"Mousetater" wrote in message
...
Well, I am new to the group. I just wanted some advice. Please excuse my
ignorance.
I thought I could just ask an innocent Cichlid question. I guess not.
More importantly, if innocent questions are perceived as what you implied,
I guess I need to re-evaluate the need for newsgroups at all. I was under
the assumption that you could go to newsgroups for help.
I respectfully remove myself and if could, I'd remove the post.
G'day

Please don't excuse yourself on my account. I rarely post here anymore.
I spend most of my time at websites where I can use smilies to get my point
across. There are hundreds of people who post on the newsgroups. Letting one
person offend you to the point where you leave is just plain silly.
Especially when posting someplace that is "unmoderated."
If you were sincerely looking for advice, I'd tell you that your tank is
in all probability too small. This based on a 30 gallon may house a pair of
Firemouths by themselves with nothing else. I'd inform you that the orange
fish you mention is probably a Metriaclima estherae and should be housed in
a 75 gallon tank or larger. They're algae grazers and have developed their
temperments from years of evolution of protecting their grazing area in Lake
Malawi. The only Mbuna I would consider for a thirty gallon tank would maybe
be Labidochromis caeruleus or Iodotropheus sprengerae.
I've found over the past few years that most new people to the hobby
don't appreciate any advice that implies they may have done something wrong.
They get defensive and say things like "The fish all seem to be doing fine."
or "My buddy has a dozen tanks and he's not having any problems." Or they
use say their LFS said it was OK. The LFS guy who wants you to buy fish so
he makes money. This isn't to say that all LFS's lie and mislead, but I've
seen enough bad advice given to make me think twice about accepting their
advice. I would start researching more and instead of ignoring what you
read, weigh out everything. A good book for beginers with cichlids would be
"Enjoying Cichlids 2nd edition" edited by Ad Konings. A little more
trustworthy than a friend, website, Newsgroup or LFS.
From the people who've been in the hobby a while, I've found they love
their fish like people love dogs. When someone talks about fish attacking
each other and says it's funny, it typically generates a lot of irate
responses. Some of those responses can be quite brutal. So, when I see you
posting this type of stuff, I go say "Wow. People are going to flip out on
this guy." But then I figure you've must of read some of the posts and would
know how people would react, so I figure you weren't some innocent poster,
but someone looking to upset people. Either way, I'm going hiking Monday to
kick off my two weeks off and am pretty apathetic towards the whole thing.
If you do read this, even if you disagree, I hope you can see my point
of view. And even if you can't, I'll say again, Enjoy your fish.
Tim
http://www.fishaholics.org