Plant's from lake malawi

Caton said:

I plan on doing a lake malawi tank with the 75g tank I am getting (custom made to be wider from front to back and its rimless). But since it is going to be a bio-type what plants come from lake malawi?

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Google it. :wink:

I have been. All I can find says: "lake malawi has very little plants with lots of rocks and some sandy beaches"
Thought I would ask here.

Because of the water type of Lake Malawi there is just not anything that you will find. The reasone their is not much mention is becuse even though alot of fish in lake malawi are herbavouris they are eating algae not plants. You could condider using some anubias or maybe soem other tough leved plants but tha is realy about what your options are.

Darn, I was really wanting plants that are native to lake malawi. I guess I can go without them...

Vallisneria is the only comercial plant available from lake malawi but your fish will most likely eat them.

nemosreef said:

Vallisneria is the only comercial plant available from lake malawi but your fish will most likely eat them.

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Vallisnerea spp.? Really? I was pretty sure they originated from South American and Asia.

Sorry Caton, but there are no native plants in Malawi. :icon_frow Maybe a riparium? :biggrin:

Many invasive/non-native plants (introduced by man) like water hyacinth and water pollution had decimated the native plants. The native fish are harsh on the few native plants too. I guess the algae on the rocks would qualify as Lake Malawi plants. Cichlids scrape those algae off the rocks for food, aside from snails.

This may be your excuse to finally put together that algae tank. It will be beautiful!

JakeJ said:

Vallisnerea spp.? Really? I was pretty sure they originated from South American and Asia.

Sorry Caton, but there are no native plants in Malawi. :icon_frow Maybe a riparium? :biggrin:

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I did not think their were either. This is just one of the things I found while doing a goggle search.

There definitely are Vallisneria in Lake Malawi, at least spiralis and aethiopica I believe. There's some Potamogeton species in there as well (schweinfurthii?), and I believe Hornwort can be found there too.

Of course there are native aquatic plants there, including Vallisneria. I believe there is also a Najas, but not one that is available. But there are large areas of sandy bottom home to the former and cichlids specialized to live there. You may be able to find photos of that in rift lake cichlid books. Aquarium Plants by Kasselmann also has some information.

If only I could get ahold of Ad konings :biggrin:

So I could get val's?

Stocking will be
8- yellow labs
8-Pseudotropheus sp. "Acei"
8-Cyrtocara moorii
4- Synodontis njassae

I am planning on fixing my 55g using that as a grow-out/time-out tank, I also have a 10g for when the mom spit's the fry, a 20g that I plan on using for the fry, a 29g for the fry, and a 30g for the fry, and a 17g rubbermaid tub...for the fry. I plan on having lot's of fry and I am glad there is one syno that will go in my tank and is from lake malawi so that way I can control the population's if need be.

I've been there, the only live plants I saw were emersed, mostly reeds. I wish I could post my pics but it was before the days of digital photography and I never have gotten around to scanning my old Africa albums LOL

This type of biotope would be a great candidate for a riparium setup, with papyrus, IMO.

Perhaps in areas with large shallow areas there could be more submersed growth since the bigger fish couldn't get to them as easily/would stay away due to predator shorebirds (it's a BIG lake!), but there weren't any around the beaches where we swam.

I once saw pictures of shoreline areas from a Rift Valley lake--can't remember which lake it was--that showed dense stands of emergent marginal vegetation including Cyperus umbrella sedges and similar stuff.

You could make an awesome riparium setup to get that kind of look and use some similar kinds of plants. Since your tank is rimless and with a broad footprint it would be doubly-suited for use as a riparium. You would just need to hang the lighting up high enough to accommodate the plants.

And with a riparium setup you could still have that broad expansive sandy bottom, and it would be a relatively easy planted tank.

You know what could look awesome would be a layout like the one that I described starting with this post...

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/plants/115841-proven-riparium-plant-combinations.html#post1154646

...with Cyperus and a dense carpet of Bacopa and other emersed stems. This kind of planting is pretty easy to set up and maintain.

chad320 said:

This may be your excuse to finally put together that algae tank. It will be beautiful!

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:hihi: I have one of these, it is beautiful in an ugly way. Amazing how hard it can be to grow algae...

I love your choice of fish. Some of my favorites.

Would I be able to keep all of the fish I wanted to keep if I did a rip? I thought with riparium's tall is kinda better. The dimensions of this tank are 48"x15"x24"

nemosreef said:

I love your choice of fish. Some of my favorites.

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Thank you, instead of taking a month to get a stocking list for my 55g and 10 page's this one only took a week and 3 pages :help::hihi:

I got some really good help on cichlid-forum...I saw you were on there hydrophyte showing off your ripariums....