# Where do I house Tilapia Buttikoferi



## griffk (Apr 10, 2011)

I was at one of our LFS saturday night and was checking out some of the new cichlids they had for sale, when I looked in the convict tank and seen they had mislabeled a handful of tilapia buttikoferi for convicts. So I purchased 3 of them, right now they are about 1 and a 1/2 inches long. My question is which one of my tanks could they be kept in? My Mbuna/Hap tank, or my South American tank? I know that these get quite large, so I actually only intend on keeping one of these, and trading the other two after they mature a little.


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## fddlss (Apr 7, 2011)

griffk said:


> I was at one of our LFS saturday night and was checking out some of the new cichlids they had for sale, when I looked in the convict tank and seen they had mislabeled a handful of tilapia buttikoferi for convicts. So I purchased 3 of them, right now they are about 1 and a 1/2 inches long. My question is which one of my tanks could they be kept in? My Mbuna/Hap tank, or my South American tank? I know that these get quite large, so I actually only intend on keeping one of these, and trading the other two after they mature a little.


I think they are too aggressive for both tanks and can grow up to 15" inches. However, you can probably could probably keep them in either tank while they are small. Here's some information about this species: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilapia_buttikoferi.


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## Fogelhund (Dec 3, 2002)

The first question is going to be, what are the dimensions of your aquarium(s)?

Chances are you won't be able to keep them in either tank though.


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## griffk (Apr 10, 2011)

my mbuna tank is 165 gallon, 6ft long by 30in but im going to guess the tilipia will grow to eat the smaller mbuna correct? My south american is a 75 gallon tall, which they will prolly quickly outgrow.


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## Fogelhund (Dec 3, 2002)

Chances are he'd eat many of the bigger mbuna too... or just kill them, which is what they are good at.

The 165 gallon would work, but chances are you'd have to keep it alone.


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## BillD (May 17, 2005)

Interstingly, (to me anyway) someone traded in a buttokoferi of around 12" at the loccal Big Al's a year or two ago. It was the fattest fish I have ever seen. What was interesting was what it had as tankmates. It was kept in a 180 with a number of the largest, fattest platies I have ever seen. These platies were around 3" long and aroundt 3/4" thick when viewed from the front. It would appear that the fish were all overfed, which may explain why the were able to cohabitate.


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## griffk (Apr 10, 2011)

Thanks for the responses, I kinda figured that. Prolly gonna trade them after they start to mature.


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