# Picking Tank Mates



## ddishon1 (Jul 5, 2020)

All, I am back to fish keeping after several years. I am wanting to setup a 55 gallon mbuna tank. I have the tank fishless cycling right now and picking out what I want. I was planning to get 20 fish to keep it slightly overstocked. I am running extra filtration on the tank will fine with weekly water changes.

First thought was to do what I did in the past and do a saulosi tank, but I cannot find them anywhere.

Current idea:
5 - yellow labs
5 - perlmutt
5 - yellow tail acei
5 - red top hongi

Open for other ideas to get a good color mix. Other thought was a peacock tank with about 12 peacocks. Not sure which peacocks I would get. Thoughts?


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## ddishon1 (Jul 5, 2020)

After looking further, It looks like I could do a similar look to saulosi if I do a yellow lab and demasoni. Thoughts on 6 yellow labs with 12-15 demasoni?


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## shiftyfox (Aug 2, 2019)

Your first post not a good mix as x3 labidochromis species, second suggestion of dems and labs sounds better.


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

For all male think in terms of 10 adults with no look-alike fish. Hard to do with peacocks only because there is red, yellow blue and not a whole lot of others that look completely different (from the perspective of the fish). Also a 75G 48x18 works better for all-male.

20 fish would be good if your tank was 48x18 but a 55G is 48x12. Shoot for 15 fish that mature <+ six inches and are more peaceful than aggressive if you are doing mixed gender. This gives you a good level of overstocking to manage aggression without crowding the fish so much that natural behaviors disappear.

Three species works well since you want 4 females for every male. Skip acei since they are better in a larger tank.

Demasoni are harder to keep healthy than saulosi and require more work for a longer period of time so choose them if you are 110% committed to make them work no matter what. 12 demasoni (after removing extra males) and 3 labs would be good numbers for a 55G.


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