if you read here:

http://s9.invisionfree.com/Tropical_Fish_C...p?showtopic=208


you'll learn that while i think i know a fair amount about rift lake cichlids and a great deal about mbuna in the specific, i can't seem to keep a demasoni alive for the life of me. (tee hee... alive... life of me.... christ, i amuse myself... anyway...)

aside from my great and awful loses with demasoni, i can probably count the number of non-demasoni mbuna i've lost in the past 4 years on one hand. i have about 50 of them right now, most over 2 years old, some as many as 7.

but i just can't keep this species. anyone else have this happen?

i just want to hear some experiences and get some information out because for a species that's becomming more common, i think they're on the harder end of things to keep.

feedback?

What I've found is that P.demasoni does best in LARGE harems, with many females to one male...or kept singly in an Mbuna communtiy....I seems that you have to have 9 (1m 8f) or 1 lone demasoni to make it work...however, as always, exceptions exist. A buddy of mine has a breeding pair that seems to do fine and spawns regularly for him ;)

I have found them to be extremely hard on conspecifics, however by themselves they seem to do well in an Mbuna community...

I have also found them to be sensitve to bloat, and they need a sticter than average vegatarian diet...High protein foods like Mysis and beefheart should be avoided at all costs, a very occasional treat of brineshrimp may be OK, but I don't recomend it.

that blue and black fish rocks!

Thanks VIP, that's the fish in question...P.demasoni. One of my favorite Mbuna...

i think maybe the fates just have it in for me with this fish. i think the single fish that i just tried was just a bad fish. only explanation i can come up with for it just dropping dead after a week with no previous signs of stress, bloat or exclusion.

seedy - that's your second single demasoni, right? you were never able to quite explain the demise of the first, or have you come up with a theory?

Well.....It was definently an internal parasite problem that got out of hand...when we necropsied him, his gut (which was bloated) had completly turned to mush :blink: There was very little organ structure left...At the same time I had a rusting plant wire in the tank causing bad water quality...I think the iron in the water stressed him, allowing the internal infection to worsen....that's my best theory....

I've been keeping Ps. demasoni in my 125G mbuna community tank for about 10 months now and haven't had any deaths so far. Because there is plenty of cover (rocks and plants) they have plenty of hiding places to help reduce the conspecific aggression you're bound to get with these guys. IME Ps. demasoni should be kept in a large tank (even though they're small for mbuna) to reduce aggression. With plenty of cover I've been able to keep two males with a school of five breeding females and now have around a dozen fry that have survived to maturity in a tank stocked with L. caeruleus, Ps. elongatus 'Usisya', Ps. acei, and Labeotropheus fuelleborni. As was suggested earlier, I feed only vegetable diets high in spirulina, with the occaisional blood worms once a month or so. Good luck :)

Great advice Travis. :)

I have a pair of young demasoni that i have had for a while now. They are doing fine. If you are having problems check your PH and such. You might just be getting unhealthy specimens. I love those fish. :starwars: