indoor pond question

[illustrator]

Dear all,

I am thinking about constructing an indoor pond of about 250 cm x 80 cm x 50 cm (1000 L, but the amount of water will be smaller because of rocks and sand). Decoration will be piles of river stones and a layer of river sand on the bottom. Maybe I will add a few hardy plants like Cryptocoryne usteriana.

I would like to keep an endangered species in this pond, which is why I consider victorian cichlids. The controll in such a pond is less than an aquarium, and I think that a single species might be better than multiple species (how else to know which females are which when seen from above?). I would like it when the fish breed in the pond, without need to remove brooding females. And it would be great when there would be several territorial males, which would show bright colours when viewed from above.

Is this at all realistic? Has any of you experience with haplochromid cichlids in such a set-up? Which species would be approprate (and available in Europe)?

[Christophe de Medeiros]

Hi It envisageable, but yu can keep at leats 3-5 very differentiated species in such a volume, friends of mine did keep 5 species of vics in one 1500 liters aquarium and that was very nice. In this kind of tank, yu can keep 2 species of pelagics( H.piceatus and H.pyrrocephalus) one detritus eaters as H.paropius(broken bar) and one predator like H.perrieri or Orange rock hunter with one mollusc eater as P.degeni or H.fisheri.
xris