Hi, I am curious to know what other people keep in the same tank with african cichlids in order to control the waste?

Malaysian trumpet snails work well for eating up leftover food and stirring the sand. Plus they have a pretty hard shell so they are hard to eat.

If you want some let me know I have a ton of them.

waste? fish poo or fish food?? just remember in the wild cichlids eat low nutrition food all day. in our tanks we feet a high quality diet 2 to 3 times a day. best thing imho is to cut down on the amount of food you feed the fish. less food= less wasted food and less fish poo. i have found in my tank with the weekly vacuuming and decreased amount of food that i am removing almost no waste from my tank the fish are healthy and their poo is a little thinner when it happens and gets filtered out. snails like plecos can survive in a african tank but once they figure out how to kill either it will be hard to keep anymore with them. in my african tank i have plecos and Chinese Algae Eaters and do well but they do not eat poo.

another note at the last cca meeting, Laif DeMason an African cichlid farmer from Homestead Florida stated he only feeds his adult fish every 4 days

Fern, Being that you are in Florida, how much is it going to cost to ship me some snails? Thanks, Alex

The smallest flat rate box there is, the snails would be free. They also help out on the algae at night, they tend to stay in the sand/gravel during the day when there are predators about. So if you don't see much of them that would be why.

If Fern cant send you any, I have a few thousand of them. Just come and get them. They are always free.

Thanks, Fern. Do you have a paypal account I can send you some money for shipment of the snails?

Thanks, Terry.

I used apple and mystery snails. The will multiply quickly too.

i use bristlenose plecos.

I need some snails terry