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Electric Yellow Lab
Labidochromis caeruleus
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Photo by Jmatz at English Wikipedia (Original text: Julian Matz (talk)) · CC BY-SA 3.0
Passport
- Family
- African Cichlids
- Grows to
- 10 cm (3.9")
- Lives
- 6–10 years
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- Care
- Beginner
- Swims
- Mid-water
- Keep
- One is fine
- Water
- 24–28 °C (75–82 °F)
Malawi
Care requirements
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On record for Electric Yellow Lab: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level, tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 160 L / 42.3 US gal
- pH 7.7–8.6
- Hardness 10–25 dGH
- Diet herbivore
- Tank length 90 cm minimum
Keeping notes
A Malawi mbuna, and the gentlest of them. Mbuna tanks are kept crowded on purpose, to spread the fighting, and the stocking figure allows for it. What makes it work is rock stacked to the surface, a big filter, weekly water changes, and company of their own kind only. Never with gentler fish.
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
Electric yellows are the mbuna you can actually recommend. Malawi rock cichlids are a famously combative group, and this one is at the mild end of it — territorial, certainly, but nothing like the relentless aggression of most of its neighbours.
The colour is unreasonable. A solid, saturated buttercup yellow with a hard black band along the dorsal fin, and it doesn't fade with age the way many cichlid colours do.
They come from Lake Malawi, which is hard, alkaline and mineral-rich, and that is the part not to compromise on. It sits at the far end of the range from the soft water most South American community fish are kept in. Whether any particular pairing works is a question for the calculator rather than for a rule of thumb about continents.
Tank setup
Give your yellow labs hard, alkaline water. Malawi water is high in dissolved minerals and well above neutral, and soft acidic water makes them sickly over time. Most tap water in a hard-water area is fine as it comes.
Build the tank out of rock. Piles of stone with caves and passages are their habitat, and each fish will claim a territory within it.
Use sand and stack rock on the base glass rather than on the substrate, so nothing collapses when they dig underneath it.
Overstock deliberately. This is counterintuitive and it's how Malawi tanks work: more fish means aggression is spread across many targets instead of concentrated on one. It requires serious filtration to support.
Keep them with other Malawi cichlids of similar temperament, never with soft-water community fish.
Feeding
Yellow labs are omnivores that graze algae off rock in the wild along with the small creatures living in it.
Feed a vegetable-based cichlid pellet as the staple. This matters more than it sounds: their gut is built for grazing algae off rock, and a diet of rich protein is a poor match for it.
Give them some protein — brine shrimp, mysis — but keep it occasional rather than daily.
Avoid: bloodworm and other rich mammalian or insect-based foods as a daily staple. An occasional feed is a different thing from a diet built on them.
Filtration and flow
Filter heavily. A properly stocked Malawi tank carries a large bioload and the water quality has to keep up.
Water changes need to be generous and regular. Stale water is a strain on any fish, and it is one of the few things about a mbuna tank you control completely.
With plants
Yellow labs will eat and uproot most plants. They graze anything soft and they dig.
Stick to tough species attached to hardscape: anubias and java fern tied to rock usually survive. Vallisneria sometimes does. Anything delicate will not.
Most Malawi tanks are rock and sand for exactly this reason, and they look right that way.
Health
They're hardy in correct water and prone to trouble in the wrong water.
Bloat is the one to know. A fish that stops eating, hangs listlessly, produces white stringy waste and swells is in serious trouble. What is behind it is genuinely contested — gut pathogens are documented in cichlids, and husbandry is thought to make matters worse rather than to be the whole story — so a fish showing it needs proper attention, ideally from a vet who sees fish, not just a water change.
Watch for a fish being singled out. In an under-stocked tank aggression concentrates, and the fish at the bottom of the order will be killed.
Breeding
Yellow labs are mouthbrooders and they'll do it without any encouragement.
The female lays a small number of eggs, takes them into her mouth, and collects milt from the male to fertilise them there. She then carries the brood for around three weeks, eating nothing at all.
You'll notice her by the distended throat and her refusal to feed. Fry are released fully formed and large enough to take crushed flake and baby brine shrimp immediately, which makes this one of the easiest cichlids to raise — the difficulty is finding homes for them all.
Tank mates
Avoid82
- Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid Electric Yellow Lab is not safe with Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid: african cichlids and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a bad pairing.
- Amano Shrimp Electric Yellow Lab is not safe with Amano Shrimp: african cichlids and shrimp and yabbies are a bad pairing.
- Angelfish Electric Yellow Lab and Angelfish do not mix: african cichlids and angelfish are a bad pairing.
- Assassin Snail Electric Yellow Lab is not safe with Assassin Snail: african cichlids and snails are a bad pairing.
- Bala Shark Bala Shark is not safe with Electric Yellow Lab: african cichlids and sharks are a bad pairing.
Only with care21
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Electric Yellow Lab is peaceful.
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid is aggressive and Electric Yellow Lab is peaceful.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid is aggressive and Electric Yellow Lab is peaceful.
- Bristlenose Pleco Electric Yellow Lab and Bristlenose Pleco are an uneasy mix: african cichlids and bristlenose catfish are a pairing to watch.
- Clown Loach Clown Loach is a risk to Electric Yellow Lab: african cichlids and loaches and botia are a pairing to watch.
No conflict recorded1
4 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.