• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

ShellDweller experience

nayr88

Member
Joined
4 Feb 2010
Messages
2,101
Helloooo people
Looking to set up a 30l well filtered Shelldweller tank, plenty of sand an shells for them and good clean water is as at as I know....

I know the tank is small so will keep to a single species an also just one pair, obviously would be cool of its possible to get more but I want to give them te best possible home so would rather have under the limit than be on the limit.


So what can I have? What would you keep and how many ect
 
I have pairs of Brevis in 30 litre cubes. You can have plants as well as they're not prolific diggers like some shellies. The only thing is once they are ready to breed they clear the tank of existing fry (whereas others might raise generations of fry together). I have 2 cubes for my pairs - move the adults over when they have spawned and you can see young (once kicked out, they are at risk), by the time the pair have spawned again, the other lot of fry are just about big enough to catch (but still pretty teeny!).
 
have you looked up multies? they are small, fairly hardy and prity readily available.

best of luck.
 
I was at MA today and saw a pair of shell dwellers. Didn't take down the name which I regret but they looked like brevis but had the wrong name to be them. Anyway they were £30 for the pair :O nice fish tho.
 
Not sure if links are allowed, but you can get wild caught Brevis for about £12.50 each from Mike's Rifts. They have normally paired off already (even if not spawned yet). Brevis are probably the best bet if you want plants of any description, multies will dig down to the base of the tank no matter how deep the substrate (although is pretty cool to watch teeny fish bulldoze loads of sand around the place)
 
Cheers for te replys

The Bravis are really cool I see them in a shop over weekend, really liked there character.
Would moss ferns and Anubis survive with the other one mentioned? Would like to see them digging around!
 
multies are tanganyikan cichlids so prefer harder water. thier natural habitat doesnt have hardly any forms of vegetation but i have seen tanks with anubias and ferns surviving. As a word of warning though they will rescape your tank for you. Im prity sure george farmer did a multies aquascape and whole article on them in PFK.

they arent shell dwellers but cave dwellers but have you considered apistogrammas. they is alot of choice from fairly easy to quite difficult, they are fairly readily available for the common types and have great little characters. they alos love a heavily planted tank to help them feel secure.
 
Brevis are plant safe and dont seem to dig too much. Im finding mine seem to colour up better with competition
IMG_3872-edit.jpg

IMG_3904.jpg

I have 2 breeding pairs and a couple of extra males
 
b1zbaz said:
I breed apistos if you want some
What apisros do you breed? Do you have pics?

@ollie- cheers for the input mate, those Bravis look really nice, I bet that have a ton of character, I'm leaving towards them ATM, I have kept apisto's in the past was just looking for something different.

Cheers guys once again.
 
You wont be disapointed. One thing I do suggest doing is make sure you can tell the difference between Brevis , Multifasciatus, Ocellatus etc when lookin at small brown juvies. They all have very differnt body shapes. I ended up with brevis when I wanted multies.
 
Back
Top