As mentioned on this web site in a couple of places, four African Cichlids usually will not get along well. The strongest will eventually make the others miserable. So watch your fish carefully. Stand across the room from you aquarium to see if one of the fish is constantly chasing the others.

You should probably start adding more of the same sorts of African Cichlids. Click here for more about aggression in Mbuna Cichlids. This advice applies to most Cichlids.

We don't now have a newsletter. I wonder if other visitors to this web site would also enjoy receiving a monthly email newsletter about fish? I also wonder, if I'd enjoy writing it each month.

(1) Be sure you get the right equipment. It would be great to get an aquarium with an Eclipse Hood. Click here to see my aquarium with an Eclipse Hood. If you don't get the Eclipse Hood, you should be sure you get an exterior power filter with a BIO-Wheel.

Click here to read more about filters with BIO-Wheels. Be sure the aquarium has no gravel or a thin layer of gravel at most 1/4" thick. For goldfish you won't need an aquarium heater. Click here to read about cool water aquariums without heaters.

(2) Be sure to get the right fish. Click here to read more about Fantails, Orandas, and Telescopes, which are types of goldfish that do very well in a large cool water aquarium. Do not mix Pond Comets (or Pond Koi) with your fish.

(3) Click here to read about feeding fish. Feed the fish early in the morning and in the late afternoon. If your Goldfish are 3" or less, feed them TetraFin flake food. When they grow bigger than 3" begin to feed them pellet food for goldfish. Both flakes and pellets are available in most stores that sell fish and from online stores like the ones that advertise in this web site.

(4) Click here to read about the essentials of keeping fish. Click here to read about an aquarium maintenance schedule.

The advice on this web site is simple to read and practical to use. If you consistently follow this advice, the fish will do very well. You might also enjoy seeing the pond by my front door, which has has been a great joy to me. Click here to see it.

At least not for Koi that are one year old and a few inches long. Professional Koi breeders can tell a lot more than I can, after they've been breeding Koi for many years. When we visit their Koi farms to buy Koi from them, they'll often say, "There is one of my best breeding females". As they point to a huge Koi, that is perhaps 16" long.

Professional fish breeders can often predict which fish are males and which are females long before the fish spawn and confirm which gender they are. When I've asked professional koi breeders how they make these accurate predictions, I've always gotten an answer that doesn't help me. Often they'll say that they can not predict with more than about 80% accuracy anyway.

Some people have said that professional breeders really do know how to do it, and just don't want to share their knowledge, because the knowledge that they share might help other people to spawn more fish and compete with them. But most of the people that I've known that produce lots of fish are very willing to share all their secrets. But they often can't put into words how they do it.

Here is some math. If you have room in your pond for three more koi, the probability that all three of the new koi will be the same gender as the koi you now have is 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/8 = 12.5%. So the odds of having at least one male and one female are 87.5%. Those are pretty good odds.

Incidentally, I have a beautiful Comet Goldfish in my barrel pond by my front door. All last summer I was convinced that this Comet was a slim male. But this winter it looks like my slim male Comet has been getting plumper and filling with eggs to lay in the early spring. Click here to see my pond comet. Click here to read more about my Comet.