The Peace of Lake Malawi

The Blue Planet Aquarium has some beautiful displays and some fascinating fish. But this tank, the Lake Malawi Cichlid tanks is one of my favourite. Simply because i believe it is the most relaxing tank to just sit any watch for a long time. The tank is full of around 100 species of Cichlids and if you ever try to count the species in the tank, you will quickly lose count as they are not slow fish. These fish are constantly active. Most of the fish in the tank hang around near the front proudly showing off their colours but look towards the bottom and the back and you see more fish. These fish are showing some truly fascinating behaviour because they are spawning or guarding tiny fry. If you look closely you can occasionally see the fry quickly moving across the stones and rocks. If any other cichlids comes close to the fry/eggs you can see a parent chasing them away. In Fact regularly you will see Cichlids chasing each other, sometime it is clearly because a fish has got to close to a another's territory, other times it seems to be completely random. This just makes them more fun to watch.

I love this tank and i hope you like the videos, the tank is massive and shows the fish off to great effect. It inspires me to try and set up my own Lake Malawi Biotope fish tank. The tank is so big i think it should be described as a tropical pond but then most of the tanks in the Blue Planet Aquarium are this big. What makes this look so beautiful is how big the tank is and compared to how small the fish are. There are hundreds of fish in tank all showing a variety of behaviours. I would recommend any visitor to the Blue Planet to spend some time just watching this tank and try and see if you can spot any fry hiding amongst the rocks at the bottom.