. When I got my 2 first wild females, one of them just kill the other.


I have 5 females and one male...Any more suggestions? :lol:

The females are so busy trying to kill each other that the poor male can't get their attention, and he's looking really good!

Kim


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## vanBuuren (May 24, 2006)

cichlidaholic said:


> vanBuuren said:
> 
> 
> > That is why I said you should have 3+ females. When I got my 2 first wild females, one of them just kill the other.
> ...


Did you read my message??? :?



> For this, in my opinion, keeping msobo must be with a ratio of 1 male / 3+ females or 3+ males / 3+ females.


Your situation is perfect.


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## vanBuuren (May 24, 2006)

gbleeker said:


> Not to hi-jack this thread.. but I have a Msobo question:
> 
> I have 11 in a 55 gallon right now.. the largest males are about 2'' maybe 2.5''
> I have one clearly starting to morph, and I think another 2 that could be males. Definitely a 2nd to be sure.
> ...


Your fish are not yet finished growing but at the end you will be able to see the difference between each male and female. Like I said earlier males dominated wont have a nice colors, they will look a pale blue or a mix of dark orange and blue and you wont see clearly their black spots. females stays orange but some can have a bit of blue on their dorsal but they stay bright orange (or yellow, it depend how you distinguish this color)


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

Yes, vanBuuren, I read your message. :roll:

I said:



> I find the Msobo females to be pretty aggressive among each other...Has anyone else found this to be true?


And you said:



> That is why I said you should have 3+ females. When I got my 2 first wild females, one of them just kill the other.


To which I replied:



> I have 5 females and one male...Any more suggestions? :lol:


 :?

I would think 5 females would be enough to spread the aggression out amongst them from your previous post...In my case, that doesn't seem to hold true.

Great fish, none the less, so I may try adding a couple more females.

Kim


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## MightyWarMonger (Mar 20, 2007)

AquaDigi what camera and lense were you useing when you took those pics?


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## fishboy11 (Jul 13, 2005)

Kim, I too have kept the msobos. For a while I had 4m/4f in a 90g along with F1 Ps. blue dolphins and yellow labs. They were perfectly fine in this ratio, however, no breeding. I took 3 males out to see what would happen, and that is when the trouble started. A female became dominant in the group, and the male became aggressive. Maybe you should get 2 more males and see what happens? Mine never spawned for me, even at 4.5", and I sold them, because I wanted my dolphins to be the focus of that tank.


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## vanBuuren (May 24, 2006)

cichlidaholic said:


> Yes, vanBuuren, I read your message. :roll:
> 
> I said:
> 
> ...


OK I did not read it like if you were joking, I thought it was a question. For msobo you need lots of place they can hide from bottom to top if possible, my dominated females hide on top and my dominated males hide between rocks in the right corner of the tank.

Also it is in sometime better to overpopulate a bit the tank so there will be less aggression on fish (not too much neither!).


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

No problem vanBuuren!

The tank is very heavily populated - I've taken "overstocking" to new heights. They are in with a group of about 20 Cynotilapia White Tops! Neither species bothers the other, the aggression is completely conspecific. But the poor male Msobo doesn't know which end is up with those 5 females fighting all the time! He does a lot of "Hey, look at me"... :lol:

I've even considered moving the Msobos to their own tank, but I'm afraid that would make things worse, especially after hearing what you have to say about them.

fishboy11, if I added more males (and I would like to, if I could find some close to the same size) I'd also feel like I would need to add more females, but maybe that might not be the case with these girls! They are, by far, the most aggressive females I've ever kept!

Kim


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## vanBuuren (May 24, 2006)

You are right I had afra in the past and even if the male is very very aggressive he just ignore others species.

For msobo, my dominant male sometime go in the females battles to stop it. It is funny to see.

I had many msobo in the past and the male had generally no character and personnality. Maybe for this reason it was impossible for me to reproduce my wild msobos, the males would never insist enought for reproduction on females. It is known in the litterature that wild msobo are hard to reproduce by the way.

But now I have a wild that has character and he insist enought that he is able to breed with 2 wild females (one of them is of course my dominant msobo female). I don't think it will be possible for the 2 others females they do not have a high position enough in the hierarchy of my tank so the male just ignore them and chase them to concentrate the most of his time on my dominant female (which also chase the others females to be sure the male look at her and not at the others)

What is your tank size by the way?


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

It's a 4 ft. tank, 55G, but keep in mind that the White tops aren't all mature...Only 3 are adult size and breeding, the others are anywhere from 2 1/2 inches down to 1 1/2 inches. Maybe because they are so young, they don't add alot of "balance" to the tank???

I have a funny feeling my male is never going to be a match for my dominant female! I have 3 girls that fight non stop, the other two just try to stay out of everyone else's way.

My Msobo are tank raised, but perhaps some of the wild traits carry on in them. The adult White tops are wild, but they are all pussycats compared to those 3 female Msobos! 

Kim


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## Cole1309 (Feb 5, 2006)

lol right now I have a trio in my 125 and my male is in the "yuck" stage right now. lol I dont like it but it will be worth it when he fully changes to that gorgeous black/blue. Him and the dom. female are circling all the time now. They follow each other everywhere. Is that because she knows he is changing or what. and they have claimed some territory over my DOMINATE Ps. Elongatus. Im pumped. Im ready for some more babies


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## moonlight (Feb 21, 2007)

Female msobos are the worst, hands down the most evil females I'v ever kept. The male makes up in looks for the actions of the female. Here is a really bad picture of my male.


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