75 gal new tank

[ram1anne]

Hi, I'm new....

My husband and I are purchasing a 75 US gal tank. Our water is relatively soft, high salinity for tap, and relatively high pH as tap water goes. We want to have african cichlids and live plants. What are your suggestions for other fish to include and any other suggestions?

thanks!

 

[morleyz]

Welcome to AC.

Because of the agressive nature of africans and their high pH/Hardness requirements, you should really only keep other african cichlids.

http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Plants/cichlids.html#3

The above is a good resource for plants in African tanks...but keep in mind a lot of african species will eat your plants or at least uproot them frequently. I ended up using silk plants in my 150G and had to silicone them to ceramic tiles to get them to stay put. Before that...every few days I'd find another group of them floating.

 

[JSchmidt]

Many species of synodontis catfish make excellent companions to africans. The cichlids pretty much ignore the catfish and vice versa.

Some species I keep successfully with african cichlids:

Synodontis petricola (keep in groups of at least 3-5 to see best behavior)
Syn. multipunctatus
Syn. eupterus
Syn. angelicus
Syn. ocellifer
Syn. decorus
Syn. flavitaeniatus

Check out www.planetcatfish.com and look in the Cat-e-log under Mochokidae to see the different synodontis species.

Good luck,
Jim