Koi Fish Information Centre

Hello Everyone, First of all I’d like to wish you all a Very Happy New Year, may it give you everything that you want. Next, I’d like to tell a little true story. A member of one of the Freecycle groups I belong to in Devon had three goldfishes she didn’t want and as we have a tank with just a Koi Carp & Goldfish we offered to have them and she send me an email with her phone number asking me to contact her which of course I did. Having done this she told me that she also had another three fishes but as she didn’t know what they were called she hadn’t offered them but asked me if I would like it as well as the *big* tank they were in & of course I said Yes Please I’d love them! When we got them we realized that the Big tank was in fact a 24 inch one but it came complete with underwater gravel filter & pump and of course the 6 fishes. Now, I would be the first to admit that although I’ve kept cold water fishes since 1987 & tropical fishes from about 1991 I am not an expert in the field but when we arrived home I was pretty sure that the 3 unknown fishes were tropical & not cold water fishes, so I put the 3 goldfishes in our cold water tank and put a heater in the new tank & waiting to see what happened, as they had been kept in cold water without a heater I put the heater on at a low heat and gradually increased the temperature as I didn’t want to kill them! The next day I took a couple of photo’s of the biggest one which is a pale grey with darker grey rings round it’s body, although I tried to photograph the others I haven’t managed to do so but they are both brown with a black dorsal fin and black tail, then armed with the best of my photo’s we went to our local fish shop and he told us that they were Malawi? Cichlids and was told that they are not community fishes and need a tank of their own although they will live quite happily with another one of the Cichlid family (sorry I can’t remember what name he said) so we bought another 3, one is golden with a black dorsal fin, another one is orange with black stripes going from it’s head to the base of his tale and the third (who has since died) was grey with red on it’s back. As we now have 8 x 24 inch it is quite easy for us to have a tank just for them, and later we are hoping to get some Convict Cichlids which will also need their own tank. We did have a lot of Convicts but unfortunately the local water board decided to add even more chemicals to the water on the same day as we did a major water change and they all died. Cheerio for now,
God Bless you & yours, Joy, Elaine, Charlie & all our fishes of Burrington, Devon - England
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Category: UniQuaria