identifying my cichlids, need assistance

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auroraz
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2024 7:27 pm

identifying my cichlids, need assistance

Post by auroraz »

I recently picked up 7 assorted cichlids from my LFS, and 4 of them have this awesome yellowish-orange color going on. The other 3 are blue with stripes that show up every now and then.

I managed to snap a few pics, but it's tough since they freak out and hide whenever I get close to the tank. When I'm far away, though, they're super active.

They're currently in a 55-gallon tank, and I'm thinking of adding more fish to get a total of 15. Before I do that, I wanted to figure out what kind of fish these guys are.

http/imgur.com/a/36vec#l66osmR
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starluna
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2022 7:37 pm

Re: identifying my cichlids, need assistance

Post by starluna »

The orange ones appear to be either Red Zebra (Metriaclima estherae) or Kingsizei Lupingu (Metriaclima sp.), though I'm far from a cichlid expert. Both are from the Malawi/Victoria region.

The blue ones seem to resemble Chinuni (Cynotilapia zebroides) or possibly the "Metangula" variant, also known as white top afra. Again, these are Malawi/Victoria rock dwellers.

I'm basing this off of some research from african-cichlid.com, specifically their Lake Malawi page. I'm not familiar with size or specific requirements, so I'll leave that to those more knowledgeable.
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